Zora Neale Hurston was an American writer and anthropologist who trained under Franz Boas at Columbia University and conducted pioneering ethnographic fieldwork on African American and Caribbean folklore, religion, and vernacular culture. In Mules and Men (1935) she documented African American folktales, songs, and hoodoo practices in Florida and New Orleans using methods that combined literary narrative voice with ethnographic observation, and in Tell My Horse (1938) she extended this fieldwork to Haitian and Jamaican Vodou. Hurston's insistence on presenting Black vernacular speech, belief, and expressive culture on its own terms, without translating it into more conventional academic idiom, distinguished her ethnographic method from that of her Boasian contemporaries and gave her folklore collections lasting value as both anthropology and literature.
Facts
Nationality / Culture Defining ContributionPortrayed racial struggles in the early-20th-century American South and published research on Hoodoo and Caribbean Vodou as a trained anthropologist and central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. 1 Notable WorkTheir Eyes Were Watching God (1937) 1 Connections
Associated With
Source Zora Neale Hurston (Wikipedia)
Informed By
Hurston studied anthropology under Boas at Barnard and Columbia before conducting her own folklore fieldwork in the American South and the Caribbean.
Source Zora Neale Hurston (Wikipedia)
Practices Studied
Source Zora Neale Hurston (Wikipedia)
Source Zora Neale Hurston (Wikipedia)
In the Other Atlases
Same As
Also in Divinity Atlas: the same subject.
Also in Literature Atlas: the same subject.
Nationality
Also in Geography Atlas: the nationality of this subject.
Source Zora Neale Hurston (Wikipedia)Lead paragraph of the cited Wikipedia articletier 2Quote, Lead paragraph of the cited Wikipedia article
Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American writer, anthropologist, folklorist, and documentary filmmaker.
Sources
1. Zora Neale Hurston (Wikipedia)
Wikipediaopening sentence
Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891, January 28, 1960) was an American writer, anthropologist, folklorist, and documentary filmmaker.
Biography section, early life
Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama, and moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida, in 1894.
Later life and death section
She died of hypertensive heart disease on January 28, 1960, and was buried at the Garden of Heavenly Rest in Fort Pierce, Florida.
opening paragraph
The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937.
Informed By: Franz Boas, Early career, anthropological research
In her early career, Hurston conducted anthropological and ethnographic research with anthropologist Franz Boas as a scholar at Barnard College and Columbia University.
Associated With: Columbia University, Article text
She conducted ethnographic research with anthropologist Franz Boas of Columbia University and later studied with him as a graduate student.
Practices Studied: Ritual, Article text
Tell My Horse (1938) documents her account of her fieldwork studying spiritual and cultural rituals in Jamaica and vodoun in Haiti.
Practices Studied: Religion, Article text
Included are rare ethnographic evidence of the Hoodoo and Vodou religion in the U.
View the Source Wikidata: Zora Neale Hurston
Wikidata Q220480, class allow-list match, case-insensitive label variant (w-bbfill-smallsix2-0926/resolve_ci.ps1)View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.