Franz Boas

Among her instructors were Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict , poet and author of Patterns of Culture (1934). Before graduating, Hurston travelled to the South on a Carter G. Woodson Foundation fellowship, in her first...

After graduating from high school in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, MM intended to go to Wellesley College , her mother's alma mater, which was then an all-female institution. But her father refused to fund her higher...

The first edition has an introduction by Franz Boas and illustrations by Miguel Covarrubias . Later editions are provided with introductions by Robert Hemenway (1978) and Arnold Rampersad (1990).

She did her research during eight months spent in Samoa, during which she learned the language, conducted interviews, and was chosen the taupou, or ceremonial virgin representative of a village she stayed at.