A Social Scientist and Social Critic
One of The New York Academy of Sciences early Fellows advanced anthropological understandings of Native tribes. Her social sciences background also extended into feminism and broader societal critiques.
Published March 6, 2025
By Nick Fetty
Digital Content Manager
Elsie Clews Parsons was born to a prominent New York family in 1875. She earned a BA from the recently established Barnard College prior to completing her PhD in sociology from Columbia University in 1899. The following year she married Herbert Parsons, a New York City lawyer also involved with politics, furthering her access to “the wealthy, social, and generally conservative circles of New York City.”
While she could have spent her life as an elite socialite, she instead pursued a rigorous career in the social sciences, and later in life championed feminism and pacificism that may have run counter to those conservative, social networks.
Early Sociological Works
After completing her PhD, Parsons returned to Barnard where she served as a sociology lecturer and a Hartley House Fellow. However, her time on the Barnard faculty was relatively short-lived as in 1905 the family moved to Washington D.C.
She published her first major work, The Family: An Ethnographical and Historical Outline, in 1906. This was a textbook for freshman sociology students that taught them the basic sociology of familial matters from “The Meaning of the Family in Evolution” to the economic and ethical dynamics amongst kin. It included a robust discussion about “trial marriage” which at the time was considered provocative, but likely played a part in the book’s successful sales.
Between 1913 and 1916, she published five pieces: Religious Chastity (1913), The Old Fashioned Woman (1913), Fear and Conventionality (1914), Social Freedom (1915), and Social Rule (1916). Because of the notoriety of her first book, she penned her two 1913 pieces under the pseudonym “John Main” to avoid jeopardizing her husband’s political career.
It was during this time that she was elected a fellow of The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy), meaning that she was selected by active members for her scientific achievement.
Anthropological Research
Parson developed an interest in anthropology after visiting the American Southwest with her husband. She began making frequent trips to Arizona and New Mexico to study the Hopi and Pueblo tribes, where she “recorded in meticulous detail data on social organization, religious practices, and folklore of the Southwest Indians.” She worked closely alongside Franz Boas, a prominent Columbia academic who has been dubbed “The Father of American Anthropology.”
Later in her career, she expanded her focus area to study tribes and cultures in the Great Plains, the Carolinas, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. Publications from this era include The Social Organization of the Tewa of New Mexico (1929), Hopi and Zuni Ceremonialism (1933), Mitla: Town of the Souls (1936), Pueblo Indian Religion (1939), and Peguche (1945).
A Leader to the End
Parsons contributed to the intellectual discourse up until her death, serving as associate editor for the Journal of American Folklore between 1918 and 1941. She was president of the American Folklore Society (1918-1920), the American Ethnological Association (1923-1925), and the American Anthropological Association (1940-1941). Parson passed away in 1941 at the age of 66. Her Journal of a Feminist was published posthumously.
In the 1960s, the American Ethnological Society (AES) established the Elsie Clews Parsons Prize to not only recognize “the best graduate-student paper that engages with AES’s core commitments to combining innovative fieldwork with rich theoretical critique,” but to also carry on the legacy of this trailblazing scientist.
Also read: Celebrating Girls and Women in STEM
This is part of a series of articles featuring past Academy members across all eras.
