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Edward T. Hall collection, 1937

MS-210

Biographical Note

Edward Twitchell Hall (16 May 1914 – 20 July 2009), a cultural anthropologist, was born in Webster Groves, Missouri but grew up in New Mexico. From 1933 through 1937, Hall lived and worked with the Navajo and Hopi on their reservations. His experiences there are the subject of his autobiography, West of the Thirties. He graduated from The University of Denver in 1936 and received his MA in Anthropology in 1938 from the University of Arizona. And in 1942 he completed his Ph.D. at Columbia University. During WW II, Hall served in the US Army Corp of Engineers in both Europe and the Pacific, commanding an African American regiment. It was during the war that he first became interested in the cultural perceptions of space, which he would continue to research and write on for the rest of his life. Because he pioneered the study of nonverbal communication and interactions among members of different ethnic groups he is considered the “grandfather” of the modern intercultural communication field. In later years, he would be the first to train American diplomats to work in an international and intercultural environment through the Foreign Service Institute in Washington, D.C.

In 1946 Hall married his second wife, Mildred Ellis Reed of Pittsburgh. They had two children, Ellen and Eric. Hall and Mildred researched and wrote about intercultural relations for business and government together.

Hall worked as a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, the Washington School of Psychiatry, Bennington College, the University of Denver, and Northwestern University. After his retirement, he served as professor emeritus at Northwestern and continued to lecture widely on interethnic and intercultural relations at colleges and universities throughout the United States and abroad.

His wife, Mildred, passed away in 1994 and in 2004 Hall married Karin Bergh. He passed away in Santa Fe, New Mexico on July 20, 2009.

Scope and Content

This collection includes 11 lantern slides that hall produced during the excavation of archeological sites on the Walhalla Plateau in the Grand Canyon. Images include: maps, charts, ruins, sherds, landscapes, and a human burial.

Restrictions

Conditions Governing Use

Unpublished and published manuscripts are protected by copyright. Permission to publish, quote, or reproduce must be secured from the repository and the copyright holder.

Controlled Access Terms

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Edward T. Hall collection, MS-210 [Box Number]. Museum of Northern Arizona. Flagstaff, Arizona.

Acquisition Information

Sent to the Museum of Northern Arizona by Dr. Arnold Withers, Department of Anthropology, University of Denver in January 1974 (Accession #MS-210).

Processing Information

Processed in August of 2010.

Bibliography

The lantern slides come from an excavation trip Hall took in 1937:

Hall, Edward Twitchell. 1942. Archeological survey of Walhalla glades. Bulletin, Museum of Northern Arizona, 20. Flagstaff, Ariz: Northern Ariz. Soc. of Science and Art.

Container List