Helen Frances Codere

Helen Frances Codere was born on September 10, 1917, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but moved to Minnesota in 1919. In 1939, she received her BA from the University of Minnesota, and in 1950 she completed her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Columbia University, where she studied under Ruth Benedict, a protégé of Franz Boas. Codere held appointments at a variety of academic institutions including Vassar University (1946-1953) and Brandeis University (1964 1982), where she was also dean of the graduate school from 1974-1977. At other times she held appointments at the American Ethnological Society, the University of British Columbia, Northwestern University, Bennington College, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Codere’s early work focused on the Kwakwaka’wakw. She carried out field studies in 1951 and 1955 and, in 1950, published Fighting with Property: Study of the Kwakiutl Potlatching and Warfare, 1792-1930. In 1959, Codere traveled to Rwanda to study social structures and relationships between the Tutsis and Hutus, and in 1973 published The Biography of an African Society: Rwanda 1900-1960. In 1966, she edited Boas’s unpublished manuscript, Kwakiutl Ethnography.

Helen Codere died in 2009.

Copied from MemoryBC on November 20, 2015, by Katie Ferrante.