Katherine Spencer Halpern

Katherine Spencer was born in Reading, Massachusetts. She earned a bachelor's degree at Vassar College in 1935, and a master's degree at the University of Chicago in 1944, and completed doctoral studies at the University of Chicago in 1952 with a dissertation titled Mythology and Values: An Analysis of Navaho Chantway Myths.[1]

In 1937, Spencer and two friends spent a summer doing research in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico.[2] "I was overwhelmed by the Southwest," she recalled later. "Things just opened up for me."[3] In 1940, she co-edited A Bibliography of Navaho Indians with Clyde Kluckhohn.[4]

During and after World War II, Spencer did fieldwork in Alaska and worked in Washington, D.C.[3] She was a social work professor at Boston University from 1954 to 1970. From 1970 to 1978, she was an anthropology professor at American University. She was a fellow of the American Anthropological Association. Halpern's research included studies of Navajo conceptions of disease and medicine,[3] and of Navajo health care workers.[5]

After retiring from American University, Halpern was a researcher at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe, New Mexico, resulting in Reflection of Social Life in the Navaho Origin Myth (1983).[6] She also contributed to the catalogue for catalogue for the Wheelwright's show, Woven Holy People: Navajo Sandpainting Textiles from the Permanent Collection (1982).[7] She wrote two biographies of anthropologists, Applied Anthropologist and Public Servant: The Life and Work of Philleo Nash (1983),[8] and Washington Matthews: Studies of Navajo Culture, 1880-1894 (1997, co-edited with Susan Brown McGreevy).[9]

In 1968, Katherine Spencer married fellow anthropologist Abraham M. Halpern,[10][11] who was a widower with two sons.[12][13] He died in 1985.[14] She died in 2004, aged 90 years.