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Series VI contains student evaluative material, which is restricted for eighty years, and budget and personnel material, which is restricted for fifty years. The remainder of the collection is open for research.
When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Milton Singer. Papers, [Box #, Folder #], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library
Milton Borah Singer was born to Julius Singer and Esther Greenberg in Poland on July 5, 1912. He emigrated with his family to the United States, settling in Detroit in 1920, and was naturalized in 1921.
Singer received a B.A. in Psychology in 1934 and an M.A. in Philosophy in 1936, both from the University of Texas at Austin. His M.A. thesis, “George Herbert Mead’s Social-Behavioristic Theory of Mind,” prefigured his move to the University of Chicago, where he completed a dissertation "On Formal Method in Mathematical Logic," under the supervision of Rudolf Carnap, in 1940.
Singer joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1941 as an instructor in the Social Sciences in the College. He was named Professor in 1950, and Paul Klapper Professor in the Social Sciences in 1952, and served as chair of the Social Science staff from 1947 until 1952. In 1954, he was also named Professor of Anthropology. During these years, Singer collaborated on the development and teaching of a three-year undergraduate program in the Social Sciences.
In 1951, Singer became associate director of a project on the comparison of cultures and civilizations, directed by Robert Redfield, and funded by the Ford Foundation. He traveled to Europe in 1952, to attend conference and interview scholars engaged in cross-cultural research. Following Redfield's death in 1958, Singer became director of Comparison of Cultures project, holding the position until the close of the project in 1961.
Singer's role in the Comparison of Cultures project launched his career as a South Asianist. He made field research trips to India in 1954-1955, 1960-1961 and 1964, forging contacts with Indian scholars that would remain strong throughout his career. His research centered on the city of Madras and on the fate of the Sanskritic Hindu tradition in a modern urban center. In 1955, Singer became executive secretary of the University of Chicago's newly-formed Committee on South Asian Studies (COSAS). He served as COSAS director from 1967 until 1970. From 1959 to 1963, he co-directed the South Asian Language and Area Center (SALAC). Outside the University, Singer served on the Board of Directors of the Association for South Asian Studies, 1959-1963, and as Vice President of the American Institute of Indian Studies, 1961-1964.
Singer was deeply involved in the University's undergraduate program in non-Western civilizations, an outgrowth of both COSAS and the Redfield-Ford Foundation project. He chaired the course "Introduction the Civilization of India" from 1956 to 1959, and a faculty-student Honors seminar on comparative civilizations from 1962 to 1965, and led the Civilization Studies Program in the New Collegiate Division from 1966 to 1971.
From 1970 to 1979, Singer taught a Workshop on American Culture, applying Redfield's civilizational studies techniques to his own culture. At the same time, he conducted field research in Newburyport, Massachusetts, the subject of W. Lloyd Warner's pioneering "Yankee City" studies of American culture. Singer's research in Newburyport both support his teaching in the American Culture Workshop, and allowed him to complete comparative studies of modernization and cultural traditions in the United States and India.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Singer became increasingly engaged in the study of the historical roots of anthropological theories of cultural symbolism, and the development of a semiotic anthropology. Much of his writing during this period drew on his field research in Newburyport and India, and even on his graduate studies in logic and philosophy. In 1979, Singer became Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. In the 1980s, he served as a consultant to the Center for Psychosocial Studies, where he participated in a series of interdisciplinary colloquia on "Nuclear Policy, Culture and History."
Singer served as a visiting professor at the University of Puerto Rico in 1949, at the University of California, Berkeley in 1956, at the University of Hawaii in 1967, and at the University of California, San Diego in 1971. He was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford in 1957 and 1958, a distinguished lecturer for the American Anthropological Association in 1978, and a Humanities Fellow for the Rockefeller Foundation from 1978 to 1979. Singer died in 1994 in Chicago, and was survived by his wife, Helen (Goldbaum).
The Milton Singer Papers are organized into eight series.
Series I, Correspondence
Subseries 1 contains the bulk of Singer's correspondence, spanning his career at the University of Chicago, and illustrating his deep and wide-ranging engagement with scholars worldwide. Correspondence related to particular projects or publications is in Series II. Correspondence with Robert Redfield, and with others associated with the Redfield-Ford Foundation project is in Series III.
Subseries 2 contains correspondence compiled by Singer in the 1950s. Many of these letters are related to Singer's service as a Fellow at Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
Subseries 3, Occasional Correspondence contains mostly invitations, requests for copies of articles, and other routine correspondence.
Series II, Research and Writings
Subseries 1, Key Documents, consists of documents compiled by Singer to illustrate the development of his own scholarly career. These include notes from his graduate studies and early career in Texas and Chicago, records of the University of Chicago Social Sciences curriculum Singer helped to develop, CVs and biographical articles, and correspondence and writings that Singer identified as particularly representative of his ideas and achievements. While most of the earliest materials in Subseries 1 are unique, copies of many of the later documents may also be found elsewhere in the Papers.
Subseries 2, contains a broad array of published and unpublished manuscripts, notes and correspondence with publishers and colleagues.
Subseries 3 contains notes and writings on India, including notes from Singer's research trips in the 1950s and 1960s. (Photographs, slides and films created during Singer's trips to India, or sent to him by Indian friends and colleagues may be found in Series VII. In addition to extensive notes and published and unpublished manuscripts, this subseries includes material related to three books written or edited by Singer, Traditional India: Structure and Change (1959), Krishna: Myths, Rites and Attitudes (1966), and When a Great Tradition Modernizes (1972).
Subseries 4, Yankee City, documents Singer's research in Newburyport, Massachusetts in the 1970s, and the papers it produced, including those presented to the American Anthropological Association in 1975 and 1976. Included are extensive notes and files of newspaper clippings, flyers and other ephemeral material collected in Newburyport and surrounding communities, and correspondence with residents of the region. Many photographs of Newburyport may be found in Series VII, and further results of Singer's research may be seen in files related to Workshop on American Culture in Series III.
Subseries 5, Radcliffe-Brown and Structuralism, contains material related to "A Neglected Source of Structuralism: Radcliffe-Brown, Russell and Whitehead," an article first written by Singer in 1973, and revised for publication, with a new postscript, in Semiotica in 1984. The files include letters received in response to the 1973 version of the article, from Clifford Geertz, Claude Levi Strauss, Margaret Mead and other notable anthropologists, drafts and publication materials, and course notes from three students of A. R. Radcliffe-Brown: Edward Spicer, Sol Tax and Fred Eggan.
Subseries 6 contains files on Man's Glassy Essence: Explorations in Semiotic Anthropology, a collection of essays published in 1984. It includes drafts and preparatory materials, post-publication correspondence and Singer's responses to several critical reviews.
Subseries 7 contains material related to Singer's "A Tale of Two Amateurs Who Crossed Cultural Frontiers with Boole's Symbolical Algebra," published in Semiotica in 1995. In addition to modern notes, drafts and correspondence with colleagues including Claude Levi Strauss, Edward Shils and George Stocking, the subseries contains notes take by Singer as a student of philosophy and psychology in the 1930s, and correspondence with Ethel Dummer regarding her association with mathematician Mary Boole.
Subseries 8 includes notes and research materials that cannot be conclusively linked to particular manuscripts, courses or projects. Many of the materials in this subseries are fragmentary and untitled. Particularly notable are the first files in the subseries, many of which are related to both Singer and Redfield's studies of personality and national character, and probably to the book Shame and Guilt: A Psychoanalytic and Cultural Study, co-authored by Singer and Gerhart Piers in 1953.
Series III contains material related to Singer's role on the faculty of the University of Chicago. Subseries 1 includes files on University-wide groups and affairs, while Subseries 2 contains notes and memoranda from the Department of Anthropology.
Subseries 3 and 4 document Singer's work in the1950s with his mentor and colleague Robert Redfield. Subseries 3 contains correspondence between the two, a file of correspondence between Redfield and historian Arnold J. Toynbee, notes and commemorations compiled by Singer after Redfield's death, and copies of papers written by Redfield. Subseries 4 includes files from the Comparison of Cultures Program, funded by the Ford Foundation and directed by Redfield until his death, when the post was assumed by Singer. Subseries 5 documents the "Civilizational Studies" programs that succeeded the Redfield-Ford Foundation Project in the 1960s and 1970s.
Subseries 6 documents the wide range of South Asian Studies at the University of Chicago, and its integration into the larger scholarly community. It includes files on both University groups, such as the Committee on South Asian Studies (COSAS) and the South Asian Language and Area Center (SALAC), and on larger organizations, such as the Asia Society and the Association for Asian Studies.
Subseries 7, 8 and 9 include files on courses taught by Singer. Subseries 7 contains material on "Introduction to the Civilization of India," developed by Singer as part of the Comparison of Cultures Project in the 1950s, and often taught by him into the 1970s. Subseries 8 contains files on a series of seminars and colloquia on "International Communication and Nuclear Discourse" with which Singer was involved in the 1980s and 1990s. The files in Subseries 9 are for other courses taught or co-taught by Singer, from the 1940s through the 1970s. Particularly notable among these are Anthropology 435, Workshop on American Culture, and the Comparison of Cultures Seminar, taught under a variety of course numbers.
Series IV, General Files, largely documents Singer's work outside the University of Chicago. Subseries 1 includes files from his tenure as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, 1957-1958. Subseries 2 documents his service on the Committee on International Education of the group Education and World Affairs in the 1960s, and Subseries 3 his work with the Center for Psychosocial Studies in the 1970s and 1980s.
Series V, Writings by Others, contains manuscripts and offprints of papers and articles by scholars other than Singer. Although Subseries 6 contains many student papers collected by Singer, other writings by his students may be found throughout the series.
Series VI contains material to which access is restricted. This includes evaluative student material, restricted for eighty years, and budget and personnel files, restricted for fifty years.
Series VII contains photographs and audio and video recordings. Many of the photographs are from Singer's travels in India in the 1950s and 1960s and from Newburyport, Massachusetts in the 1970s. The audio recordings are largely of lectures and conferences in which Singer participated, or of Tamil language-learning materials.
The following related resources are located in the Department of Special Collections: