Paul Radin was a widely read American cultural anthropologist and folklorist of the early twentieth century. Born the son of a rabbi in the cosmopolitan Polish city of Łódź, he became a student of Franz Boas

Franz Boas

Franz Boas was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology" and "the Father of Modern Anthropology." Like many such pioneers, he trained in other disciplines; he received his doctorate in physics, and did...

 at Columbia

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, where he counted Edward Sapir

Edward Sapir

Edward Sapir was an American anthropologist-linguist, widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the early development of the discipline of linguistics....

 and Robert Lowie

Robert Lowie

Robert Harry Lowie was an Austrian-born American anthropologist. An expert on North American Indians, he was instrumental in the development of modern anthropology.-Biography:...

 among his classmates. He engaged in years of productive fieldwork among the Winnebago

Ho-Chunk

The Ho-Chunk, also known as Winnebago, are a tribe of Native Americans, native to what is now Wisconsin and Illinois. There are two federally recognized Ho-Chunk tribes, the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska....

 (Hocąk) Indians, primarily from 1908-1912, culminating in 1923 with the publication of his magnum opus, The Winnebago Tribe. In 1929, as a result of his fieldwork, he was able to publish a grammar of the nearly extinct language of the Wappo

Wappo

The Wappo are a group of Native Americans who traditionally lived in Northern California in the areas of Napa Valley, the south shore of Clear Lake, Alexander Valley, and Russian River. When Mexicans arrived to colonize California, Wappo villages existed near the present-day towns of Yountville,...

 people of the San Francisco Bay area. Late in his career he edited several anthologies of folk tales from different continents. His most enduring publication to date is The Trickster

Trickster

In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior. It is suggested by Hansen that the term "Trickster" was probably first used in this...

(1956), which includes essays by the pioneering scholar of Greek mythology, Karl Kerényi

Karl Kerényi

Károly Kerényi was a Hungarian scholar in classical philology, one of the founders of modern studies in Greek mythology.- Hungary 1897–1943 :...

, and the prominent psychoanalyst C. G. Jung.

Radin taught at a number of colleges and universities, never staying at any one more than a few years. At various times he held appointments at University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

; Mills College

Mills College

Mills College is an independent liberal arts women's college founded in 1852 that offers bachelor's degrees to women and graduate degrees and certificates to women and men. Located in Oakland, California, Mills was the first women's college west of the Rockies. The institution was initially founded...

, Fisk University

Fisk University

Fisk University is an historically black university founded in 1866 in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. The world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers started as a group of students who performed to earn enough money to save the school at a critical time of financial shortages. They toured to raise funds to...

, Black Mountain College

Black Mountain College

Black Mountain College, a school founded in 1933 in Black Mountain, North Carolina, was a new kind of college in the United States in which the study of art was seen to be central to a liberal arts education, and in which John Dewey's principles of education played a major role...

, Kenyon College

Kenyon College

Kenyon College is a private liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio, founded in 1824 by Bishop Philander Chase of The Episcopal Church, in parallel with the Bexley Hall seminary. It is the oldest private college in Ohio...

, and the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

. He concluded his career at Brandeis

Brandeis University

Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...

, where he was chairman of the Department of Anthropology.

Books by Radin

• 1920. The Sources and Authenticity of the History of the Ancient Mexicans (Berkeley: University of California Press). ISBN B001N11VKI.
• 1923. The Winnebago Tribe, in Thirty-seventh Annual Report of the United States Bureau of American Ethnology (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution), 35-550. Reprint (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990). ISBN 0-8032-5710-4.
• 1924. Monotheism among Primitive Peoples (London: George Allen & Unwin). ISBN B0007E3XQW.
• 1926. Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of an American Indian. Edited by Paul Radin (New York and London: Appleton and Co.). ISBN B000NPAW0A.
• 1927. Primitive Man As Philosopher, (New York: D. Appleton Co.). Introduction by John Dewey
  John Dewey
  John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...
  
  . ISBN B000H7FS1M.
• 1929. A Grammar of the Wappo Language, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, v. 27 (Berkeley: University of California Press). ISBN B001N9J62K.
• 1932. Social Anthropology (New York: McGraw-Hill). ISBN B000P0QTZA.
• 1933. The Method and Theory of Ethnology: An Essay in Criticism. Introduction by Arthur J. Vidich. ISBN B0017GY4QW.
• 1934. The Racial Myth (New York: Whittlesey House). ISBN B0006DBYYW.
• 1937. Primitive Religion: Its Nature and Origin (New York: Viking Press). ISBN B000OL5C3K.
• 1942. Indians of South America (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co Inc. The American Museum of Natural History Science Series). ISBN B000JOPBB.
• 1944. The Story of the American Indian (New York: Liveright). ISBN B000OL8BRY.
• 1945. The Road of Life and Death: A Ritual Drama of the American Indians (New York: Pantheon Books. Bollingen Series, #5). Foreword by Mark van Doren
  Mark Van Doren
  Mark Van Doren was an American poet, writer and a critic, apart from being a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, and Beat Generation...
  
  . ISBN B000JVI9FS.
• 1947 . The Culture of the Winnebago as Described by Themselves, Special Publications of the Bollingen Foundation, #1 (Baltimore: Waverly Press). ISBN B002B01B0K.
• 1948. Winnebago Hero Cycles: A Study in Aboriginal Literature. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Publications in Anthropology and Linguistics, Memoir 1. Republished in the International Journal of American Linguistics, Memoir 1, Supplement to International Journal of American Linguistics, Vol. 14, #3. ISBN B0012KNYZU.
• 1953. The World of Primitive Man. The Life of Science Library, no. 26 (New York: H. Schuman). ISBN B000S88DAS.
• 1954/1956. The Evolution of an American Indian Prose Epic, Bollingen Foundation, Special Publications, 3 (1954): 1-99; 5 (1956): 103-148. ISBN B0006CQUBA.
• 1956. The Trickster: A Study in Native American Mythology (New York: Schocken Books, 1956). Commentaries by Karl Kerenyi
  Karl Kerényi
  Károly Kerényi was a Hungarian scholar in classical philology, one of the founders of modern studies in Greek mythology.- Hungary 1897–1943 :...
  
   and C. G. Jung. ISBN 0-8-52-0351-6.
  • first published in German in 1954. Der göttliche Schelm, Rhein-Verlag, Zürich. Mit Karl Kerenyi und C. G. Jung.

Writings on Radin

• Diamond, Stanley (ed.). 1960. Culture in History: Essays in Honor of Paul Radin (New York: Columbia University Press).
• Lindberg, Christer. 2000. "Paul Radin: The Anthropological Trickster," in European Review of Native American Studies 14 (1).
• Lurie, Nancy Oestreich. 1960. "Winnebago Prohistory," in Stanley Diamond, ed., ‘’Culture in History: Essays in Honor of Paul Radin’’ (NY: Columbia University Press): 790–808.
• Lurie, Nancy Oestreich. 1988. "Relations Between Indians and Anthropologists," in Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 4. (Washington, D. C.).
• Sullivan, Lawrence E. 1982. "Multiple Levels of Religious Meaning in Culture: A New Look at Winnebago Sacred Texts," The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 2 (2): 221-247.

External links

• Paul Radin's Winnebago Notebooks at the American Philosophical Library.
• Paul Radin Papers at Marquette University.