On April 4th, CLACS welcomed a visit and lecture by famed anthropologist Sidney W. Mintz. He was speaking as part of the Our America course and speakers series organized by Professors Aisha Khan and Millery Polyne. Born in 1922 in New Jersey, Mintz received his BA from Brooklyn College in 1943, and his PhD from Columbia University’s Anthropology department. Mintz’s work has influenced anthropology, history, and particularly Latin American / Caribbean studies. His books Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past, and The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Approach among others, have established Mintz as a seminal figure in the study of on slavery, peasantry, labor, and food. He is one of a group of prominent anthropologists from Columbia who developed under Julian Steward and Ruth Benedict, including Marvin Harris, Eric Wolf, Morton Fried, and Stanley Diamond.
Mintz’s lecture reflected the ongoing primacy of his subject matter, based upon field work he had begun in 1948. His continued engagement with issues of race, ethnicity, creolization, dislocation, linguistics, relationships of power and dominance, and the economies of colonialism are an integral to academic study across several disciplines. His delivery was pithy, witty and grounded in his competence as a life-long scholar, educator, sincere and honest human being.
