Paper short abstract

Going beyond both gender and genre polarizations, this paper aims to present Masson’s work and her contribution to Malinowski’s ethnographic writing, drawing on documents and fragments from the archives, such as private correspondence, drafts, and copy-edited manuscripts.

Paper long abstract

As the research on the history of sociocultural anthropology, carried out at unibz in the framework of the MFEA-The Malinowski Forum of Ethnography and Anthropology, has demonstrated, Elsie R. Masson played a central role in the development of a peculiar form of ethnographic writing by her husband, Bronislaw Malinowski.

Going beyond both gender and genre polarizations, on the one hand, this paper aims to present Masson’s work. This refers not only to the travelogue she published in 1915 on the Northern Territory of Australia but also to the literary short stories she authored, which unfortunately remained unpublished, and to the newspapers’ notes she wrote in the 1920s, when living in Italian South Tyrol, strongly criticizing the fascist regime. I will show extracts from Masson’s unpublished short stories and newspapers’ notes, recovered in the archives, suggesting connections between ethnographic writing, literature, and political critique.

On the other hand, the paper will retrace the work of copy-editing, discussion, and transcription that Masson did for Malinowski, in this way helping her husband to elaborate that innovative ethnographic writing, which became foundational within the discipline. To point out Masson’s contribution to Malinowski’s work, I will rely on a “puzzle of inferences”, drawing on documents and fragments from the archives, such as private correspondence, drafts, and copy-edited manuscripts.