Joel Martin Halpern and Barbara Kerewsky-Halpern papers
name: label: Creator
content: Kerewsky-Halpern, Barbara
label: Creator
content: Halpern, Joel Martin
label: Names
content: Inuit Cultural Institute
label: Interviewee
content: Arensberg, Conrad M. (Conrad Maynadier), 1910-1997
label: Correspondent
content: Hammel, Eugene A.
label: Correspondent
content: Simić, Andrei
place: label: Place
content: Arviat (Nunavut)
label: Place
content: Slovenia
label: Place
content: Balkan Peninsula
label: Place
content: Macedonia
label: Place
content: Croatia
label: Place
content: Yugoslavia
label: Place
content: Serbia and Montenegro
label: Place
content: Orašac (Serbia)
label: Place
content: Bosnia and Hercegovina
label: Place
content: Laos
label: Place
content: Löffingen (Germany)
label: Place
content: Frobisher Bay (N.W.T.)
label: Place
content: Ontario
topic: label: Topic
content: Indians of North America -- Northeast
label: Topic
content: Multiple sclerosis
label: Topic
content: Feldenkrais method
label: Topic
content: Demography
label: Topic
content: population -- History
label: Topic
content: Immigrants
label: Topic
content: Anthropology -- study and teaching (higher)
label: Topic
content: Peasants
acqinfo: label: Provenance
content: These papers were donated to the National Anthropological Archives by Joel Halpern in multiple installments from the 1980s to 2006.
creator: label: Creator
content: Kerewsky-Halpern, Barbara
label: Creator
content: Halpern, Joel Martin
culture: label: Culture
content: Eskimos
label: Culture
content: Bosnians
label: Culture
content: Laotians
label: Culture
content: Slavs, Southern
label: Culture
content: Croats
label: Culture
content: Slovenes
label: Culture
content: Serbs
label: Culture
content: Inuit
label: Culture
content: Shinnecock
setName: label: See more items in
content: Joel Martin Halpern and Barbara Kerewsky-Halpern papers
bioghist: label: Biographical Note: Barbara Kerewsky-Halpern
content: Barbara Kerewsky-Halpern was born on December 23, 1931 in Mt. Vernon, New York. Her mother, Rose S. Kerewsky, had worked with physical anthropologist Stanley Garn and coauthored a number of papers on dentition. Kerewsky-Halpern attended Barnard College, where she received a B.A. in Geology and Geography in 1953. She later obtained her M.A. in Linguistics (1974) and Ph.D. in Anthropology (1979) at University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Kerewsky-Halpern married Joel M. Halpern in 1952. In the following year she accompanied him to the field in Orašac, Serbia and assisted him in his research. She was also the illustrator and cartographer for Halpern's monograph A Serbian Village. Over the span of her career, she frequently collaborated with her husband on research projects and coauthored a number of articles. Like her husband, her research focused on peasant communities, specifically on oral traditions and the ethnography of communication. In 1974, she also studied South Slav communities in Ontario. 

When she was 44, Kerewsky-Halpern became incapacitated due to multiple sclerosis. Through self-rehabilitation, she was able to regain full motion, but the experience continued to influence her life. Her research interests expanded to include medical anthropology, cross-cultural perspectives on disability, and the anthropology of movement. She also became active in multiple sclerosis associations and became a licensed instructor in the Feldenkrais Method in 1983.

Kerewsky-Halpern and Halpern divorced in 2010.

Sources consulted

[Articles about Barbara K. Halpern], Series 9. Personal, Joel Martin Halpern and Barbara Kerewsky-Halpern Papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Barbara K. Halpern curriculum vitae, Series 9. Personal, Joel Martin Halpern and Barbara Kerewsky-Halpern Papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Clifford, Joyce and Jeremy Smith. 2010. Finding Aid to Joel Martin Halpern Papers, 1939-2009 (Bulk: 1948-2008). http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/ead/mufs001.pdf (accessed December 3, 2012).

Halpern, Joel. 2003. Interview with Joel Halpern [regarding fieldwork in Serbia] conducted by Mirjana Prošić-Dvornić. Emeritus Faculty Author Gallery. Paper 60. http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1059&context=emeritus_sw (accessed  December 3, 2012).

Halpern, Joel. August 2007. Curriculum Vitae. http://works.bepress.com/joel_halpern/cv.pdf (accessed July 6, 2012).
label: Biographical Note: Joel M. Halpern
content: Joel Martin Halpern was born on April 8, 1929 in New York City. He attended University of Michigan, where he obtained his B.A. in History in 1950. He had initially intended to major in chemistry but realized that he wanted to pursue a more "adventurous" field that would allow him to travel. While an undergraduate student, he published articles based on his ethnographic, geological, and archaeological research in Alaska, Canada, and Swedish Lapland. 

Halpern decided to continue his studies at Columbia University, where he earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology in 1956. Conrad Arensberg was his faculty advisor, while Margaret Mead was on his doctoral committee. Halpern was greatly influenced by Philip E. Mosely, the first director of Columbia University's Institute for Russian Studies. Through Mosely, he met the prominent Serbian ethnologist Milenko Filipović, who also served as his mentor. It was due to Filipovíc that Halpern chose to focus his research on a Serbian village for his dissertation.

In 1953, Halpern and his former wife, Barbara Kerewskey-Halpern, conducted ethnographic field research in Orašac, a village in the Sumadija district of central Serbia, at the time part of former Yugoslavia. This research resulted in Halpern's dissertation, Social and Cultural Change in a Serbian Village, for which he was awarded the Ainsley Award from Columbia University. The dissertation was later edited and published as A Serbian Village (1958). Halpern and his wife would return to Orašac numerous times throughout their career. The documentary The Halperns in Orašac, which aired in Yugoslavia in 1986, focuses on the couple's research in Orašac from 1953 to 1986. 

In addition to Serbia, Halpern conducted research in Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Croatia, and Slovenia. A prolific writer, he published and presented a number of papers on peasant communities, historical demography, kinship, and social change in the Balkans. He also co-edited Among the People: Native Yugoslav Ethnography, Selected Writings of Milenko S. Filipovic (1982) and authored and edited works on and by Jozef Obrebski, the pioneering ethnographer of the Balkans, whose papers Halpern helped deposit at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Halpern also published extensively on Laos. He was one of the first American anthropologists to conduct research in the Southeast Asian country.  After receiving his doctorate, he had worked on Area Handbook for Laos (1958) as a Research Associate for the Human Relations Area Files office in Washington, DC (1956). When he accepted a position as a Junior Foreign Service Officer (Foreign Service Reserve) with the Community Development Division of the U.S. International Cooperation Administration, he was stationed in Laos in 1957-1958. In 1959 he returned to the country under the sponsorship of Rand Corporation to study the Lao elite. He returned once again in 1969 as chair of the Mekong Seminar of the Southeast Asia Development Advisor Group to study the socio-economic impact of hydro-electrical dams constructed on the Mekong River. 

In his later years, Halpern conducted research on the Inuit in Arviat (formerly known as Eskimo Point) and Frobisher Bay in Canada and immigrant populations in the United States. He was particularly interested in Southeast Asian immigrant communities in New England. He co-edited with Lucy Nguyen Far East Comes Near, a compilation of autobiographical essays by his Southeast Asian refugee students at University of Massachusetts. He also studied Jewish ethnic communities in Western Massachusetts and the urban history of the Bronx.

Halpern taught at UCLA (1958-1963) and Brandeis (1963-1965) before joining the Anthropology faculty at University of Massachusetts Amherst (1967-1996). He was also a visiting professor at Albert Ludwigs-Universitat and Arnold Bergstrasser Institute in Frieberg (1970-1971) and University of Graz (Spring 1993, Spring 1994). In addition, he was a National Academy of Sciences Senior Exchange Scientist at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1975) and Serbian Academy of Sciences (1975, 1978).

1929 -- Born April 8, New York, New York

1950 -- Receives B.A. in History from University of Michigan

1952 -- Marries Barbara Kerewsky

1953-1954 -- Conducts fieldwork in Orašac, Serbia for first time

1956 -- Earns Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University

1957-1958 -- Stationed in Laos as a Junior Foreign Service Officer with the Community Development Division of the U.S. International Cooperation Administration

1958-1963 -- Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at University of California, Los Angeles

1959 -- Returns to Laos to conduct research on the Lao elite under sponsorship from Rand Corporation

1963-1965 -- Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Brandeis University

1964 -- Director of Brandeis University Summer Field Program in Bosnia 

1967 -- Joins Department of Anthropology faculty at University of Massachusetts, Amherst

1970-1971 -- Visiting Professor, Albert Ludwigs-Universitat and Arnold Bergstrasser Institute, Freiburg, Federal Republic of Germany 

1976, 1979 -- Research on Jewish Ethnic Communities in Western Massachusetts

1996 -- Retires from University of Massachusetts

2010 -- Divorce from Barbara Kerewsky-Halpern finalized
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 1 Folder (Map folder)
label: Extent
content: 1 Cassette tape
label: Extent
content: 60 Linear feet (Consisting of 60 boxes and 2 boxes of separated restricted materials)
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1942-2006
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Anthropological Archives
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NAA.1986-17
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
label: Type
content: Cassette tapes
label: Type
content: Photographs
arrangement: label: Arrangement
content: This collection is organized into 10 series: 1) Correspondence, 1950s-2003; 2) Research, 1953-1996; 3) Writings, 1948-2007; 4) Professional Activities, 1951-1990s; 5) Student Files, 1946-1955, 1968-1979; 6) Teaching Files, 1947-1992; 7) Personal and Biographical Files, 1948-2002; 8) Writings by Others, 1950s-1990s; 9) Photographs, 1942, 1953-1970, 1978, 1997, undated; 10) University of Massachusetts, 1968-1992
processinfo: label: Processing Information
content: Joel M. Halpern numbered and inventoried at the item level most of the materials that he deposited at the National Anthropological Archives. The numbering system was not retained when the collection was processed. Researchers, however, may consult Halpern's original inventory, which are filed with the NAA's accession files. 

The processing archivist organized the collection into ten series. Original folder titles were retained with titles assigned by the archivist placed within square brackets. Restricted materials were separated and replaced with notes indicating original and new locations. 

Throughout the container list, Joel M. Halpern and Barbara Kerewsky-Halpern's names are sometimes abbreviated as "JMH" and "BKH."
bibliography: label: Selected Bibliography: Joel M. Halpern
content: 1949  A Geological Odyssey Through the Province of Ontario, Canada. Rocks and Minerals. January-February, pp. 24-26.

1949 Swedish Lapland as a Hostler Saw It. Hostling, pp. 6-7.

1958  contributor. Area Handbook for Laos. Washington, D.C.: Human Relations Area Files.

1958 A Serbian Village. New York: Columbia University Press.

1959  Economic Development and American Aid in Laos. Practical Anthropology 6(4):  l5l-l7l.

1961  Culture Change in Laos and Serbia: Possible Tendencies Toward Universal Organizational Patterns. Human Organization 20(l): ll-l4.

1961 The Economics of Lao and Serb Peasants, A Contrast in Cultural Values. Southwest Journal of Anthropology 17(2): l65-l77

1963  Yugoslav Peasant Society in Transition - Stability in Change. The Anthropological Quarterly 36(3): l56-l82.

1964  Economy and Society of Laos, A Brief Survey, Yale University, Southeast Asia Monograph Series, No. 5.

1964 Government, Politics and Social Structure in Laos: A Study of Tradition and Innovation, Yale University, Southeast Asia Monograph Series, No. 4.

1965  Peasant Culture and Urbanization in Yugoslavia. Human Organization 24(2): l62-l74.

1965 The Rural Revolution. Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Series II 28( l): 73-80.

1967  The Changing Village Community (Modernization of Traditional Societies Series). Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

1970  with David Anderson. The Zadruga, a Century of Change. Anthropologica XII(1): 83-97.

1972  with Barbara Kerewsky-Halpern. A Serbian Village in Historical Perspective. Case Studies in Anthropology Series. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

1975  with Barbara Kerewsky-Halpern. The Pecalba Tradition in Macedonia, A Case Study. The Journal of the British Yugoslav Society 2: 6-9.

1978  Jewish Communities in Western Massachusetts, A Preliminary Study. In Ethnicity and Cultural Pluralism in the U.S.A., A Report of the Field Research in U.S.A (1976). Tsuneo Ayabe, ed. Pp. 251-306. Fukuoka, Japan: Research Institute of Comparative Education and Culture, Faculty of Education, Kyushu University.

1982  co-editor with E. Hammel, R. Ehrich, R. Fabijanic-Filipovic and A. Lord. Among the People: Native Yugoslav Ethnography, Selected Writings of Milenko S. Filipovic. Papers in Slavic Philology, 3. Ann Arbor : Michigan Slavic Publications, Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures.

1983  with David Kideckel. Anthropology of Eastern Europe. Annual Review of Anthropology, pp. 377-402.

1984  with Richard Wagner. Time and Social Structure: A Yugoslav Case Study. Journal of Family History 9(3): 229-244.

1984 with Richard Wagner. A Microstudy of Social Process, The Historical Demography of A Serbian Village Community (1775-1975). In Papers for the Vth Congress of Southeast European Studies, Belgrade, September, 1984. Kot K. Shangriladze and Erica W. Townsend, eds. Pp.119-216. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica.

1987  The Inuit (Eskimo), Aspects of Mental Health: An Approach Utilizing Linear and Cyclical Time Concepts. Collegium Anthropologicum 11(1): 213-226.

1989  editor with Lucy Nguyen-Hong-Nhiem. The Far East Comes Near, Autobiographical Accounts of Southeast Asian Students in America. Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press.

1990  with Laird Christie. Temporal Constructs and Inuit Mental Health. Social Science and Medicine. 30(6): 739-749.

1991  with Elinor Despalatovic. Emily Balch: Balkan Traveler, Peace Worker and Nobel Laureate. In Black Lambs & Grey Falcons, Women Travellers in the Balkans. John Allcock and Antonia Young, eds. pp. 35-64. Bradford, England: Bradford University Press.

1993 editor with David A. Kideckel. War Among the Yugoslavs. Special Issue, Anthropology of East Europe Review 11(1-2): 7-15.

1996  with T. L. Christie. Time: A Tripartite Sociotemporal Model. In Dimensions of Time and Land-The Study of Time VIII. J.T. Fraser and M.P. Soulsby, eds. Pp. 187-198. Madison, CT: International Universities Press, Inc.

2000  edited with David A. Kideckel. Neighbors at War : Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture, and History. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park.

2003  Reflections on Jozef Obrebski's Work in Macedonia from the Perspective of American Anthropology. Ethnologia Polona 24(29-42).
label: Selected Bibliography: Barbara Kerewsky-Halpern
content: 1956  with Joel Halpern. Yugoslavia. Garden City, New Jersey: Nelson Doubleday Company.

1964 with Joel M. Halpern. Laos and America - A Retrospective View. South Atlantic Quarterly LXII(2):175-178.

1973  with Joel M. Halpern. The Anthropologist as Tourist, and Incidental Ethnography on the Impact of Tourism in a Dalmatian Village. East European Quarterly II( 2): 149-157.

1978  with John Foley. The Power of the Word: Healing Charms as an Oral Genre. Journal of American Folklore, 91(362): 902-924.

1979  Changing Perceptions of Husbands and Wives in Five Yugoslav Villages. In Europe as a Culture Area. J. Cuisinier, ed. Pp 159-172. The Hague: Mouton.

1979 with John Foley. Bajanje: Healing Charms in Rural Serbia, in Culture and Curing: Anthropological Perspectives on Traditional Beliefs and Practices. P. Morley and R. Wallis, eds., Pp. 4-56. London: Peter Owen Press. 

1981  Genealogy as Genre in Rural Serbia. In Oral Traditional Literatures (Festschrift in Honor of Albert B. Lord). J. Foley, ed. Pp. 301-321. Columbus, Ohio: Slavic.

1981 Text and Context in Serbian Ritual Lament. Canadian-American Slavic Studies, special edition 15(1):52-60.

1982  Bulgarian Oral Tradition: Context, Continuity and Change. In Culture and History of the Bulgarian People, Their Bulgarian and American Parallels. W. Kolar, ed. Pp. 51-61. Pittsburgh: Duqesne University, Tamburitza, Press.

1983  Watch Out for Snakes! Ethnosemantic Interpretation and Misinterpretations, Anthropological Linguistics, Bloomington, Fall: 309-325.

1983 These are Your Neighbors. New York: Cambridge Book.

1984  Talk, Touch and Trust in Rural healing. In Papers for the Vth Congress of Southeast European Studies, Belgrade, September 1984. Kot K. Shangriladze and Erica W. Townsend, eds. Pp.119-216. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica.

1987  with Joel M. Halpern and J. Foley. Oral Genealogies and Official Records: A Comparative Approach Using Serbian Data. Southeastern Europe 10, 2 (1983): 150-174.

1989  Healing with Mother Metaphors. In Women as Healers, A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Carol McClain, ed. Pp. 115-133. Rutgers, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

1990  Serbian Conjurers' Word Magic. Acta Etnographia. Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 34 (1-4): 245-164.
genre_format: label: Genre/Form
content: Photographs
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: This collection is comprised of the professional papers of Joel M. Halpern and, to a lesser extent, the papers of Barbara Kerewsky-Halpern. Both their collaborations and individual work are represented here. Materials include their correspondence, published and unpublished writings, research materials, photographs, grant applications, consultant work, teaching files, their files as students, and writings by colleagues.

The bulk of the research files pertain to Halpern's Orašac demography project. Also present are notes and photographs from his field research in the Balkans during the 1950s and 1960s. The collection also reflects his research interests in the Inuit of Alaska and Canada. There is little original material, however, documenting his fieldwork in Laos. Additional materials of interest in the collection include a transcript of an interview Halpern conducted with Conrad Arensberg as well as his notes and syllabi from courses taught by a number of prominent anthropologists, such as Conrad Arensberg, Morton Fried, Alfred Kroeber, and Margaret Mead. The collection also contains a set of prints of Shinnecock Indians that Halpern obtained from Red Thunder Cloud.

Among Kerewsky-Halpern's files are notes from her research on South Slav immigrants in Ontario, her research on oral tradition among peasant communities in Southeastern Europe, as well as her involvement in multiple sclerosis organizations and the Feldenkrais Method.

Please note that the contents of the collection and the language and terminology used reflect the context and culture of the time of its creation. As an historical document, its contents may be at odds with contemporary views and terminology and considered offensive today. The information within this collection does not reflect the views of the Smithsonian Institution or National Anthropological Archives, but is available in its original form to facilitate research.
relatedmaterial: label: Related Materials
content: The Smithsonian Institution holds additional materials relating to Joel M. Halpern and Barbara Kerewsky-Halpern. Their correspondence can be found in the Conrad M. Arensberg papers at the National Anthropological Archives. Halpern also donated films and video to the Human Studies Film Archives and a collection of Eskimo dolls (Accession # 409953) to the Anthropology Collections division.

The bulk of Joel M. Halpern's papers are at the Special Collections and University Archives of University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The following is a list of other repositories that hold his papers and photographs:

Joel Martin Halpern Collection, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

Joel Martin Halpern Papers, Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Joel M. Halpern Papers, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Carl A. Kroch Library, Cornell University Library

Joel Martin Halpern Photograph Collection, Jones Library (Amherst, MA Public Library)

Joel Martin Halpern Southeast Europe Collection, University of Alberta Libraries

Joel Martin Halpern Balkan Archive, University of Bradford

Joel Halpern Collection, University of Graz

Joel M. Halpern Laotian Slide Collection, Department of Special Collections
, University of Wisconsin, Madison 

The Halpern, Joel Papers, General/Multiethnic Collection, Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota