May Mandelbaum Edel (1 December 1909 – 23 May 1964) was an American anthropologist known for her fieldwork among the Okanagan in Washington, the Tillamook in Oregon, and the Kiga in Uganda.
[4] She began her studies at Barnard College in 1925,[3] where she took graduate anthropology courses taught by anthropologists Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict at Columbia University.
From 1930 to 1931, Edel served as a research assistant to Franz Boas while conducting fieldwork among the Okanagan in Washington and the Tillamook in Oregon.
[3] During this period, Edel also gave lectures to teachers at the American Museum of Natural History, which brought to her attention the potential impact of anthropology on education.
[2] Franz Boas later requested Melville Jacobs to collect information about dialects in the Garibaldi area in Oregon to provide more grammatical material for Edel's doctoral dissertation.
[2] Jacobs conducted fieldwork from November to December 1933, supported by a grant from the ACLS Joint Committee on Native American Languages.
Edel spent a full year among the Kiga people on the Bafuka peninsula on Lake Bunyonyi in the Kigezi District.
[3] Edel's linguistic training allowed her to work in vernacular speech, which was a necessity given that there were not interpreters available to aid her research.
[7] Edel's research demonstrated the variability in African social systems, a phenomenon under-acknowledged by Western scholars at the time.
Edel actively collaborated with those at the International African Institute, including Professor Daryll Forde and Mrs. Beatrice Wyatt.
She received guidance on her African studies from Audrey Richards, Bronislaw Malinowski, Diedrich Westermann, and Lucy Mair[8] as well as Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Franz Boas.
[5] Edel and Landes met with Mead and four other associated graduate students in the Department of Anthropology to discuss results and working hypotheses related to each researcher's culture of study.
[5] Correspondence between Franz Boas and May Mandelbaum Edel related to her trip to Africa are currently housed in the American Philosophical Society Library.
[9] She was an active member of the New York section of the Committee on Anthropology and World Affairs, and as Bunzel noted, "believed that anthropologists had a role and a responsibility in finding ways to peace and fulfillment.
[4] May Mandelbaum Edel died on May 23, 1964, after an illness lasting more than a year in Kew Gardens General Hospital in Queens, New York[4] at the age of 54.
[3] The May Mandelbaum Edel papers are currently housed in the National Anthropological Archives, and this paper collection includes her field notes from fieldwork with the Okanagan Indians in Washington and the Kiga in Uganda, language materials, manuscripts, correspondence, teaching materials, and lecture notes taken from courses taught by Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict.
[1] The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in the New York Public Library also houses stories, tales, and drafts of the manuscript related to the Kiga people.