REVIEWER MEETS REVIEWED
SEMINAR SERIES AT THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE
Head Hunters: A Drama Based upon the Life and Works of Alfred Cort Haddon
Wednesday 24 October at 5.30 pm
Royal Anthropological Institute
THIS IS A FREE EVENT
The British Museum’s Anthropology Library and Research Centre, in conjunction with the Royal Anthropological Institute, is pleased to present ‘Reviewer meets Reviewed’, a discussion between Michael Eaton, author of Head Hunters: A Drama Based upon the Life and Works of Alfred Cort Haddon, and Prof Jeremy MacClancy, who reviewed the book for the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
In 1898 Alfred Cort Haddon led an expedition to the islands of the Torres Strait where he made the very first ethnographic films. Haddon took the fledgling ‘Cinderella Science’ of anthropology away from the speculative theories of Victorian scholars into the real world of native peoples whose lives had been transformed by global mercantilism and Christian evangelisation. Michael Eaton’s play centres upon Haddon’s relationship with James Frazer, author of The Golden Bough and armchair anthropologist par excellence, and on the time he spent as a volunteer in the YMCA Huts on the Western Front, where Charles Myers, one of the original members of the team, pioneered the psychological treatment of shell-shocked soldiers. The introduction to Head Hunters pays tribute to Haddon’s unjustly neglected work and its recent unforeseen political consequences.
Bookings/enquiries: Ted Goodliffe (TGoodliffe@britishmuseum.org)
Location : Royal Anthropological Institute
50 Fitzroy Street
London
W1T 5BT
United Kingdom
http://www.therai.org.uk