Biographical Text
Professor Emeritus of Anthropology Brian Carey Bennett (July 19, 1937-) was born in Portage, Wisconsin, to Helen Case Hinkley, a school teacher and graduate of the School of Commerce at the University of Wisconsin, and Ross Bennett, a noted lawyer, businessman, sportsman, and pioneer conservationist in Wisconsin. The Hinkleys came to the United States in the 1640s and the Case family was one of the founding families of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Ross Bennett's family came to Endeavor, Wisconsin, in 1850 from Accrington, England. Brian Bennett's great-grandfather, David Bennett, was a farmer and served in the Civil War in the cavalry of the Wisconsin Green Bay Company. Bennett attended Portage High School, lettering in five different sports and holding the conference track record for the 880. He then went on to Beloit College as a third- generation legacy student. At Beloit, he lettered in cross-country and was recruited his junior year to be a defensive tackle and offensive end on the football team, possibly the only defensive tackle in American football ever to be recruited from a cross-country team. He also lettered in football and track. Bennett graduated from Beloit in 1960 with a B.A. degree in economics. He attended the University of Wisconsin Law School, but returned to Beloit College for postgraduate work in education in 1962-63 when he realized he wanted to pursue a career in teaching. He taught high school economics and social science and was the curling coach at Wausau, Wisconsin, from 1963 until 1966. The school allowed him to create his own courses of study, which emphasized civil rights, nuclear disarmament, the United Nations and world federalism, tolerance of the Marxist experiment in the Third World, and understanding and tolerance of the other Great Religions. He also became very involved in the local anti-United States involvement in Vietnam movement, an interest that he would carry to graduate school, where he helped organize the closure of Southern Illinois University because of its cooperation with the United States involvement in Vietnam. In 1967, Bennett decided that one should have a career in the field that he or she might love, and, returning to that one undergraduate introductory course in anthropology, he was accepted into the graduate program at Southern Illinois University. With no background in anthropology and with graduate assistantships, he completed his Ph.D. degree in 1971. Bennett conducted his dissertation research in "Communist" Yugoslavia, publishing his community ethnographic study, Sutivan: A Dalmatian Village In Social and Economic Transition in 1974. He would go on to publish over twenty articles on socioeconomic and political change in what would become a longitudinal study of a Croatian/Dalmatian community as an example of a country with a Marxist experiment, of the collapse of that country into war and the subsequent attempt at capitalism and democracy in the 1990s. He continues to publish about Sutivan. In 1971, Bennett came to Appalachian State University to fulfill his primary focus, teaching anthropology. In his twenty-seven years at the university, he offered over twenty different courses which reflected his interest in not only Yugoslavia (Croatia) and Eastern Europe, but also in theory in anthropology. His interest in anthropological theory, modernism to postmodernism, structuralism to post-structuralism, led to his being awarded a Fulbright Lectureship at Quid i Azam University, Pakistan, in 1979 to develop their graduate Ph.D. program in applied anthropology. Unfortunately, he and his family were evacuated out of Pakistan as the 1979 seizure of the United States Embassy in Iran influenced the burning of the United States Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, and the killing of several embassy employees. Bennett was reassigned to the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, where he taught a seminar on network analysis (a Norwegian/English/Dutch anthropological theoretical development) and spent a semester reading Marxist anthropological theory. In the early 1980s, Bennett shifted his interest to economic and political globalization in Mexico and Central America, taking Appalachian State students to Mexico in 1982, and was a member of the Carolina Interfaith Task Force on Central America's observational team to Nicaragua in 1983 to interview Sandinista government officials about the United States-funded Contra war. These interests were reflected in his teaching at Appalachian. In 1987, Bennett was selected to represent Appalachian State as a member of the North Carolina Bridges for Peace delegation to the United Soviet Socialist Republics, and with this reorientation to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, he re-established his research in Yugoslavia/Croatia. In 1988-89, Bennett digressed with an off-campus scholarly assignment year in Cairo, Egypt, which permitted him time not only to read about and learn Pharaonic/Islamic Egypt, as well as read postmodern theory, but to be with his present wife, Kristine Anne Newman, who was a teacher at Cairo American College. Since 1987, Bennett has returned to Croatia almost every year to do research, write, and lecture. In 1994-95, he was awarded a Fulbright lectureship to the Institute for Anthropological Research, Zagreb, to lecture on anthropological theory and to develop the sociocultural component to their biological anthropology Ph.D. program and their research in human genetics. The Presidency of the Croatian Anthropological Society awarded Bennett the "Goijanovic Kramberger Medal for Anthropology" for 1995, recognizing his contribution to the development of anthropology in Croatia and stating that Bennett "has clearly shown through his involvement an understanding of our problems and need for international scientific cooperation and research programs.... We thank him for outstanding contribution to the promotion of anthropological science in Croatia and particularly for his great moral support to the Croatian people in their struggle for freedom and independence." This moral support included experiencing a Serbian rocket and cluster bomb assault on Zagreb, the killing and wounding of innocent civilians, and a subsequent evacuation from the city by the United States Embassy staff. The Bennetts were ordered back to the states; however, Dr. Bennett returned to Zagreb to finish his editing and publication of a special edition of the institute's journal dealing with the war, and Kristine returned to finish her teaching at the American School of Zagreb. In the summers of 1997 and 1998, Bennett continued lecturing for the institute as a Rotary International University Professor. Bennett's daughter, Sabrina Helen Bennett Hardenbergh, has a Ph.D. degree in medical anthropology. She did her research in Madagascar. His son, Langdon Bennett, has a Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering and physics. He worked in research for the Japanese government and is presently doing research at Los Alamos, New Mexico, although he cannot divulge what he does for the United States Government. Another son, Ian Sean, works in computer animation and photo enhancement, while Brian Carey II is an assistant manager for a country club in Prescott, Arizona. Bennett retired in June of 1998, only from the classroom at Appalachian State, not from anthropology. He was awarded faculty emeritus status by the Board of Trustees at that time. He will continue to be affiliated with the institute in Zagreb and will continue research and writing on Croatia. Mrs. Bennett accepted a librarian's position at an international school in Izmir, Turkey, in 1998-2000 and in Seoul, South Korea, in 2001-2002. The Bennetts continue their international and anthropological experience with extensive travel abroad. Presently, they live in Los Alamos, New Mexico to be near grandchildren and where Kristine is a library/ media specialist in the Los Alamos schools. A great-uncle, Dr. Merlin Ennis, has always been an inspiration for Dr. Bennett. Dr. Ennis, who was a missionary in Umbundu for forty years, collected and translated Umbundu Folk Tales From Africa. This collection was published when he was eighty-eight years old. A proverb from this collection follows: "There is chaff in my eye, a crocodile has me by the leg, the goat is in the garden, there is a porcupine cooking in the pot, meal is drying on the pounding rock, the king has summoned me to court, and I have to go to my mother-in-law's funeral: I am busy." Sources: Appalachian State University files, personal correspondence, and long association. -Dr. Richard D. Howe
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