May Mandelbaum Edel

May Mandelbaum Edel (1 December 1909 – 23 May 1964) was an American anthropologist known for her fieldwork among the Okanagan in Washington, the Tillamook in Oregon, and the Kiga in Uganda. Edel's linguistic research of the Tillamook serves as the only published account of the language which provided data for future linguistic publications.

Early life and education May Mandelbaum Edel was born in New York on December 1, 1909, to a Brooklyn physician. She began her studies at Barnard College in 1925, Chiga, and the Ciga, in 1932. Edel was a graduate student at the time, and it sparked her interested in African studies . After her doctoral dissertation, Edel went on to pursue field research in Uganda.

Edel was awarded a fellowship by the National Research Council for research in Uganda from October 1932 to January 1934, the basis of Kiga livelihood was horticulture and yams, eleusine, and millet are staple foods. Her full monograph was published in 1957

After returning from Africa, she married American philosopher Dr. Abraham Edel in 1934, and they collaborated on the book Anthropology and Ethics. This study focused on morality as a specific focus of anthropological studies. The Story of Our Ancestors (1955) was released two years after her first book. In an obituary published in the American Anthropologist, anthropologist Ruth Bunzel stated that Edel "reached out beyond the walls of academia to those in whose hands the future lay – to the young, whose minds were not yet closed to new orientations." Abraham Edel died in 2007. Anthropologist Ruth Bunzel also wrote an obituary about May Mandelbaum Edel in the American Anthropologist.

The May Mandelbaum Edel papers are currently housed in the National Anthropological Archives, and this paper collection includes her field notes from fieldwork with the Okanagan Indians in Washington and the Kiga in Uganda, language materials, manuscripts, correspondence, teaching materials, and lecture notes taken from courses taught by Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict.

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in the New York Public Library also houses stories, tales, and drafts of the manuscript related to the Kiga people. This New York Library Collection also contains letters from several African individuals to Edel and Edel's fieldnotes dated 1933 to 1934 related to kinship and religious studies.

Selected bibliography

1934 The customs of the Baganda. Vol. 22. New York: Columbia University Press, 1934. (co-authored with Sir Apolo Kagwa, Ernest Balintuma Kalibala, and John Roscoe) 1937 "The Bachiga of East Africa." In Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples. Margaret Mead, ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1937 "Uganda". American anthropologist, 39 (1), p. 151. 1938 "Property among the Ciga in Uganda." Africa: 325–341. 1938 "The work of tending the gardens and preparing and storing the crops." Africa: 325. 1957 The Chiga of Western Udanga. New York: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute. 1968 Anthropology and ethics. Case Western University Press. Republished in 200 by Transaction Publishers and in 2017 by Routledge. (co-authored with Abraham Edel)