Marett Lecture Explained

The Robert Ranulph Marett Memorial Lectureship at Exeter College, Oxford is a memorial lecture established in memory of R. R. Marett, D.Litt., D.Sc., F.B.A., Rector of the College 1928-43, by subscribers to a Memorial Fund.[1]

List of Marett Lectures

DateLecturerTitle
17 May 1947Dorothy Annie Elizabeth GarrodEarly man and the threshold of religion
5 June 1948Herbert Jennings RoseMana in Greece and Rome
7 May 1949Charlie Dunbar BroadEgoism as a theory of human motives
3 June 1950Edward Evan Evans-PritchardSocial anthropology: Past and present
2 June 1951(George) Gilbert Aimé MurrayTill Nous came and put things in order
7 June 1952Sir Robert Eric Mortimer WheelerArchaeology and the transmission of ideas
6 June 1953Raymond William FirthThe study of values by social anthropologists
6 May 1954Leon RothA contemporary moralist: Albert Camus
7 May 1955Robert Hugh Kirk MarettIndian civilizations of Mexico and Peru
5 May 1956Kathleen Mary KenyonJericho and its setting in Near Eastern history
6 June 1957Sir Alexander Morris Carr-SaundersThe social sciences and the humanities
15 May 1958Edwin Oliver JamesThe threshold of religion
11 March 1959 [2] John Bryan Ward-PerkinsA Parthian view of the Eastern frontier of the Roman Empire: the recent excavations at Hatra
7 June 1960Humayun KabirBritain and India
1 February 1961Herbert Ian Priestly HogbinMorality without religion
8 February 1962Courtney Arthur Ralegh RadfordEvidences of Norse settlement in Britain
2 May 1963Sir Eric AshbyAn anatomy of academic life
18 February 1965(Herman) Max GluckmanMoral crises: Magical and secular solutions [3]
25 February 1965(Herman) Max GluckmanMoral crises: Magical and secular solutions
24 February 1966Stuart PiggottThe origins of the village settlement in prehistoric Europe
18 May 1967William Calvert KnealeThe responsibility of criminals
9 May 1968Sir Alister Clavering HardyMarett, anthropology and religion
8 May 1969Jacqueline Worms de RomillyHistorical necessity in the fifth century, B.C.
13 May 1971Leslie AlcockSouth Cadbury excavations - Camelot, 1966–70
4 November 1971(John Percy Vyvian) Dacre BalsdonRomulus and Remus; the birth of a legend
18 May 1972Constantine Athanasius TrypanisGreek folk songs
8 November 1973Willard Van Orman QuineSubstitutional quantification
12 November 1974Meyer FortesWest African seasonal festivals and the ancestors
20 November 1975Martin BiddlePatterns of authority? Problems in the emergence of Anglo-Saxon England
18 November 1976David Walter HamlynThe phenomena of love and hate
3 November 1977Sir Edmund Ronald LeachThe threshold of religion
14 November 1978Arthur Ernest MourantJohn Ranulph de la Haule Marett, pioneer biological anthropologist
8 November 1979Charles ThomasHermits on islands or priests in a landscape? Early Christianity in the Isles of Scilly
25 November 1980Richard G. SwinburneAre mental events identical with brain events?
12 May 1982Malcolm Donald McLeodAfrican art and time
17 May 1983Dewi Zephaniah PhillipsPrimitive reactions and the reactions of primitives
1985Ernest André GellnerAnthropology between positivism and romanticism
1986Edward Thomas HallArchaeometry: attempting co-operation between the Arts and Sciences
1987Bernard WilliamsHumans, animals and machines
1988David Francis PocockPersons, texts and morality
8 May 1989Julian Alfred Lane Fox Pitt-RiversFrom the love of food to the love of God
1990Jean Sybil La FontainePower, authority and symbols in domestic life
26 April 1991Thomas R. TrautmannThe revolution in ethnological time
1992Caroline HumphreyRethinking moral authority in post-socialist Mongolia
1993John David Yeadon PeelFor who hath despised the day of small things? Missionary narratives and historical anthropology
29 April 1994Fredrik BarthEthnicity and the concept of culture
28 April 1995Alan Donald James MacfarlaneIllth and wealth
26 April 1996Signe L. Howell"May blessings come, may mischiefs go!" Living kinds as agents of transition and transformation among the Lio
25 April 1997Geoffrey Ernest Richard LloydThe uses and abuses of classification: Ancient Greek and Chinese reflections
1 May 1998Ruth Sophia PadelHow myth uses us: Greek "Guyville" and women's rock music
30 April 1999Martin David GoodmanExplaining religious change
5 May 2000Piers VitebskyForgetting the ancestors: Living without the dead
27 April 2001James Patrick MalloryThe cultural worlds of the Indo-Europeans
26 April 2002Roger JustOf fishers and boats, and sacrificial goats: Interpreting the commonplace
2 May 2003Jonathan WebberMaking Sense of the Past: Reflections on Jewish Historical Consciousness
30 April 2004John BennetArchaeologies of Homer
16 September 2005Harvey WhitehouseThe evolution and history of religion
12 May 2006Christina TorenHow do we know what is true? The case of mana in Fiji
27 April 2007Jonathan ParryHegemony and resistance: Trade union politics in central India
25 April 2008Sherry Beth OrtnerIndie producers: Class and the production of value in the American independent film scene
1 May 2009Scott AtranTalking to the Enemy: The Dreams, Delusions and Science of Sacred Causes and Conflicts
30 April 2010[4] Byron J. GoodTheorizing the 'Subject' of Medical and Psychiatric Anthropology
6 May 2011[5] Terence S. TurnerBeauty and The Beast: Humanity, Animality and Animism in the Thought of an Amazonian People
27 April 2012Adam KuperAnthropologists and the Bible
2 May 2014Birgit MeyerHow to Capture the Wow: Awe and the Study of Religion

Notes

Except where otherwise indicated, dates and titles are from the Oxford University Gazette.

Notes and References

  1. Oxford University Gazette; No. 2544, 30 April 1947 (p. 689)
  2. delayed from original date of 4 February due to illness
  3. The lecture was originally to be delivered on 14 May 1964 as "The politics of divination in Africa", but Gluckman was forced to postpone due to an attack of malaria. The Oxford University Gazette (No. 3192) announced that the lecture was to be delayed until Michaelmas term, and it was ultimately delivered in Hilary term of 1965, when Gluckman delivered the lectures for both 1964 and 1965. He discusses these events in his introduction to his edited collection The allocation of responsibility (1972).
  4. Web site: Good Gives Marrett Lecture . 18 June 2010 . Department of Global Health and Social Medicine . 26 May 2016 . Harvard Medical School.
  5. Web site: Marett Lectures . Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology . 26 May 2016 . University of Oxford . 26 May 2016 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160411101642/http://www.isca.ox.ac.uk/publications/podcasts/marett-lectures/ . 11 April 2016 . dead .