A collection of 11 Christmas cards from noted 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 natives 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. A charming collection of Christmas cards from one of the world's most renowned anthropologists.
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.
Special Collections & Archives hold the
The Library of Congress holds the
Organized by size.
Processed in August 2012 by Jordan Patty. EAD markup completed in August 2012 by Jordan Patty.
Margaret Mead Christmas card collection, C0216, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries.
There are no access restrictions.
There are no restrictions on personal use. Permission to publish material from the Margaret Mead Christmas card collection must be obtained from Special Collections Research Center, George Mason University Libraries.
Purchased in 2012.
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"