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George Mason University. Libraries. Special Collections Research Center
Fenwick Library, MS2FLJordan Patty
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Margaret Mead Christmas card photograph collection, C0216, Special Collections Research Center, George Mason University Libraries.
Purchased in 2012.
Processed in August 2012 by Jordan Patty. EAD markup completed in August 2012 by Jordan Patty. Finding aid updated by Amanda Menjivar in January 2023.
Margaret Mead was a prominent twentieth-century educator, writer, and lecturer. An anthropologist by occupation, she studied the lives of natives of Samoa, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. Her first book, "Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization" (New York: Morrow, 1928), which compared the seemingly care-free adolescent years in Samoan culture to this stressful period of development for American teenagers, catapulted her to instant fame. As she went on to research and write about other cultures, she used her anthropological studies as a framework to discuss and analyze American society.
A collection of 11 Christmas cards from anthropologist Margaret Mead with five cards signed and with holiday greetings. The collection includes 10 original photographic prints, with one in color, and one printed card, many taken by friends and contributors to her work, such as visual anthropologist Paul Byers and cinematographer Richard Leiterman. Four of the card images include Mead's granddaughter, Sevanne "Vanni" Kassarjian, with one also showing her daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson (herself a well-respected anthropologist). Three other Christmas cards picture Mead with indigenous people of New Guinea and Bali, often surrounded by children, with one lone color image of her being filmed on Manus Island for the 1968 documentary "Margaret Mead's New Guinea Journal." Other cards show artwork, a choir, and various children.
Arranged by size.
The Special Collections Research Center holds the George Mason University photograph collection that includes several photographs of Mary Catherine Bateson, Mead's daughter and a former professor of Anthropology at GMU.
The Library of Congress holds the Margaret Mead papers.
3" x 5"
Inscribed by Mead with a holiday greeting. 3" x 4"
Signed by Mead with a holiday greeting. Photograph by Leiterman. 3" x 7"
3" x 7"
3" x 7"
3" x 6"
Photograph by Peter Gordon. 3" x 7"
Holiday greeting from Mead. 3" x 6"
Photograph by Robert Levin. Signed by Mead. 3" x 5"
Photograph by Polyxane Cobb. 3" x 5"
3" x 5"