Ruth Bunzel

Ruth Leah Bunzel (née Bernheim) (18 April 1898 – 14 January 1990) was an American anthropologist, known for studying creativity and art among the Zuni people (A:Shiwi), researching the Mayas in Guatemala, and conducting a comparative study of alcoholism in Guatemala and Mexico. Her doctoral dissertation, The Pueblo Potter was a study of the creative process of art in anthropology

Early life Ruth Leah Bunzel was born in New York City on April 18, 1898, to Jewish parents Jonas and Hattie Bernheim. Bunzel lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with her parents and lived most of her life in Greenwich Village, only leaving New York for long periods of time when conducting fieldwork. Bunzel's father died when she was ten, and she was raised by her mother. Bunzel replaced Esther Goldfrank, a friend of one of her sisters, who resigned the position to study anthropology at Columbia. In the summer of 1924, Bunzel conducted fieldwork among the Zuni people; she apprenticed herself to Zuni potters and observed as well as made pottery alongside them. Bunzel was fascinated by the prominent role of women as potters in Zuni society.

In 1925, after returning to New York, Bunzel resigned as Boaz's secretary, and just like Goldfrank, enrolled as a student at Columbia University to study anthropology. and poetry were published in 1932. something that she also did in her later monograph Chichicastenango: A Guatemalan Village. Bunzel edited The Golden Age of American Anthropology (1960) with Margaret Mead and contributed to Boas and Benedict's General Anthropology (1938).

During her fieldwork among the Zuni people, Bunzel lived with Flora Zuni and her family, who initiated her into the Beaver clan and gave her the Zuni name Maiatitsa or "blue bird".

Fieldwork in Guatemala and Mexico Bunzel interviewed for a Guggenheim Fellowship to study Mexican culture but was redirected to study Guatemala, as little American anthropological research existed in this area at the time.

The Ruth Leah Bunzel Papers are currently housed at the National Anthropological Archives, including correspondence, manuscripts, notes, research files, teaching materials, artwork, sound recordings, and more.

Selected bibliography 1928 "Notes on the Katcina Cult in San Felipe." Journal of American Folklore 41: 290–292

1928 "Further Notes on San Felipe." Journal of American Folklore 41: 592.

1928 "The emergence." Journal of American Folklore 41: 288–290.

1929 The Pueblo Potter: A Study of Creative Imagination in Primitive Art. Courier Dover Publications.

1932 Zuni Origin Myths. Chicago: US Government Printing Office.

1932 Zuni Ritual Poetry. Chicago: US Government Printing Office.

1932 "Introduction to Zuni Ceremonialism." Bureau of American Ethnology BAE Annual Report 47: 467–554

Above three texts collected and reprinted as Zuni Ceremonialism: Three Studies, ed. by Nancy J. Parezo (1992)

1932 "The Nature of Kachinas." BAE Annual Report 47: 837–1006. Reprinted in Reader in Comparative Religion, edited by A.W. Lessa and Evon Vogt (1958): 401–404

1933 "Zuni." In Handbook of American Indian Languages. Part 3, edited by Franz Boas.

1938 "The Economic Organization of Primitive Peoples." In General Anthropology, edited by Franz Boas: 327–408

1940 "The role of alcoholism in two Central American cultures". Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes 3(3): 361–387.

1952 Chichicastenango, a Guatemalan Village. University of Washington Press.

1953 "Psychology of the Pueblo Potter." In Primitive Heritage, edited by Margaret Mead and Nicolas Calas: 266–275

1964 "The Self-effacing Zuni of New Mexico." In The Americas on the Eve of Discovery, edited by Harold Driver: 80–92

1960 Mead, M., and Bunzel, R. L., eds. The Golden Age of American Anthropology. George Braziller.

1976 Bunzel, R. (1976). "Chamula and Chichicastenango: A Re-examination", in Cross-Cultural Approaches to the Study of Alcohol, The Hague: Mouton & Co.: 21–22.