The University of Michigan Department of Anthropology record group is arranged into five series: Chair Correspondence, Meeting Minutes, Memos and General Correspondence Weekly Bulletin, and Miscellaneous.
The University of Michigan Department of Anthropology was established in 1929 by Carl E. Guthe, director of the university's Museum of Anthropology, and Julian Steward. Administratively, the department was originally part of the museum, and housed within the museum's facilities. Steward left soon after the department began offering courses, but two additional faculty members were added over the next ten years, Leslie A. White in 1930 and Mischa Titiev in 1936. By 1940 the department offered 16 courses, an undergraduate major, and a master of arts program.
During and immediately after World War II, the department began to expand more rapidly, although founding member Carl Guthe left the university in 1944. Three curators from the Museum of Anthropology, James B. Griffin (Guthe's successor as museum director), Volney H. Jones, and Emerson Greenman, were the first additions to the department, in 1945 and 1946. The academic program was designed to prepare students in all four subfields of anthropology (ethnology, linguistics, archaeology and biological anthropology), and faculty were added strategically in all areas. By 1948, the department offered a Ph.D. program, and by 1955, its faculty had risen to 15, offering 75 courses.
More faculty and courses were steadily added in the coming years. By 2002, the department enrolled over 5000 student per year in undergraduate and graduate courses and had more than 50 faculty members. A number of anthropology faculty have joint appointments with other departments and programs at the university, including history, women's studies, and the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies (CAAS).
The department moved several times over the years to accommodate its growth. In 1954 the department took up offices in the basement of Angell Hall, though faculty from the museum retained their offices in the museum. The department later relocated its administrative offices to the LS&A building in 1981, and to West Hall in 2003.
Ethnology has traditionally been the most well-represented anthropology subfield in the department's faculty and courses, but the Museum of Anthropology's national prominence has assured that archaeology has also been very strong. In addition to the faculty members already mentioned, the long list of prominent anthropologists and archaeologists that have been associated with the department either as faculty or students includes Roy Rappaport, Eric Wolf, Richard MacNeish, Marshall Sahlins, Albert Spaulding, Lewis Binford, Ruth Behar, and Henry T. Wright.
Today the department offers joint graduate programs in Anthropology and History, Anthropology and Social Work, Evolution and Behavior, and Culture and Cognition, as well as undergraduate, master's, and doctoral courses and degrees. It is consistently ranked one of the top anthropology departments in the country. More information is available on the department's website at http://www.lsa.umich.edu/anthro/.
(Additional information about the Department of Anthropology may be found in the papers of individual faculty members, including Leslie A. White, James B. Griffin, and Roy A. Rappaport, all available at the Bentley Historical Library.)
Chairs of the Department of Anthropology
| Date |
Event |
| 1941-1944 | Leslie A. White (Acting) |
| 1944-1957 | Leslie A. White |
| 1957-1958 | Frederick P. Thieme |
| 1958-1967 | James N. Spuhler |
| 1967-1970 | W.D. Schorger |
| 1970-1971 | Eric R. Wolf |
| 1971-1972 | R.K. Beardsley |
| 1972-1975 | James B. Griffin |
| 1975-1980 | Roy A. Rapaport |
| 1980-1983 | Robbins Burling |
| 1983-1986 | Frank Livingstone |
| 1986-1989 | Sherry B. Ortner |
| 1989-1996 | Richard I. Ford |
| 1996-2006 | Conrad Kottak |
| 2006-2009 | Judith T. Irvine |
| 2009-2015 | Thomas E. Fricke |
| 2015- | Andrew Schryock |
