REVIEWER MEETS REVIEWED

SEMINAR SERIES AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM'S ANTHROPOLOGY LIBRARY AND RESEARCH CENTRE

Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment

Thursday 16 March at 10.00 am (tea & coffee served from 9.30 am)

Anthropology Library and Research Centre, British Museum

THIS IS A FREE EVENT

The British Museum’s Anthropology Library and Research Centre, in conjunction with the Royal Anthropological Institute, is pleased to present the fourth seminar in the 2016-17 series of  ‘Reviewer meets Reviewed’, a discussion between Dr Han F. Vermeulen, author of Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment (University of Nebraska Press, 2015), and Dr David Shankland, who reviewed the book for the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

From the cover: “The history of anthropology has been written from multiple viewpoints, often from perspectives of gender, nationality, theory, or politics. Before Boas delves deeper into issues concerning anthropology’s academic origins to present a groundbreaking study that reveals how ethnography and ethnology originated during the eighteenth rather than the nineteenth century, developing parallel to anthropology, or the ‘natural history of man.’

Before Boas argues that anthropology and ethnology were separate sciences during the Age of Reason, studying racial and ethnic diversity, respectively. Ethnography and ethnology focused not on ‘other’ cultures but on all peoples of all eras. Franz Boas professionalized the holistic study of anthropology from the 1880s into the twentieth century.”

Bookings/enquiries: Ted Goodliffe (TGoodliffe@britishmuseum.org)