Listen "Isabel Kelly"
Episode Synopsis
Isabel Truesdell Kelly earned her PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1932, with a dissertation on the “Fundamentals of Great Basin Culture,” having researched the Northern Paiute and Coast Miwok Indigenous cultures of Northern California. After graduating she led excavations in Mexico and then began a career as an anthropologist with the US State Department, which had a growing interest in assisting the scientific and technological development of countries like Mexico as a way of maintaining a toehold in the region during the growing cold war with the Soviet Union. Joining me this week is Dr. Stephanie Baker Opperman, Professor of History at Georgia College, and author of Cold War Anthropologist: Isabel Kelly and Rural Development in Mexico.Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Hermoso Mexico,” composed by R. Herrera, arranged and conducted by Guillermo González and performed by Banda González (Victor Band) on May 16, 1919, in Camden, New Jersey; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Isabel T. Kelly portrait,” DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University. Additional Sources:“Isabel T. Kelly Ethnographic Archive,” Southern Methodist University (SMU) Libraries.“Isabel Truesdell Kelly,” The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.“Isabel T. Kelly's Southern Paiute Ethnographic Field Notes, 1932-1934, Las Vegas,” compiled and edited by Catherine S. Fowler and Darla Garey-Sage, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.“Isabel T. Kelly: Pioneer Great Basin Ethnographer,” by Catherine S. Fowler, Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 36, no. 1 (2016): 172–76..“With Grit and Determination: A Century of Change for Women in Great Basin and American Archaeology,” by Nicole M. Herzog and Suzanne Eskenazi, University of Utah Press, 2020. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
More episodes of the podcast Unsung History
An American History of Coffee
01/12/2025
The History of Rum
17/11/2025
The Girl Scouts of the USA
20/10/2025
Zoe Anderson Norris
06/10/2025
Marguerite Cartwright
22/09/2025
Black Women's Anti-Rape Activism
08/09/2025
Ideological Exclusion & Deportation
25/08/2025
Genealogy in Early America
11/08/2025
Catholicism in the American Colonies
28/07/2025
ZARZA We are Zarza, the prestigious firm behind major projects in information technology.