Katherine Spencer Halpern

Katherine Spencer Halpern (August 7, 1913 – March 9, 2004) was an American anthropologist and educator.

Katherine Spencer was born in Reading, Massachusetts. She earned a bachelor's degree at Vassar College in 1935, and a master's degree at the University of Chicago in 1944, and completed doctoral studies at the University of Chicago in 1952 with a dissertation titled Mythology and Values: An Analysis of Navaho Chantway Myths.^[1]

In 1937, Spencer and two friends spent a summer doing research in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico.^[2] "I was overwhelmed by the Southwest," she recalled later. "Things just opened up for me."^[3] In 1940, she co-edited A Bibliography of Navaho Indians with Clyde Kluckhohn.^[4]

During and after World War II, Spencer did fieldwork in Alaska and worked in Washington, D.C.^[3] She was a social work professor at Boston University from 1954 to 1970. From 1970 to 1978, she was an anthropology professor at American University. She was a fellow of the American Anthropological Association. Halpern's research included studies of Navajo conceptions of disease and medicine,^[3] and of Navajo health care workers.^[5]

After retiring from American University, Halpern was a researcher at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe, New Mexico, resulting in Reflection of Social Life in the Navaho Origin Myth (1983).^[6] She also contributed to the catalogue for the Wheelwright's show, Woven Holy People: Navajo Sandpainting Textiles from the Permanent Collection (1982).^[7] She wrote two biographies of anthropologists, Applied Anthropologist and Public Servant: The Life and Work of Philleo Nash (1983),^[8] and Washington Matthews: Studies of Navajo Culture, 1880-1894 (1997, co-edited with Susan Brown McGreevy).^[9]

In 1968, Spencer married fellow anthropologist Abraham M. Halpern,^[10][11] who was a widower with two sons.^[12][13] He died in 1985.^[14] She died in 2004, aged 90 years.^{[citation needed]}