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© 2008 University of Chicago Library
Series XXIII contains student evaluative material restricted until 2052 and personnel material restricted until 2023. The remainder of the collection is open for research.
When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Cora DuBois. Papers, [Box #, Folder #], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library
Cora DuBois, (1903-1991). Born to Swiss immigrants in the United States, Cora DuBois grew up as an American but learned German and French during frequent family trips to Europe.
DuBois received an MA in history at Columbia, but was influenced by a course in anthropology with Ruth Benedict and Franz Boas to move to Berkley to pursue a PhD in anthropology with Robert Lowie and Alfred Kroeber. Unable to immediately get an academic position, DuBois stayed in Berkley as a teaching fellow and research assistant to Alfred Kroeber from 1932 to 1935. In these years, DuBois assisted with the, "salvage ethnography," conducted with the Wintu people of Northern California.
In 1935, DuBois received an NRC fellowship to investigate how professional anthropologists could benefit from the study of psychiatry. She interned at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital and with Abram Kardiner at the New York Psychoanalytic Society. In this period, she began to formulate her plans for her upcoming projects in Alor, now Indonesia. From 1937 to 1939, DuBois recorded observations and ethnographies, and focused on psychological anthropology, such as the administration of Rorschach tests, with the hope that results would support comparisons between cultures. The resulting work, People of Alor: a social-psychological study of an East Indian Island, probes the basic Alores personality structure, which DuBois concluded was related to specific cultural institutions. DuBois pioneered the concept of, "modal personality structure," in which she modified Kardiner and Ralph Linton's notion of basic personality structure, theorizing that a certain personality structure occurs most frequently within each society, but that it is not necessarily common to all members of that society.
During World War II, DuBois set aside her own projects, and joined the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services, as Chief of the Indonesia section, eventually accepting the Southeast Asia Command. She stayed in public service for the State Department and the World Health Organization, engaging in "applied anthropology," until 1954 when she accepted the Zemurray-Stone Chair at Harvard University. DuBois entered Harvard with tenure, and was the first woman to have that distinction in the Department of Anthropology.
Returning to intense field work between 1961 and 1972, DuBois directed PhD students in team field work regarding socio-cultural change in Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India.
DuBois received many honors for both her government service and academic work. She died in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1991.
The Cora DuBois Papers are the material result of the eleven years that DuBois spent in India collecting information about socio-cultural change in Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India. The work in Bhubaneswar was conducted through team investigations in which DuBois accumulated and compared the materials gathered by Indian and American students and academics such as, Peter Grenell, James Freeman, Harish Das, Susan Seymour and M. Mohapatra.
The materials gathered range from newspaper clippings and government publications to interviews conducted informally and with formal questionnaires developed by the team. When possible, the name of researcher is associated with the research.
DuBois was an efficient organizer and the collection largely follows her original plan. The subject headings were derived from her files. Miscellaneous papers have been filed into the appropriate sections and most of the work by students has been moved to Series XXI: Project Results, Manuscripts, and Theses.
Series I: Project Plans, includes preparation materials such as account books, bibliographies, index cards, grant materials and reports.
Series II: Correspondence, is primarily between Cora DuBois and her colleagues, including students, academics, doctors and Indian city planners.
Series III: Field Notebooks. DuBois' field notebooks contain handwritten comments on language, government, caste, and personal biographies. Much of this material was summarized, typed and filed in with the general collection.
Series IV: Manuscripts. The manuscripts in this section are the result of research conducted under DuBois.
Series V: Orissa focuses on Orissa in general. Included here are news clippings, government pamphlets, and summaries written by the anthropologists concerned with the history, geography, climate, economy, government, education, population, communication, transportation, caste, religion, health and nutrition of the region.
Series VI: Bhubaneswar: New Capital. The research here is particularly focused on development and the materials consist of news clippings, proposal outlines and summaries about development, institutions, government, religion, education, business communities, and attitudes.
Series VII: Bhubaneswar: Old Town. The majority of this work is concerned with religion and the materials consist mainly of questionnaires, summaries and reports about development, leadership, the Bauri, temples, maths and ashrams, education, and business communities.
Series VIII: Communities focuses on BJM College and Rameswar and the materials consist of maps, brief summaries and reports.
Series IX: Railway Zone contains maps and interviews with workers whose work was related to trains, such as government servants, rickshaw pullers, peddlers, shopkeepers, business men, day laborer, and squatters. There are also brief summaries and reports about religion, recreation, illicit activities and summary studies of occupational groups.
Series X: Laxmisigar contains maps, and census statistics. The materials also consist of brief summaries regarding occupational sketches, family relationships, institution, leadership, government, education, religion, attitudes, and biographies.
Series XI: Nuapalli (Naypalli) contains maps, and summaries, charts, surveys, and reports on development, census statistics, occupational sketches, consumption of stimulants, institutions, leadership, government, education, religion, knowledge of outside world, attitudes and biographies.
Series XII: Baragad contains maps, charts, brief summaries, and informant reports on development, census statistics, occupational sketches, family relationships, institutions, leadership, government, education, religion, communication, attitude and biographies.
Series XIII: Siripur contains maps, informant reports, and brief summaries on development, censuses, occupational sketches, family relationships, institutions, leadership, government, education, religion, knowledge of the outside world, attitudes, biographies, and comparisons of Siripur with Nuapalli.
Series XIV: Kapileswar contains maps, charts, questionnaires, reports and brief summaries about census statistics, caste, family relationships, institutions, leadership, government, education, occupational sketches, religion, knowledge of the outside world, individual and group behavior, attitudes and summary statements.
Series XV: Cuttack contains reports, news clippings, articles and brief summaries about development and education.
Series XVI: Puri contains reports, brief summaries and an article on government bureaucracy.
Series XVII: Other Villages consists of brief summaries and an article.
Series XVIII: Psychology includes secondary literature, brief summaries, and news clippings on general psychology, character traits, biographies, self-identification, frustration, violence, suicide, inter-personal relationships, family, and child rearing.
Series XIX: Values contains brief summaries, pamphlets, secondary literature, news clippings, conference papers, values questionnaires, values preliminaries, codebooks, children's' books and translations, regarding general values, basic premises, religion, focal values, specific values, contraries, directives, ego-ideals, processes, communication, and values questionnaires.
Series XX: Materials for Analysis includes data processing cards, computer printouts, and vocabulary cards.
Series XXI: Project Results, Manuscripts and Theses contains manuscripts and that are based on the research conducted during the project. The manuscripts include biographies, and thesis projects such as Memoirs of an Orissan Gentleman by Nilamani Senapati, and the Bauri study by M. Mohapatra.
Series XXII: India, Research contains reprints regarding the history of India. Many of these writings are signed and dedicated by the authors to Cora DuBois.
Series XXIII: Restricted contains files to which access is restricted. Grades, letters of recommendation and other student records have been restricted in compliance with University of Chicago policies.
Series XXIV: Oversize contains large hand drawn maps and statistical charts.
Series XXV: Peter Grenell materials consist of research materials, such as news clippings and legislative records, collected regarding Orissa and Bhubaneswar by Cora DuBois’ student Peter Grenell.