Morton Klass, Former Professor of Anthropology,
Dies at 73 -- Leaves a Mark as Gifted Scholar
and Expert in the Anthropology of Religion in
South Asia
Barnard
College Archives |
New
York , N.Y., May 1, 2001 -- Morton Klass, who
taught anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia
University for over 30 years, died on April 28,
2001, at his home in Washington Heights, New York,
at the age of 73.
Born
in 1927, Klass, an anthropologist with a focus
on religion and consciousness, was known by his
peers, friends and family, as a passionate and
effective teacher, and as someone who embraced
egalitarian values in his work and life.
Barnard
President Judith Shapiro, a cultural anthropologist,
said: "I came to know Morton Klass when I first
began graduate work at Columbia University, and
was happy and grateful to find him still doing
his wonderful work for the Department of Anthropology
when I came to Barnard as president in 1994. He
was a beacon of thoughtful and balanced eclecticism
at a time when many in his profession were being
driven to theoretical extremes."
Chairman
of the Department of Anthropology at Barnard,
Klass taught at Barnard College and Columbia University
since 1965. Klass was also the member of the Executive
Committee of the Southern Asian Institute since
its founding in 1967, and later served as the
Director from1982-85. With his thirst for knowledge
and passion for the field of anthropology, Klass
helped to revitalize the Barnard Anthropology
Department, along with professor emeritus Abraham
Rosman and professor emerita Paula Rubel, his
colleagues and friends at Barnard of over 35 years.
His primary areas of interest were South Asia,
South Asians overseas, and Europe. His main topics
of research included: religion, new religious
movements, social organization, ethnicity, race
and racism, anthropology of the future, and immigration
and emigration.
Professor
Rosman said: "Mort will be remembered as a passionate
and effective teacher whose students loved him,
and as a gentle human being, whose door was always
open, not as a famous scholar in the ivory tower
writing books, whom no one even knows."
Paula
Rubel added: "Mort hired me in 1965 as a lecturer
when I was pregnant with my daughter and it was
very hard for a woman to get a position anywhere
while pregnant back then. Mort truly thought of
women and men as equals and embraced these egalitarian
values with his scholars and students before the
idea of feminism was even born."
Klass,
who grew up in Brooklyn, NY, graduated magna cum
laude with a major in anthropology from Brooklyn
College in 1955. After graduation, Klass was accepted
into the masters program for anthropology at Columbia
University, and graduated 1959 with a Ph.D. While
at Columbia, he was awarded several scholarships
and distinctions. A member of Phi Beta Kappa and
Alpha Kappa Delta honor societies, Dr. Klass conducted
extensive field research in Trinidad and in West
Bengal, India.
In 1957, Klass received a Research and Training
Fellowship from the Institute for the Study of
Man in the Tropics, Trinidad, West Indies. The
following year he received a Social Science Research
Council Fellowship to study cultural change and
persistence, community structure among East Indians
of Trinidad, the descendants of the nineteenth-century
migrants from South Asia, who came to work on
sugar plantations as laborers. Klass argued in
his dissertation that the East Indian community
in the village of Amity was culturally more Indian
than Caribbean. His dissertation, East Indians
in Trinidad, was selected for publication
by Columbia University Press in 1961, and received
the prestigious annual Clarke F. Ansley Award
from Columbia.
In 1964, Dr. Klass traveled to West Bengal, India,
to conduct field research. There he studied the
impact of industrialization on life in a West
Bengalis village. For his work, Klass was awarded
a Research and Writing Grant from the American
Council of Learned Societies, allowing him to
continue his research in West Bengal. Based on
the study of the same village, which had become
a site for a bicycle factory, Klass was able to
analyze the Indian caste system in the factory.
As a result of his findings, he argued for a more
expansive and theoretical approach to the caste
system in India, and published a book in 1978,
From Field to Factory: Community Structure and
Industrialization in West Bengal. In 1980,
Klass finished his research on the nature and
origins of caste in South Asia, and published
Caste: The Emergence of the South Asian Social
System.
In 1985, Klass received a Barnard Faculty Research
Grant to study the Sai Baba religious movement
in Trinidad and Tobago. His fieldwork on the Sai
Baba religion and the Indian holy man culminated
in Singing with Sai Baba: The Politics of Revitalization
in Trinidad (1991). His most recent works,
which reflected his continued interest in the
anthropology of religion, included: Ordered
Universes: Approaches to the Anthropology of Religion
(1995) and Across the Boundaries of Belief:
Contemporary Issues in the Anthropology of Religion,
which he edited together with Maxine K. Weisgrau
(1999). A productive and gifted scholar, Klass
leaves behind an impressive body of work and several
unfinished manuscripts, including a book on the
anthropology of consciousness, due to his sudden
death.
In addition to his impressive academic career,
Klass was a gifted community actor, memorable
as George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf,
Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night,
and Bogart in Play it Again, Sam.
Klass
is survived by his wife Sheila Klass of 48 years,
sister Fran Goldman-Levy, brother Philip Klass,
three children: Perri, David and Judy, and grandchildren:
Orlando, Josephine, Anatol, and Gabriel.
The memorial service for Morton Klass was held
on Sunday, April 29, 2001, at The West End Synagogue.
Contributions to his memory may be sent to the
Leonia Players Guild, 130 Grand Avenue, Leonia,
NJ 07605.
Contact:
Petra Tuomi, Public Affairs, 212-854-7907
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