Ruth Landes Program

            The Anthropology Department at Columbia University is proud to announce the launch of its new Ruth Landes Program.  This program is supported by the Reed Foundation, Columbia's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Anthropology Department with an initial three-year pilot that seeks to energize, deepen and drive graduate student training for anthropological work that combines innovation with a commitment to social justice.

            The spirit of Columbia Anthropology alumnus Ruth Landes' (PhD 1937) trailblazing ethnographic publications on Ojibwa and Afro-Brazilian women and her scholarly commitment to addressing gender inequality, class injustice and racism guide this new program.  The program honors Landes' bold commitment to describing, valorizing and conceptualizing the social world as it truly is. 

            Our new program is comprised of three interlocking components: the Ruth Landes Memorial Lecture, the Ruth Landes Fellowship, and the Ruth Landes Summer Research Fellowships.  All three components are designed to sharpen the conceptual and ethnographic focus of students training at Columbia University's Master's in Sociocultural Anthropology. 

            The Ruth Landes Memorial Lecturer will offer the keynote address for Master's Student Conference and offer the closing remarks on the students' MA thesis presentations.

The Ruth Landes Master's Fellowship shall be offered to one outstanding applicant to our Masters in Sociocultural Anthropology program, providing the selected Landes Fellow with one full-year of full tuition and stipend.  Candidates will be selected from amongst all applicants to the MA program with an eye to promoting the interests and trajectory that best resonate with the qualities of intellectual independence and social commitment that characterized Ruth Landes' work. 

Finally, four competitively allotted yearly Landes Summer Field Research Grants will enhance our MA students' ability to carry out in-depth ethnographic research for their MA theses, providing awardees with the means to put develop consequential ethnographic research projects. 

The inaugural Ruth Landes Memorial Lecture will be held in the spring semester of 2026.