Anthony Wallace | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 15, 1923 |
| Died | October 5, 2015(2015-10-05) (aged 92) Ridley Park, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Alma mater | University of Pennsylvania |
| Awards | Cornplanter Medal (1970) Lifetime Achievement by the Society for Psychological Anthropology (2013) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Anthropology |
| Institutions | Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute |
Anthony Francis Clarke Wallace (April 15, 1923 – October 5, 2015) was a Canadian-American anthropologist who specialized in Native American cultures, especially theHaudenosaunee. His research expressed an interest in the intersection of cultural anthropology and psychology. He was famous for the theory ofrevitalization movements.[1]
Wallace was born inToronto,Ontario, on April 15, 1923, and was the son of the historianPaul Wallace and his wife, a British national. After attending school inAnnville, Pennsylvania, he enrolled intoLebanon Valley College, in 1941, where he studied French-Canadian folklore, and later, the oral literature of theHaudenosaunee andLenape. A year later, Wallace joined the Army Specialized Training Program at theUniversity of Cincinnati, and studiedelectrical engineering there for one year. In October 1944, he was assigned to the14th Armored Division inSouthern France where he remained until the end of the war in 1945.[2]
After the war, Wallace returned to his studies and earned his BA in history in 1947 and an MA and PhD in anthropology in 1949 and 1950 respectively from theUniversity of Pennsylvania. It was during 1947 studies, when he published his first article entitled "Woman, Land, and Society: Three Aspects of Aboriginal Delaware Life", and following its success, joined the Department of Anthropology after readingThe Golden Bough byJames George Frazer. During his graduate studies at Penn, Wallace was a student of American ethnologistFrank Speck and when professorsAlfred Irving Hallowell,Loren Eiseley, andWard Goodenough joined the faculty, Wallace became their student too.[2]
For his MA in 1949, Wallace wrote a thesis aboutTeedyuscung titled "A Psychocultural Analysis of the Life of Teedyuscung, a Delaware Indian, 1700-1763", which was published same year under the titleKing of the Delawares. His PhD thesis was entitled "The Modal Personality Structure of the Tuscarora Indians: As Revealed by the Rorschach Test" that appeared two years later in theBureau of American Ethnology Bulletin. While completing his PhD, Wallace was already married to Betty, and already had two children, Anthony and Daniel.[2]
Immediately after graduation, Wallace started to receive position offers fromUniversity of Wisconsin and Yale, but due to his family ties, turned them down in order to remain inPhiladelphia,Pennsylvania. His decision was also justified by the fact that he already was an instructor atBryn Mawr College, a position that he was thoroughly enjoying. The previously obtained Ph.D., allowed Wallace to hold numerous part-time positions at theUniversity of Pennsylvania where in 1955 he became senior research associate at the Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, at which place he later became the Director of Clinical Research, and served as such until its closure in 1980. From 1955 to 1960, Wallace served as research associate at the institute and visiting associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Penn, following which, he was appointed director of clinical research at the University of Pennsylvania.[2] A year later, after writingCulture and Personality, he abandoned that position, in order to become full-time professor and chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Penn.[3]
TheCold War, which started around the same time, allowed Wallace to join theNational Academy of Sciences Committee which was headed byWilliam N. Fenton, an anthropologist and Haudenosaunee expert, at that time. During his stay with the committee, he was responsible for the study of aftermath of atornado atWorcester, Massachusetts in 1953. A year prior to it, Wallace already published an article on Native American studies titled "Handsome Lake and the Great Revival in the West" which in 1969 was published as part of his bookThe Death and Rebirth of the Seneca. His other notable works of that time were the "Mazeway Resynthesis: A Biocultural Theory of Religious Inspiration" and "Mazeway Disintegration" which were published in 1956 and 1957 respectively. At time when he was writing those articles, he wrote a report on tornado studies in Worcester, Massachusetts entitled "Tornado in Worcester: An Exploratory Study of Individual and Community Behavior in an Extreme Situation" which was later published underRockdale and St. Clair, a precursor of his future career. His last publication in that field was in 1960. Entitled "The Meaning of Kinship Terms", the work was written by him and his colleague, a fellow anthropologist John Atkins.[2]
At the age of 40, the Wallace family began adopting children from Korea, bringing their family to six. From 1965 to 1966, he taught "Primitive Religion", one of the courses on the Anthropology of Religion. It was during these times when Wallace wroteReligion: An Anthropological View and became a mentor to future anthropologistsRaymond D. Fogelson andRichard Bauman. During the late 1960s, Wallace shared an office with fellow anthropologistGreg Urban at theUniversity of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.[2]
He was elected as a member of theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1969.[4]
Around 1971, Wallace, after finishing his term as department chair, he became an author of such books asRockdale andSaint Clair which were awardedBancroft and Dexter Prizes in 1987 and 1989 respectively.[2] In 1980, he became the first Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania, and three years later became Professor of the Department of Anthropology at the same institution.[5] Until his retirement in 1988, Wallace served on the board of the Research Foundation of the University, the Faculty Editorial Committee of the University Press and the Ethnohistory Committee.[6]
After his retirement in 1988, Wallace returned to the study of Native American culture, writing such books asThe Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians in 1992 andTuscarora: A History in 2013. A decade before the publication, Wallace's wife, Betty had died. He had planned to move to western New York with her so that he would be closer to theTuscarora Reservation.[2]
He died on October 5, 2015, inRidley Park, Pennsylvania, where he had been residing.[7]
