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Full Text: Anthropos, 102.2007

Berichte und Kommentare 
593 
Vhi- 
°Pos 102.2007 
preoccupations of the past two decades (voice, nar 
rative, authority, agency, and gender as so elegantly 
demonstrated by the autobiographical sketches in 
this volume) so narrowed our discipline’s foci as to 
have made the discipline irrelevant or, at the very 
least, nonresonant with many, including most male 
Undergraduates? 
I hope these ruminations prompt discussion. 
I would like to hear the views and experiences of 
others about my suspicion that, in our zeal to make 
anthropology responsive to our intellectual con 
cerns, we may have caused a marginalization of the 
discipline as a newly gendered intellectual locus. 
I have a quibble, and it is only that, with the 
title of the book. “Women in Anthropology” seems 
overly broad given the volume’s core theme. My 
advertising background will be evident in these 
suggestions of alternative titular attention compel- 
lers. Maybe something more catchy and to the 
Point like “’Late Bloomers:’ (ironic quotes to un 
derscore the silliness of such a label as Schweitzer 
and Calteli [212] have both duly noted) Women, 
Midlife Career Shifts, and Anthropology” would 
have gotten more people to pick the book up and 
scan its table of contents. (I think of my several 
and sometimes simultaneous careers as sequential 
blooming.) Or “She Had to Have It! Women, Mid- 
Hfe Career Shifts, and the Seduction of Anthropol 
ogy” might have prompted greater interest in the 
Adume’s contents. And then, of course, there is the 
Wonderfully arcade term, opsimathy (coming late 
1° education), for the knowledge of which Maria 
fatteli (13, 211), thanks to her crossword puzzle- 
e uthusiast mother, and to which she introduces us 
'hat, surely, as a book title, would have provoked a 
Jook see. But then, such titular alternatives are moot 
at this point. I must content myself with appropriat- 
ln g Maria’s found word and using it to lead off the 
title of this review essay. 
The contents, though obscured by the book’s too 
general title, are well worth a read. In fact, I encour- 
a reading of these fascinating self-revelations. 
" helps tremendously that a number of the authors 
are dam good writers. Maria Calteli’s thoughtful 
analysis of and insightful pattern-findings in her in 
troductory chapter are most helpful in establishing 
a clear overview of the book’s larger and overar 
ching themes. To paraphrase one of her graduate 
school mentors, Maria (210) writes just about as 
well as “anyone I have ever known.” I was (to 
use an adolescent phrase) “blown away” by Judy 
Rosenthal’s (59-74) luminous prose. Her current 
autobiographical voice has clear roots in her early 
inspiration to express herself poetically. I suspect 
that you will find yourself unable to put down Eliz 
abeth Hoobler’s (153-162) painfully honest ac 
count of her intellectual struggle with her attempts 
to rectify belief with academic science. And Jean 
Harris’s (163-172) moving description of what it 
was like to be African-American and female in 
academia is not to be missed as well. Women of 
all ages should be inspired by the success stories 
of these plucky, not to be denied, anthropology 
Ph.D.s. They not only had to have, but got it - so 
can you. 
References Cited 
Cattell, Maria G., and Marjorie M. Schweitzer (eds.) 
2006 Women in Anthropology. Autobiographical Narratives 
and Social History. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. 
Conroy, James 
2004 Betwixt and Between. The Liminal Imagination, Educa 
tion, and Democracy. New York: Peter Lang 
Kondo, Dorinne 
(in progress) (Re)visions of Race. Performance, Ethnography, 
and Politics in Motion. [Book manuscript] 
Mead, Margaret 
1970 Culture and Commitment. Garden City; Doubleday. 
1972 Blackberry Winter. My Earlier Years. New York: Wil 
liam Morrow. 
Schweitzer, Marjorie (ed.) 
1999 American Indian Grandmothers. Traditions and Transi 
tions. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 
Sokolovsky, Jay (ed.) 
1990 The Cultural Context of Aging. Worldwide Perspectives. 
New York: Bergin and Garvey.
	        
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