Event details

A hot new anthropology department in America. A hip young cohort of scholars—fresh from the upheavals of the ’60s—pushing frontiers in symbolic analysis, Native American Studies, and gender equality. Students demanding courses in anthropology, hungry for ethnography and critical theory, and pushing pedagogical boundaries with their teachers. And a conservative Ivy League university that was just opening its doors to women after two centuries. How could such an audacious experiment be sustained? What could possibly go wrong?

Born of an intergenerational research project led by anthropologist João Biehl for the department’s 50th anniversary, this documentary draws on original archival research and oral histories in a one-of-a-kind filmic endeavor in the history of anthropology. Award-winning filmmaker and anthropologist Jeffrey Himpele intertwines candid interviews and previously unseen images in a surprising odyssey into the turbulent, brilliant early life of an academic department—and the enduring values that steadily prevailed.

Featuring Ruth Behar, Karen Blu, James Boon, Michael Brown, Alfred Bush, Craig Calhoun, Vincent Crapanzano, Nancy Coble Damon, Fred Damon, Loring Danforth, Roger Dube, Jim Freedman, John Kamm, Hildred “Hilly” Geertz, Rena Lederman, Mark Leone, Sherry Ortner, Lawrence Rosen, and Peter Whitely.

Produced and Directed by Jeffrey Himpele; João Biehl, Executive Producer.
40 minutes.

This is an expanded new version of an earlier film with several new revealing interviews and footage.