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

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?

Compare and contrast Zora Neale Hurston and Ella Cara Deloria: What did they have in common? How was their field research similar, and how was it different? What was the reception that they received from their peers?

Ruth Benedict gave Boas the nickname “Papa Franz,” one that the rest of the circle also adopted. Discuss his relationship with the rest of the cohort. In what ways was he like a father figure to them? What lessons and values did he instill in his students that might be similar to those a parent might impart to their children?

How was Boas’s experience on Baffin Island transformative for him? What did he discover, and how did he carry those lessons with him throughout the rest of his career?

Boas once said that his best students were women. What examples might he have cited to prove that this was the case? What do you think made the women in his group better students of anthropology?

Consider the influence of colonialism and imperialism as it pertained to the societies that the Boas circle encountered. How did these forms of oppression impact their research subjects both abroad and in the US?

Hurston once said, “Gods always behave like the people who make them” (289). What elements from Hurston’s field work support this conclusion? What evidence is there to suggest that religious views reflect the society that holds them?