Edith L. B. Turner

Anthropologist Edith L. B. Turner (b. 1921–d. 2016) is known for her ethnographic fieldwork among the Ndembu of (then) Northern Rhodesia, the Inupiat of Alaska, and pilgrims in Ireland, and for her important theoretical contributions to the study of pilgrimage, shamanism, communitas, and the anthropologies of experience and performance. For the first sixty-two years of her life, she was best known as the wife and collaborator of anthropologist Victor W. Turner (b. 1920–d. 1983). Victor Turner acknowledged Edith as a collaborator in all his publications, but Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (1978) is the only book in which Edith was formally named as a coauthor. For the last thirty-three years of her life, she established herself as an independent researcher and scholar. I thank Frank Salamone, Rory Turner, and Marjorie Snipes for sharing their ideas on Edie’s life and scholarly contributions. Emily Pitek read and commented on earlier drafts of this article.