Novel Approaches to Anthropology

Marilyn Cohen is associate professor of sociology and director of women’s studies at Saint Peter’s College in Jersey City, New Jersey. Dr. Cohen is the author and editor of numerous books, articles, and book chapters. Her books include Linen, Family and Community in Tullylish, County Down, 1690–1914; The Warp of Ulster’s Past: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Irish Linen Industry, 1700–1920; Reclaiming Gender: Transgressive Identities in Modern Ireland; and No Girls in the Clubhouse: The Exclusion of Women from Baseball.

• List of FiguresAcknowledgmentsChapter 1: Introduction: Anthropological Aspects of the Novel, by Marilyn CohenChapter 2:A Shandean Description of Frakean “Ethnographic Behavior,” by Ray McDermottChapter 3: Reading Defoe, the Eighteenth Century Master Story-teller, by Mary Elizabeth ReeveChapter 4: “A Genuine Victorian Oddity”: Harriet Martineau’s Fiction, by Marilyn CohenChapter 5: Mark Twain’s Weapon of Mass Destruction: “The Human Race Has Only One Really Effective Weapon and that is Laughter,” by David Surrey Chapter 6: The Creole Speaks: Daniel, Christophine and the Other in The Wide Sargaso Sea, by John PulisChapter 7: Ethnografiction and Reality in Contemporary Irish Novels, by Helena WulffChapter 8: Engaging Students’ Interest Through Fiction, Memoirs and Film, by Ward KeelerIndexAbout the Authors

The subfield of literary anthropology logically connects the study of culture shared by literary studies and humanistic anthropology. Cohen presents seven articles covering this nexus with topics from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. A common theme in the essays is how specific literature can provide, particularly to students, superb introductions to social and cultural customs, beliefs, artifacts, behavior, and roles. From literature, the seven contributors (six from the US) examine Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, William Defoe, Harriet Martineau, Mark Twain, the Jamaican author Jean Rhys, minor 20th-century Irish authors, and 20th-century Southeast Asian authors. In the Sterne article, Ray McDermott compares and contrasts Sterne's culturally rich presentation of 18th-century England with Charles Frake's 1964 ethnography of Subanun religious life in the Philippines, a fascinating treatment examining methodology, approach, and content. The other articles (by Mary-Elizabeth Reeve, Cohen, David Surrey, John W. Pulis, Helena Wulff, and Ward Keeler) are likewise fascinating, each with in-depth insights into cultural life and of cultural analysis. The level of scholarly writing suggests an intended audience of advanced undergraduates to professors. Cohen's introduction prepares readers for the dazzling display that follows. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.