Carol Delaney

Carol Lowery Delaney (born December 12, 1940) is an American anthropologist and author. She is also an Associate Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Emerita of Stanford University.

Education Delaney earned an A.B. in philosophy from Boston University in 1962, an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School in 1976, and her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1984.

Academic career Delaney was the assistant director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University, and a visiting professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University. She is now a professor emerita at Stanford University and a research scholar at Brown University.

Anthropological work Delaney specializes in the anthropological sub-discipline of cultural anthropology, focusing on gender and religion. Her original anthropological fieldwork was conducted in Turkey from 1979-1982; from 1984–85, Delaney conducted additional fieldwork in Belgium among Turkish immigrants. More recently, her research has focused on the religious beliefs of Christopher Columbus. In 1995, Delaney co-edited the volume Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis with Sylvia Yanagisako.

Delaney was Assistant Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University, 1985-87. At Stanford University, she was Assistant Professor of Anthropology, 1987-1995; Associate Professor, 1995-2005; Emerita, 2005. At Brown University, she was visiting professor in Religious Studies, 2006 and 2007. From 2007 to the present, she served as a Research Scholar in that department and is also an Invited Research Scholar at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

Delaney has been criticized for whitewashing the history of and ignoring the known atrocities committed by Christopher Columbus in the Americas in her book Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem, while also praised for highlighting that Columbus has taken the blame for atrocities committed by all Europeans intentionally and unintentionally to native peoples in the "New World".

She has published many anthropological literature, her most recent including "Investigating Culture: An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology."