Where anthropology, fiction meet

Peg Skorpinski photo

29 November 2001 | Prize-winning author Ursula LeGuin, left, chatted with anthropology’s George Foster, professor emeritus, right, and assisant professor Junko Habu after her Nov. 16 campus lecture.

In the kick-off event of a lecture series commemorating a century of anthropology at Berkeley, the renowned science fiction and fantasy novelist talked about fiction writing and about her father, the late Alfred Kroeber, founder of the university’s anthropology department and a leader in American anthropology.

Anthropologists and fiction writers both face the dilemma of being subjective practitioners of objectivity, LeGuin told listeners in Doe Library’s Morrison Room. She described her father as a modest man, a wonderful though reluctant storyteller and an anthropologist distrustful of “whites” who claimed spiritual identification with Native Americans.

A recording of her lecture will be available through the Media Resources Center.