Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Professor Emeritus of Psychology
About
Lawrence A. Hirschfeld, Ph.D., professor of anthropology and professor of psychology in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, and faculty associate in the Research Center for Group Dynamics, Institute for Social Research, retired from active faulty status on May 31, 2005.
Professor Hirschfeld received his A.B. degree from the University of Michigan in 1971 and his M.A., M.Phil, and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University in 1975, 1977, and 1984, respectively. He was a visiting assistant professor at the University of Michigan from 1989-91, and was appointed assistant professor of anthropology in 1991 and faculty associate in 1993. In
1996, he was promoted to associate professor of anthropology and received an additional appointment as associate professor of psychology; he was promoted to professor in 2004.
Professor Hirschfeld is a major international figure in both anthropology and cognitive psychology, whose research has broken new ground in articulating fundamental relationships between these two areas. He explored core theoretical ideas at the intersection of the two fields and developed a ground-breaking theory of the psychological grounding of race and racialization, a concept with far-reaching significance.
Professor Hirschfeld's publications have helped frame the relationship between innately specified constraints on cognition and culturally and historically specific categories in a way that does justice to both. His landmark book, Race in the Making, made a major contribution to understanding the ways young children conceive of race and their internalization of racial and ethnic prejudice, and his research on the culture of children is a simultaneous challenge to anthropology (in seeing children as active shapers of the transmission of cultural and social forms) and psychology (in seeing cultural, social, and organizational dimensions to developmental processes). Based on his work, Professor Hirschfeld calls for ethnography of children's culture as a step toward understanding the ways in which culture and cognition interact in development.
The Regents salute this distinguished scholar by naming Lawrence A. Hirschfeld professor emeritus of anthropology and professor emeritus of psychology.
