Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century

What aspects of Franz Boas’s early life and research in Germany helped to shape his career as one of the defining members in the field of anthropology? How did each of those aspects contribute to the scientist he later became?

Discuss the relationship between Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead. How did their companionship shape their research interests? What impact did it have on each of them personally, and on the Boas circle as a whole? How did their romance differ from that that they shared with their husbands, and in what ways were those features a product of their time?

Margaret Mead was accused of using her findings to excuse the way she treated colleagues with whom she was romantically involved. Is there any truth in these assertions? How might she have been treated differently, having acted the same way, if she had been a male anthropologist?