The American cultural anthropologist Ruth Fulton Benedict (1887-1948) originated the configurational approach to culture. Her work has provided a bridge between the humanities and anthropology, as well as background for all later culture-personality studies.

Ruth Fulton was born in New York City, the daughter of a surgeon. She entered Vassar College in 1905 and specialized in English literature. After graduation she taught English in a girls' secondary school.

In 1914 she married the biochemist Stanley Benedict, and the next 5 years were spent waiting for the children who never came and experimenting with a variety of creative tasks, such as writing poetry (her pen name as a poet was Anne Singleton), studying dance, and exploring the lives of famous women of the past. In 1919 she began to study anthropology and received her doctorate from Columbia University in 1923.

Configurational Theory

Her first anthropological work was a study of the way in which...