Robert A. Manners Papers

Robert A. Manners was a professor at Brandeis University in the Anthropology department from 1952-1979 and Chairman of the department from 1963-68 and 1978-79. His vast and prolific research includes Puerto Rican culture, East African tribes, American Indians of the Southern Western United States, and cultural theory. Born in 1914, he graduated from Columbia University with a Ph.D in Anthropology in 1950. He worked briefly at the University of Rochester, until he was hired by the young Brandeis University in 1952 to join the Sociology and Anthropology department (at the time, these two departments were combined). He would be instrumental in building the Anthropology Department (helping to separate it from Sociology) and developing a strong reputation in the academic community, serving as its first chairman. Though he retired in 1979, he remained an active participant in the academic community serving as professor emeritus until his death and continuing to write and publish works through the 1990s. These included the textbook Culture Theory, which he wrote with David Kaplan, also of Brandeis. Manners was noted for his fieldwork in Latin American rural communities, East Africa, and the American Southwest. He passed away in 1996 at the age of 82.