Teaching
The Problems With Coming of Age
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Unit 4
Margaret Mead’s Remarkable Career
In this unit (to accompany SAPIENS podcast S6E2), students will learn about Margaret Mead’s career, including how her accomplishments impacted future anthropologists from a feminist perspective and how her developments influenced 20th-century America. Students will read about significant milestones in her career and learn how her academic journey led toward her research outcomes with the Samoans and other anthropological achievements.
Learning Objectives
- Recall the significant milestones in Margaret Mead’s career as an anthropologist.
- Summarize how Mead’s findings have affected anthropology, Samoans, and the American public.
Sapiens articles
The Anthropologists Who Undid Sex, Race, and Gender
In Gods of the Upper Air, a biographer reveals how anthropologist Franz Boas and his students helped transform how human differences and similarities are perceived.
Margaret Mead Imagined Different Futures
For those anxious about the state of the world, Mead’s celebrated work shows how anthropology can help guide alternative futures.
Keywords
View All in Activism
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![Four people, one wearing a red baseball cap and another a blue shirt, ride a boat on a khaki-colored river surrounded by dense forest.]()
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Do Strict Criminal Penalties Protect Animals From Abuse?
In Mexico, a growing animal protection movement often promotes harsh criminal punishment for those who abuse animals. But are these strategies working, or do they lead to further injustices?
Through Film, Discovering Hope in the Face of Environmental Destruction
In the midst of acute eco-anxiety, can community-based filmmaking help young people imagine a different future?
Writing Indigenous Oral Tradition to Fight a Dam
In the northern Philippines, the Isnag are documenting their Traditional Stories to sustain their culture and fight a legal battle against dams that would inundate their homelands.
Finding Ceremony for Ancestors Held in the Penn Museum and Other Colonial Institutions
An anthropologist and an organizer try to connect descendant communities with the remains of 20 Black Philadelphians slated for court-ordered burial.
The Mexican River Defenders Fighting for the San Pedro
Nature-loving volunteers in the Mexican state of Chihuahua gather weekly on the banks of the San Pedro River to collect trash. But their aims are bigger.
The Colonial Roots of Peru’s Troubles
An archaeologist traces the current protests in Peru to exploitive labor policies enacted in silver mines during Spanish colonial rule from 1532 to 1800.
View All in Gender
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![A close-up image features a circular street sign with random black symbols such as an exclamation mark and hashtag and a red circle and strikethrough over them.]()
![A human figure with a large white cloth draped over them stands in a long, dark corridor lined with windows on one side.]()
![A person with blonde hair wearing a pink blazer stands at a podium with several microphones on it and a sign that reads, “Protect Children’s Innocence.” Several people in suits stand behind, with a large white domed building in the background.]()
How Eugenics Shaped the U.S. Prenatal Care System
Black women in the U.S. are far more likely to die from complications related to pregnancy and birth than White women. Two scholars explore how the discrediting of Black midwives helped create these racial disparities—and call for alternative models of prenatal care.
The Urgency of Envisioning a World Without Police
An anthropologist working in Baltimore argues that safety for Black communities requires an end to policing. That also means taking a hard look at how policing intersects with patriarchy and intimate partner violence.
Excavating a 19th-Century Detroit Saloon
A filmmaker highlights the work of urban archaeologists who are excavating the site of a woman-owned business that opened in the late 1800s.
Why I Ask My Students to Swear in Class
An anthropologist uses explicit insults to get students thinking about gender and power in everyday language. Plus, a brief explainer on the slang term “sus.”
What It Means to be Human in an Asylum
A sociocultural anthropologist from Pakistan speaks to how women in asylums in a patriarchal culture are in a battle between their realities and their lost dreams. Yet those dreams offer hope for tomorrow.
Two Myths Fueling the Conservative Right’s Dangerous Transphobia
An anthropologist attends the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)—ground zero for the current onslaught of anti-trans rhetoric and legislation in the U.S.
View All in Media
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![Behind a red carpet, a large poster features a person in a brown brimmed hat holding up a whip over a cluster of other people. A pillared building lies in the background opposite yellow and orange text that reads, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. It is flanked by display cases, one holding a bronze time dial.]()
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Through Film, Discovering Hope in the Face of Environmental Destruction
In the midst of acute eco-anxiety, can community-based filmmaking help young people imagine a different future?
Bringing Nhakpoti, the Kayapó Story of Star Girl, to the Screen
Over years and across long distances, an international filmmaking team collaborated to bring to life the origin story of how agriculture came to Kayapó communities, Indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon.
What Indiana Jones Gets Right About Archaeology
As Dr. Jones returns to the big screen, a real archaeologist acknowledges the movie franchise's shortcomings while espousing its merits.
Do Washing Machines Belong in Kitchens? Many Brits Say “Yes.”
An anthropologist moves from Canada to the U.K. and finds herself reflecting on what home design patterns reveal about a society.
Five Highlights From the 2023 RAI Film Festival
This March, SAPIENS is partnering with the Royal Anthropological Institute’s RAI Film Festival to celebrate anthropological documentaries.
Picturing the Deep Universe Is Deeply Human
The James Webb Space Telescope’s stunning photos require extensive image processing—revealing as much about humanity as about the universe.
Glossary
Feminism
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The belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes expressed especially through organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests.
Intersectionality
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The complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect, especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.
Social Constructionism
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The idea that contends that categories of knowledge and of “reality” itself are actively created by and are the products of social and symbolic relationships and interactions, all within the given temporal and spatial boundaries of a cultural context
Professor Talking Points
- Examine key moments in Mead’s career, including her work after Samoa. Provide students with a brief timeline of her career and the significant accomplishments she made in the field of anthropology. Consider how the key moments of her career impacted the legacy that she left behind.
- Explain what a feminist perspective in anthropology is. Keeping this definition at the forefront of students’ minds, look at Mead’s accomplishments from a feminist perspective, analyzing what steps she took that led to positive changes and what could be seen as setbacks.
- Describe to students the world that Margaret Mead experienced, the expectations for women in the 1920s, particularly the social constraints and behavior, and expectations toward sexuality. Also, consider the misconceptions the West often held about other cultures and how colonial attitudes dominated Western society. Lead students to examine lifestyle differences evident in today’s culture compared to what the average woman experienced during Mead’s time.
- Discuss with students how Mead’s own experience coincides with the social constructionism of her time and the misconceptions she helped to perpetuate about Samoan women.
- Examining Mead’s work suggests that people, including notable academics, are a complex composite of multiple sociocultural, political, and familial influences that shape our interpretation of the world around us. Consider what you think might prove controversial in the future when historians look at what today’s academics are writing about. Lead students to discuss their own beliefs on what could be controversial in the future.
Academic Articles
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Jarvie, Ian. “Mead and the Trajectory of Anthropology in the United States.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 47, nos. 4-5 (2016): 359-369.
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Shankman, Paul. “The Public Anthropology of Margaret Mead: Redbook, Women’s Issues, and the 1960s.” Current Anthropology 59, no. 1 (2018).
Student Discussion Questions
- What is an example of, or an opposing position to, social constructionism in Mead’s early career?
- What examples of intersectionality are present in Mead’s career concerning her accomplishments with the Samoan people?
- How can we see the impact of Mead’s work in the ongoing feminist struggle?
- What is one positive and one negative effect of Mead’s work in Samoa?
- How did Mead’s work in anthropology influence future academics in that field?
Activities
- Construct a timeline of Mead’s career, which includes a section in each event that compares society’s expectations of women in her time compared to
- Create a LinkedIn account for Margaret Mead, including three to five jobs, a bio based on your knowledge of her, and career goals, then post at least four times from her perspective.
- Write an argumentative essay of five paragraphs that argues for or against the narrative that Mead’s career impacted feminism/intersectionality for the better.
- Create a meme or a political cartoon that shows the social constructionism that Mead faced in her career.
Additional Resources
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Article: Barnard Center for Research on Women’s “Margaret Mead’s Legacy: Continuing Conversations
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Article: The Legacy Project’s “Margaret Mead – Nominee 1901-1978”
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Article: Sam Dresser’s “The Meaning of Margaret Mead”
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Video: Manufacturing Intellect’s “Margaret Mead interview on Cultural Anthropology (1959)”
Unit By
Casie Gray, Freedom Learning Group
Teaching
The Problems With Coming of Age
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Unit 5
Samoan Voices
