Raymond D. Fogelson

Who is Raymond D. Fogelson?

Raymond D. Fogelson is an American anthropologist known for his research on American Indians of the southeastern United States, especially the Cherokee. He is considered a founder of the subdiscipline of ethnohistory.

He was born August 23, 1933, in Red Bank, New Jersey. In 1951 he was admitted to Wesleyan University in the pre-med program, shifting first to psychology and then to anthropology. He received an M.A. in 1958 and a Ph.D. in 1962 from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was influenced by two Americanist anthropologists with strong interests in psychology, Anthony F. C. Wallace and A. Irving Hallowell.

He began fieldwork with the eastern Cherokee in 1956 under the direction of the anthropologist John Gulick; fieldwork with the Oklahoma Cherokee was conducted in 1958 and 1960. In 1960-61 Fogelson was a research fellow at the Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute.

In 1962 he began a teaching position at the University of Washington, during which time he did fieldwork among the Shuswap in British Columbia, though fieldwork with Oklahoma Cherokee and Muskogee continued through the 1960s. In 1965 he moved to the University of Chicago, where he continues to teach in the Department of Anthropology.