| Katherine Spencer Halpern | |
| Birth Date: | August 7, 1913 |
| Birth Place: | Reading, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Death Date: | March 9, 2004 (aged 90) |
| Occupation: | Anthropologist and educator |
| Spouse(S): | Abraham M. Halpern (1968-1985; his death) |
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. 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, 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.