Reed’s Warm Springs Project

Reed Magazine has published online a lovely account of the Warm Springs Project of David and Kay French. Robert E. Moore writes:

The Warm Springs Project was a multi-year collaborative program of anthropological and other field research organized by David French ’39 (1918–1994), who taught anthropology at Reed from 1947 to 1988, and his colleague and wife, Kathrine S. (Kay) French (1922–2006), also an anthropologist (both held Columbia Ph.D.s). Combining outside funding from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation with support from the college, the Frenches brought a series of Reed students to live and work on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Central Oregon (100 miles east of Portland on the Columbia plateau). The project was active between 1950 and 1956—mostly in summer, with shorter trips during the school year when possible.

Moore is the literary executor of the French papers, and his essay beautifully evokes the conviviality, intellectual vitality, and lasting influence of the project. With modest funding, the project “left—through the subsequent activities of its participants—a remarkable impact on anthropology, and on the arts and sciences more broadly.” For example, Dell Hymes was one illustrious participant (and the essay notes many more). Moore’s essay is accompanied by pieces on Hymes, and on other folks associated with the project, including Gary Snyder. I especially liked Stephanie Snyder’s article on the Frenchs’ basement study.

Strong is Thomas Strong, lecturer in the department of anthropology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He has previously held teaching and/or research posts at the University of Helsinki, the University of California, San Francisco, the University of Wisconsin, and (oddly enough) the American Academy of Ophthalmology. His publications include essays on the symbolism of blood and body in the U.S. and elsewhere, new cross-disciplinary work on kinship, and ideas of culture loss and bodily detumescence amongst the Dano-speakers of Papua New Guinea's eastern highlands province. His on-going research in PNG concerns transformations in sociality, gender relations, and personhood following the mid-twentieth-century repudiation of the traditional men's cult in the upper Asaro valley. His other interests include 'brand' as an ethnographic and analytic concept, HIV/AIDS (especially in the U.S. gay male community), and celebrity/fame.