Bob Graber

I was born in 1950 in Lansing, Michigan, and grew up in northern
Indiana.  My father was a physician (obstetrics/gynecology), my mother
a schoolteacher.  We were Mennonites.  Though we were not among the
highly culturally-conservative ones, I was impressed by the church's
claims to ultimate significance and by the church/"world" dichotomy.
Within months after leaving home at age 19, however, I became a devout
agnostic.  I was attracted to anthropology by the popular books by
Desmond Morris and Robert Ardrey.  I got my bachelor's at Indiana
University in 1973, my masters ('76) and doctorate ('79) at University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  Victor Barnouw, who had been a student of Ruth
Benedict, was my adviser.  My dissertation was a comparative study of
the schisms that have made Mennonites such a culturally variable group
of sects.  I published several papers in psychoanalytic anthropology,
but have grown more and more preoccupied with quantitative theorizing
about cultural evolution.  My book in press is *A Scientific Model of
Social and Cultural Evolution* (Thomas Jefferson University Press 1994)
and I am writing an introduction to general anthropology for Harcourt
Brace.  I have a wonderful wife and two great daughters 13 and 11.  I
play classical guitar, golf, and chess (in order of declining
proficiency), and drive a red '72 Mustang (fastback) which still looks
good if you don't look too closely.  I taught for two years at Millsaps
College in Jackson, MS, before coming to Northeast Missouri State.  I
enjoy teaching anthropology as an integrative, "eye-opening" experience
for students.  I have enjoyed--and benefitted from--ANTHRO-L.

Biographies << anthro-l << Anthropology << Danny Yee