Edmund Snow Carpenter | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1922-09-02)September 2, 1922 Rochester, New York, U.S. |
| Died | July 1, 2011(2011-07-01) (aged 88) |
| Education | University of Pennsylvania (BS,PhD) |
| Years active | 1941–2011 |
| Known for | Anthropologist best known for his work ontribal art andvisual media |
| Spouse(s) | Florence Ofelia Camara (1946-mid-1950s) Virginia York Wilson (1960s) Adelaide de Menil (late 1960s to his death in 2011) |
| Children | 3 |
| Parent(s) | Fletcher Hawthorne Carpenter Agnes Barbara Wight |
| Relatives | John C. Carpenter (brother) Barbara Carpenter (sister) Collins W. Carpenter (brother) |
| Part ofa series on |
| Anthropology |
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EdmundSnow Carpenter (September 2, 1922 – July 1, 2011) was an Americananthropologist best known for his work ontribal art andvisual media.
Edmund Snow Carpenter was born on September 2, 1922, inRochester, New York to the artist and educator Fletcher Hawthorne Carpenter (1879–1954) and Agnes "Barbara" Wight (1883–1981). He was one of four children.[3]
He was a fraternal twin with Collins W. "Connie" Carpenter, later ofCanandaigua, New York.[4][5][6]
He was a descendant of William Carpenter (1605 England - 1658/1659Rehoboth, Massachusetts) the founder of theRehoboth Carpenter family who came to America in the mid-1630s.[7]
Carpenter began his anthropology studies underFrank G. Speck at theUniversity of Pennsylvania in 1940. After completing his semester in early 1942, he volunteered to serve his country duringWorld War II.
He joined theUnited States Marine Corps in early 1942, fighting in thePacific Theater of Operations for the duration of the war especially inNew Guinea, theSolomon Islands, theMarianas, andIwo Jima. After the war ended, he was assigned to oversee hundreds of Japanese prisoners, putting them to work on an archaeological dig inTumon,Guam.[1][8]
Discharged as a captain in 1946, he returned to the University of Pennsylvania using hisG.I. Bill, was awarded a bachelor's degree, and earned his doctorate four years later in 1950. His doctoral dissertation was on the pre-history of the Northeast, entitledIntermediate Period Influences in the Northeast.[1]
Carpenter began teaching anthropology at theUniversity of Toronto in 1948, taking side jobs such as radio programming for theCanadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). In 1950, he started fieldwork among theAivilingmiut, returning to theseInuit inNunavut in the famine winter of 1951–52, and again in 1955.
When public television took off in Canada with the launching ofCBC-TV in 1952, Carpenter began producing and hosting a series of shows.
Moving back and forth between Toronto's broadcasting studios and Arctic hunting camps, Carpenter collaborated on the theoretical ideas in development byHarold Innis andMarshall McLuhan. He and McLuhan co-taught a course, and together hatched core ideas about the agency of modern media in the process of culture change.
In 1953, after a well-received proposal written by Carpenter, he and McLuhan received aFord Foundation grant for an interdisciplinary media research project, which funded both the Seminar on Culture and Communication (1953–1959) and their co-edited periodicalExplorations throughout the 1950s.[4] Meanwhile, Carpenter continued his programs on CBC-TV, including a weekly show also titled "Explorations" (which started as a radio program).
Together withHarold Innis,Eric A. Havelock, andNorthrop Frye, McLuhan and Carpenter have been characterized as theToronto School of communication theory. In his famous article "The New Languages" (1956), Carpenter offers a succinct analysis of modern media based on years of participant observation in different cultures, academic and popular print publishing, and radio and television broadcasting.
In 1959, Carpenter joined anthropologistRaoul Naroll at San Fernando Valley State College (California State University-Northridge) and was appointed an assistant professor and founder of an experimental interdisciplinary program of Anthropology and Art, where students were trained in visual media, including filming.[9][10][11] As the only faculty member in the new department, Carpenter went on to hire more faculty. In 1960, he was promoted to the rank of associate professor.[10] In 1961, he was made chairman of the anthropology department.[12]
With award-winning filmmaker Robert Cannon, he made an innovative documentary about "surrealist"Kuskokwim Eskimo masks. Carpenter also co-authoredGeorgia Sea Island Singers (1964), a film documenting six traditional African-American songs and dances byGullahs ofSt. Simon Island, based on fieldwork byAlan Lomax. And withBess Lomax Hawes, he collaborated onBuck Dancer (1965), a short film featuring Ed Young, anAfrican-American musician-dancer fromMississippi. In 1967, however, just when visual anthropology began to take institutional form as an academic enterprise, the program was closed.
During this period, Carpenter worked with McLuhan on the latter's bookUnderstanding Media (1964).[1] In 1967 McLuhan was awarded the Schweitzer Chair atFordham University, and he brought Carpenter (on a sabbatical from Northridge),Harley Parker, andEric McLuhan to be on his research team.[13]
On leave from his faculty position at Northridge, Carpenter subsequently held the Carnegie Chair in anthropology at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz (1968–69), and then took a research professorship at theUniversity of Papua New Guinea, officially having resigned his position at Northridge. Joined by photographer Adelaide de Menil (who later became his wife), he journeyed to remote mountain areas where indigenous Papua had "no acquaintance" yet with writing, radios, or cameras. They took numerousPolaroid and 35mm photographs, made sound recordings, and shot some 400,000 feet of 16mm film in black and white, as well as color andinfrared film.
During the next dozen years, Carpenter taught at various universities, includingAdelphi University (c. 1970–1980),Harvard,New School University, andNew York University (c. 1980–1981). In addition to numerous other publications, he also completed art historianCarl Schuster's massive cross-cultural study on traditional art motifs,Materials for the Study of Social Symbolism in Ancient and Tribal Art: A Record of Tradition and Continuity, published privately in three volumes, with a much-abbreviated one-volume version published in 1996 by Abrams under the titlePatterns That Connect.
In 2008, Carpenter guest-curated an important Eskimo traditional and prehistoric art exhibitUpside Down: Les Arctiques at theMusée du quai Branly, the ethnographic art museum in Paris, France. This exhibit was re-installed in 2011 asUpside Down: Arctic Realities at TheMenil Collection, an art museum inHouston, Texas, which, since 1999, also houses his permanent exhibitWitnesses to a Surrealist Vision.
On June 14, 1946, Carpenter married a fellow student at the University of Pennsylvania, Florence Ofelia Camara, and had two children with her; sons Stephen and Rhys.[7] Their marriage united two of the earliest English and Spanish families to settle in the New World: the Camaras were a SpanishConquistador family who settled in theYucatán Peninsula of Mexico. They served underFrancisco de Montejo, theAdelantado and Capitan General of Yucatán, and after that under his son,Francisco de Montejo (el Mozo), conqueror of the Yucatán.[14] They divorced in the mid-1950s.
On September 6, 1961, inYorkville, Michigan, Carpenter married Virginia York Wilson, of Toronto, the daughter of the well-known Canadian artistRonald York Wilson. This marriage produced a third son, Ian Snow Carpenter. This marriage also ended in divorce.
In the late 1960s, Carpenter met Adelaide de Menil, the daughter ofDominique de Menil andJohn de Menil ofHouston, Texas. Adelaide was a professional photographer who had worked for theAmerican Museum of Natural History, and who joined Carpenter inNew Guinea when he took a professorship there in 1969. Their collaborations and subsequent marriage lasted until his death in 2011.[15]
Carpenter died on July 1, 2011. He was 88 years old.[1]
A memorial service for Carpenter, attended by 400 people, was held on October 29, 2011, at the LeFrak Theater of theAmerican Museum of Natural History in New York City. It was followed by a celebration of his life at theMetropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street.[16]
