1946-2009
Rhoda Halperin, a formidable presence in economic anthropology, author/editor of nine books and numerous papers, former president of SEA, and supportive colleague to many, died suddenly of an acute leukemia on the night of April 9.
After obtaining her PhD from Brandeis in 1975 (under Bob Hunt), Rhoda went to Cincinnati in 1977 where she ultimately served as chair and helped revitalize the department, then in 2004 moved to Montclair State University to serve as chair and to be closer geographically to her husband Bill and her two sons. At this time, she became an active and valuable member of the Advisory Committee of the Anthropology Section of the New York Academy of Sciences.
Rhoda was a tireless worker and advocate for anthropology. After attending the April SEA conference in Los Angeles, she flew to Alberta where she gave a colloquium on “Long Term Field Work as Memoir” on April 8 at Calgary, then attended an MA thesis defense at Lethbridge University on April 9, a thesis deeply influenced by her book The Livelihood of Kin. Her work with this student, Tracy McNab (who was “over the moon that the [scholar] who had so influenced her work had read and liked her thesis”) was typical of Rhoda’s generosity. Her last presentation at the University of Calgary on April 8was an informal but passionate discussion of how working with the same community and people over a long term results in very different possibilities and challenges for anthropological fieldwork. The audience was very impressed with her commitment and concern for the people involved with the Cincinnati school. She stayed with Josephine Smart and Alan Smart for the several days she was in Calgary, who greatly value the discussions that they had over the course of her visit, as well as in previous meetings over the years, and of course learned a great deal from her important writing and research. Exhausted on her return to New Jersey, Rhoda was taken to the emergency room of Rutgers’s University Hospital by Bill Halperin, her husband of forty-one years, where she died within minutes of her arrival. While her death is a tragedy to us, Rhoda never would have wished to have lingered.
SEA and the Anthropology Section of the New York Academy of Sciences are planning a Celebration of the Life of Rhoda Halperin for the AAA meetings in December.
Bill Mitchell, her close friend and colleague for 35 years, is writing her obituary for the Anthropology Newsletter of the AAA. Please share your thoughts and memories about Rhoda on this wikidot. Bill will incorporate these comments into her obituary. Do not forget to include comments on her intellectual contributions to your research.
CDC
From: Okun, Andrea H. (CDC/NIOSH/EID)
Cc: 'Bill Halperin' <ten.tta|nireplahw#ten.tta|nireplahw>
Sent: Mon Apr 13 15:52:14 2009
Subject: Death of Rhoda Halperin (Wife of Bill Halperin)
It is with great sorrow that I share information about the death of Rhoda Halperin, wife of a former colleague and friend, Bill Halperin. Rhoda passed away very suddenly last Thursday (April 9, 2009) of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Bill took Rhoda to the hospital upon her returned from a very hectic travel schedule and she passed away within a short time of her arrival at the hospital. Bill has requested no flowers or cards, but would be happy to receive any e-mails at ten.tta|nireplahw#ten.tta|nireplahw. At some time in the future, there will be a remembrance celebrating Rhoda's life. For now, Bill, Sam, and Michael are doing the best they can. Many of us have very fond memories of Rhoda and share in their great loss.
Andrea Okun, DrPH
Deputy Director, Education and Information Division
(513) 533-8377
vog.cdc|nukOA#vog.cdc|nukOA
Montclair University
April 13, 2009
It is my unfortunate duty this morning to inform you of the sudden passing of a colleague, Dr. Rhoda Halperin, Professor of Anthropology in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Dr. Halperin came to Montclair State in 2004 as chair of the Department of Anthropology. She was also Professor Emerita, Department of Anthropology, at the University of Cincinnati.
A cultural and economic anthropologist by training with a regional specialization in Latin America, her work is widely read by archaeologists, especially her book, Cultural Economies Past and Present (University of Texas Press 1994). Her most recent ethnographic publication is: “The Political Economy of Mesoamerican States: An Economic Ethnographer’s View” in The Political Economy of Ancient Mesoamerica. Dr. Halperin was also a Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology, which recognized her work on urban development, education and the theory and practice of community heritage. Her most recent book, Whose School is It? Women, Children, Memory and Practice in the City (University of Texas Press 2006), documents the creation and implementation of a community heritage school in a diverse working class community in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Her husband, Bill Halperin, reports that Dr. Halperin had recently been at four anthropological meetings and had a glorious time with her colleagues. She made it home but was overcome by illness and she passed on without pain. Her family will forever miss her. He has asked that no cards or flowers be sent, but that everyone take time to express kindness to one another in her memory.
I ask that the Montclair State community join me in extending our sincere condolences to Bill and Dr. Halperin's entire family. We are all diminished by her loss.
Willard Gingerich
Provost & Vice President
for Academic Affairs
Montclair State University
973-655-4383
973-655-7647 fax
ude.rialctnom|hciregnig.dralliw#ude.rialctnom|hciregnig.dralliw
Patricia McAnany
Here is what I know about Rhoda's death. She died on Thursday, April 10, of acute leukemia with a blast crisis according to her husband, Bill, a physician. She had continued on from the SEA conference at UCLA to lecture at Calgary and arrived back in NJ exhausted and having difficulty breathing. Bill took her to the hospital and she died several hours later. Her condition was undiagnosed before she died; Rhoda had refused to see a doctor. Bill said that there is very little that the medical profession could have done to improve her chances, even if she had been diagnosed earlier. Certainly, we now know to whom the SEA volume on the political economy of cloth will be dedicated.
I am devastated by this news.
Patricia McAnany
Kenan Professor
Department of Anthropology, Campus Box 3115
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC 27599
ude.cnu.liame|ynanacm#ude.cnu.liame|ynanacm; (o) 919.962.0524
www.machiproject.org <http://www.machiproject.org>
http://anthropology.unc.edu/people/faculty/mcanany
Walter Little
Tricia and I are very saddened and shocked for the news of Rhoda's passing. We've already agreed that the volume to come from this past SEA meeting on textiles and economy will be dedicated to her.
Unfortunately, we do not have a copy of the paper. Rhoda was still working through the theoretical arguments of the paper when she presented it. Her presentation raised a number of theoretical positions that help set the tone of the meeting. We had hoped that she would take a look at the final papers for the volume and write a conclusion that would draw together the theoretical contributions.
Walter E. Little
Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
1400 Washington Avenue
University at Albany, SUNY
Albany, NY 12222
Art Murphy
This loss is made more vivid by the extraordinary presentation that Rhoda gave at this year's SEA meetings in LA. The paper set a tone for the entire meetings.
Arthur D. Murphy, PhD
Professor and Head
Department of Anthropology
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro NC 27412-5001
ude.gcnu|yhprumda#ude.gcnu|yhprumda
Tel (336) 334-5132
fax (336) 334-5674
Alan Smart
I have been very touched by all the memorial statements about Rhoda. Her last presentation was the day before she passed away, a colloquium for the Department of Anthropology here at the University of Calgary. She was quite weak at that time, but wanted to speak about her topic of "Long term fieldwork as memoir". It was an informal but passionate discussion of how working with the same community and people over a long term results in very different possibilities and challenges for anthropological fieldwork. The audience was very impressed with her commitment and concern for the people involved with the Cincinnati school. She stayed with Josephine Smart and myself for the several days she was in Calgary, and we greatly value the discussions that we had over the course of her visit, as well as in previous meetings over the years, and of course learned a great deal from her important writing and research.
Alan Smart
University of Calgary
Sutti Ortiz
It is a sad news particularly for all of us who have been part of SEA. Rhoda had been very much part of our history and our meetings. I hope we can honor her memory in a forthcoming meeting, perhaps we can put her last presentation on the web so it can be shared by those of us who were unable to attend.
Christian Wells
Although I had read Rhoda’s work widely for years and seen her at the SEA meetings, I hadn’t met her until she participated in a seminar that Tricia McAnany and I organized in 2006. Rhoda and I quickly became friends, learning that she and I took grad classes from the same professor (George Cowgill)—Rhoda at Brandeis in the 1970s and me at ASU in the 1990s. Since the seminar, she visited with us in Tampa on several occasions (she was quite fond of citrus wine!). We really, really miss you, Rhoda.
E. Christian Wells, Ph.D.
Associate Professor & Graduate Director
Department of Anthropology
University of South Florida
4202 E. Fowler Ave., SOC 107
Tampa, FL 33620-8100 USA
(t) 813.974.2337, (f) 813.974.2668
ude.fsu.sac|sllewc#ude.fsu.sac|sllewc
http://anthropology.usf.edu/faculty/wells
Rahul Oka
I am so sad to hear this. Even though I have been reading her work for the longest time, I met her only once, last year at the SEA 08 when we spoke about the embeddedness" of economies and that Bob Hunt's presence was missed at the '08 meeting. I really wanted to come to this year's meeting to hear her presentation but it was not to be. She has been a major influence on my scholarship and intellectual growth and indeed for generations of economic anthropologists to come.
Rahul Oka, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
611 Flanner Hall
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556
(574) 631-8853 (Office)
(574) 631-5760 (Fax)
Lynne Milgram
I add my most deeply-felt sense of loss to this very tragic news. Rhoda's leadership and personal inspiration to colleagues and students in the field will remain with us. I had the opportunity to spend good time with Rhoda at the recent SEA meetings where she gave a wonderful first-session paper.
Robert Hunt
Dear Colleagues,
I was, like the rest of you, stunned to hear that Rhoda Halperin had died on Thursday 9 April. I had seen how unwell she was in LA the previous weekend, but thought, as did she, that she was just under the weather (a virus, she thought) and would soon snap out of it.
She was a good student (I was the advisor for her dissertation at Brandeis), a good colleague, a good friend, and a good member of the profession.
She is, and will continue to be, missed.
Bob Hunt
Jane Guyer
Dear SEA members,
Thank you so much for sending this very saddening news out to us all in SEA. Your thoughtfulness is much appreciated.
I haven't been able to attend the SEA in recent years, due to other pressing commitment in March/April, but I knew Rhoda quite well a long time ago. She was a major influence on us all, particularly for her revival of Polanyi, long before our current concerns were turning us all back to reconsider his work. Her empirical scholarship was also an inspiration; I taught with her book Kentucky. And she was a wonderful companion in discussion.
You don't mention whether she was ill for long. But in any case, can the Society send a condolence message to her family, for us all?
Kate Browne
I cannot express my shock and sadness. Rhoda's immense contributions to economic anthropology and her spirited, open-hearted mentorship of so many of us make this news very painful, personally and professionally.
Katherine E. Browne
Professor
Department of Anthropology
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1787
970-491-5813
research: http://lamar.colostate.edu/~kbrowne/
Molly Burns Barwick
Rhoda was advisor and mentor when I was a graduate student at University of Cincinnati. She offered me such support and many opportunities. My first year in the graduate program, Rhoda included me in the editing process of her book, Whose School is it? I had never participated in a project like this. Rhoda was patient, and supportive in her instructions. Not only that, she made sure I was well fed throughout the project- treating me and 2 other graduate students to lunch at each meeting (as a poor graduate student, that meant a lot!).
Looking back at my experience at UC, I realize Rhoda went well beyond what was required to introduce me to opportunities and help me succeed. She was an excellent teacher, a generous mentor, and an inspiring community member. I am grateful to have known her.
Molly Burns Barwick
Director of Civic Leadership Development
Director of Alternative Spring Break
Indiana University Kelley School of Buisness
(812) 855-8066 phone
(812) 855-0212 fax
Tom Hakansson
This was very sad news. I have not seen Rhoda since the early 2000s (AAA meeting 2003??) but we used to meet regularly in the 1990s. She was not only a great scholar but a wonderful person whose warmth and love of people made me and others always feel welcome and special. In 1990 she took the initiative to organize an informal economic anthropology group consisting of faculty and graduate students from University of Kentucky and U of Cincinnati. A kind of SEA in miniature that included a core group of both archaeologist (Kenn Hirth, Vern Scarborough) and Cultural Anthropologists (Barry Isaac, Rhoda, and I) as well as many graduate students and other faculty. We met several times per semester until second half of the 1990s, presented work in progress.
Towards the end we usually met at Rhoda’s house and took turns cooking a dinner.
Martha Rees
I got to know Rhoda well at the 1996 SEA meetings in Ajijic. It was beautiful, but a bit chilly there, and Rhoda went swimming every day.
Later, when I applied to the U Cincinnati, she encouraged me, picked me up, fed me (at "what's for dinner"), and housed me. She let me use her house when she was out of town.
Of course, it was a blow when she decided to move back to East to be with Bill, and I no longer had her support in the Department, although certainly her commuting schedule was impossible.
In Cincinnati, Rhoda is famous, and won a citizen's award, for her tireless, and continuing work with the East End, a community originally settled by Appalachian immigrants on the Ohio River flood plain. She helped start their charter school, and was a key player in the community—part of the way she lived her life, by being committed to community.
I am still in shock at her death.
"As on a field with new snow everywhere,
footsteps of birds reveal a brief alightening,
from flight begun and ended in air…"
May she go safe, your friend, across that dizzy way …
From Earth to Paradise; may you go safe today
With stars and space above, and time and stars below.
- after Lord Dunsany, “May You Go Safe: On the Death of A Muhammedan Friend”
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