Regina Bendix

Regina Bendix is currently a Professor at the Institute for Cultural Anthropology at the Georg-August University in Göttingen. Here are a few of her own words about her time in Berkeley and since: "I came to Berkeley in February 1980, about to get married, and figuring out how to continue the study of Volkskunde begun in Zürich, Switzerland, at UC Berkeley. My father-in-law suggested I go see John Gumperz (I did) and Paul Rabinow (I did that too), and then I ventured to see Alan Dundes (waited in line with many others, then went in to see "the man"). He did not know what to make of the name Arnold Niederer, with whom I had studied Volkskunde for three semesters. But when I said I had also studied with Max Lüthi, his face lit up and I somehow seemed to have acquired a sign of distinction for having actually breathed the same air as Lüthi (whose seminars had been, for a freshman, perhaps not quite as scintillating as I should have experienced them, once I grasped the international renown Lüthi enjoyed). Studying in Berkeley was a mind-opening, thrilling experience coming out of a quite different educational and university system in Switzerland—there was joy, excitement, humor, and most of all encouragement to just go where my mind was taking me. Studying with Alan Dundes set me on course to become a folklorist (though I have deeply positive memories also of Laura Nader's "Introduction to Cultural Anthropology," and bewildered memories of Tim White's "Introduction to Physical Anthropology," which I took shortly after Lucy was discovered). I took classes with Bonnie Wade, John Lindow, a great course on the Western with an English professor whose name I cannot remember, and classes with the fabulous visiting scholars Dundes brought every year: Alessandro Falassi, Venetia Newell, and Bengt af Klintberg.