Susan Seymour

Cora Du Bois’ intellect and curiosity propelled her into a remarkable life as an anthropologist and diplomat in the vanguard of social and academic change. Susan C. Seymour’s biography weaves together her personal and professional lives to illustrate this exceptional “first woman” and the complexities of the twentieth century that she both experienced and influenced. DuBois studied with Franz Boas, a founder of American anthropology. During WWII, she served as the only woman to head one of the OSS branches in Southeast Asia. After the war she joined the State Department as chief of the Southeast Asia Branch of the Division of Research for the Far East. She was also the first female full professor, with tenure, appointed at Harvard University and became president of the American Anthropological Association. Du Bois worked to keep her public and private lives separate, especially while facing the FBI’s harassment as an opponent of US engagements in Vietnam and as a “liberal” lesbian during the McCarthy era. Author Susan Seymour has lived parttime in Inverness since 1982.