Elsie Clews Parsons

She earned her bachelor's degree from Barnard College in 1896. She received her master's degree (1897) and Ph.D. (1899) from Columbia University.

Every other year, the American Ethnological Society awards the Elsie Clews Parsons Prize for the best graduate student essay, in her honor.

Biography

Elsie Worthington Clews was the daughter of Henry Clews, a wealthy New York banker, and Lucy Madison Worthington. Her brother, Henry Clews Jr., was an artist. On September 1, 1900, in Newport, Rhode Island, she married future three-term progressive Republican congressman Herbert Parsons, an associate and political ally of President Teddy Roosevelt. When her husband was a member of Congress, she published two then-controversial books under the pseudonym John Main.

Parsons became interested in anthropology in 1910. She believed that folklore was a key to understanding a culture and that anthropology could be a vehicle for social change.

Her work Pueblo Indian Religion is considered a classic; here she gathered all her previous extensive work and that of other authors. It has, however, been criticised as having been based on intrusive and deceptive research techniques.