USC professor Nancy Lutkehaus came to El Camino on Thursday and informed students and faculty on the work and contributions made to society by the former anthropologist Margaret Mead.
This was the first time that professor Lutkehaus had been on El Camino’s campus, but there was a special reason why she was so willing to come here and speak.
“I was really happy to have the opportunity to come here because Mead came here as well,” Lutkehaus said. “I am a traditionalist, Mead came here to talk about her ideas and now they were interested in me coming to talk about her. I feel I am as committed to anthropology as Mead was so I was happy to come here and speak.”
Lutkehaus’ presentation used many visual images of newspaper articles and cartoons to give the audience a good idea of how well-known and discussed Mead was in the media during her time.
Mead was a white woman who was going to primitive areas studying women coming of age, and studied human sexuality and compared them to people in the United States. This was all during the 1920s a time of change in America, which really got people talking about her. “She was the right person at the right time,” Lutkehaus said.
Lutkehaus spent time at New Guinea doing research and wrote a book “Margaret Mead: The Making of an American Icon” while also working for Mead for two years.
“I ended up wanting to be an anthropologist rather than work for one,” Lutkehaus said. “Although working for her was very exciting and eye-opening, and is something I do not regret.”
Mead is still talked about today, and many of her beliefs are relevant in our society today. In Lutkehaus’ presentation she stated that Mead believed in the legalization of marijuana, and she believed that the drinking age should be the same as the draft age.
“The lecture was pretty interesting,” William Lowry, 20, English major said. “I didn’t know much about Mead, but it was nice to learn about her and her impact.”
Dr. Blair Gibson, an anthropology professor here at El Camino who helped put the event together, was very pleased with how the day went.
“The presentation was very wonderful and gratifying,” Gibson said. “There are a lot of connections, I show films to my students where Lutkehaus appears in them. Mead was a prophet of all of these issues nowadays, and it makes it relevant to our times.”
