Keith H. Basso

Keith Hamilton Basso (March 15, 1940 – August 4, 2013) was an American cultural and linguistic anthropologist noted for his study of the Western Apaches, specifically those from the community of Cibecue, Arizona. Basso was professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of New Mexico and earlier taught at the University of Arizona and Yale University.

Early life On 15 March 1940, Basso was born in Asheville, North Carolina to Etolia Simmons and Hamilton Basso. His mother, Etolia was a teacher. His father, Hamilton, was a novelist, essayist, and editor, notably of The New Yorker. They both had roots in New Orleans. He moved with his parents to Connecticut when his father took a position as a staff writer for the New Yorker. At Connecticut, he engaged in fly fishing during the day and moved around his father's literary circle in the evenings.

Early on, Basso was interested in reading literature and writing. His early inclination to anthropology started with Clyde Kluckhohn's classes at Harvard University where he completed his undergraduate studies in 1962

Basso was awarded the Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing in 1997 for his ethnography, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache. The work was also the 1996 Western States Book Award Winner in Creative Nonfiction. In this ethnography, Basso expressed his hope that anthropologists will spend more time investigating how places and spaces are perceived and experienced; for human relationships to geographical places are rich, deeply felt, and profoundly telling.

Awards

2001. SAR J. I. Staley Prize for Wisdom Sits in Places (1996). 1997. Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing for Wisdom Sits in Places (1996). 1996. Western States Book Award for Creative Nonfiction for Wisdom Sits in Places (1996).

Personal life Basso was married to Gayle Potter. In his 1988 article "Speaking with Names", he acknowledged her as 'partner in fieldwork as in everything else, whose steady encouragement, graceful acumen, and sheer good sense helped immeasurably in moving things.'

Basso died from cancer on August 4, 2013, at the age of 73, in Phoenix, Arizona.

Works

Select bibliography Heavy with Hatred: An Ethnographic Study of Western Apache Witchcraft (Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University, 1967) Western Apache Witchcraft (1969) The Cibecue Apache (1970, 1986) Apachean Culture History and Ethnology, ed. Basso, Keith H, and Opler, Morris E. (1971)

Meaning in Anthropology, ed. Basso, Keith H, and Selby, Henry A. (1976) Portraits of 'the Whiteman': Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols among the Western Apache (1979) Western Apache Language and Culture: Essays in Linguistic Anthropology (1992) Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache (1996) Senses of Place, ed. Keith H. Basso and Steven Feld (1996) Don’t Let the Sun Step Over You: A White Mountain Apache Family Life, 1860–1975 (2004), an oral history with Eva Tulene Watt