In 1908, Dorothea Cross Leighton was born in the town of Lunenberg, Massachusetts. Dorothea went to school at Bryn Mawr University, where she majored in Chemistry and Biology. After graduating from Bryn Mawr, in 1930 she went on to medical school at Johns Hopkins. After graduating in 1936, Leighton then went out to look for a job at a hospital but was turned down because she was a woman. . She then decided to co-teach with Ralph Linton, an anthropologist, at Johns Hopkins.
Being involved with social psychiatry she went out to conduct psychiatric research on the Navajo Indians with her husband, Alexander Leighton, in New Mexico. This research was for her first book entitled, The Navaho Door published in 1944. She had published The Navaho Door for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Navajo were not the only people that Leighton conducted research on, she also studied the Inuit in Alaska, the Tohono O'odham, the Hopi and also Sioux children.
Writing in the mid 1940s, Clyde Kluckhohn, Leighton’s advisor, and Dorothea Leighton note, "Of all adult Navajo men past the age of thirty-five today, probably one out of every five or six can do divination or conduct Blessing Way, a chant, or some other rite. Many women are diviners, too, and a few women know other rites" (1974 [1946]:225). They also wrote many other books including, The Navajo published in (1946) and Children of the People published in (1948).
Leighton was an avid researcher, she was also the President of the Society for Medical Anthropology. She worked at Cornell University, North Carolina University, University of California-San Francisco and University of California-Berkeley. Leighton died in 1989.
References:
“Celebration of Women Anthropologists.” (26 June 1999) Former Link, www.cas.usf.edu/anthropology/women/index.html (October 2006) 1 March 2004.
“Leighton, Dorothea Cross (1908-1989) Papers.” National Anthropological Archives (21 Feb. 2004) www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/guide/_l2.htm 1 March 2004.
“Blood and Voice: Navajo Women Ceremonial Practitioners.” (4 Jan. 2002) Former Link, www.uapress.arizona.edu/samples/sam1511.htm (October 2006) 1 March 2004. New Link, http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/BOOKS/bid1511.htm (October 2006)
Written by: Anna Petersen, 2004
Edited by: David Gardner 2007