Editing Ruth Benedict (section)

===Education and early career===
In her search for a career, she decided to attend some lectures at the [[New School for Social Research]] while looking into the possibility of becoming an educational philosopher.<ref name="Caffrey"/> While at the school, she took a class called "Sex in Ethnology" taught by [[Elsie Clews Parsons]]. She enjoyed the class and took another anthropology course with [[Alexander Goldenweiser (anthropologist)|Alexander Goldenweiser]], a student of noted anthropologist [[Franz Boas]]. With Goldenweiser as her teacher, Ruth's love for anthropology steadily grew.<ref name="Caffrey"/> As close friend, and lover [[Margaret Mead]] explained, "Anthropology made the first 'sense' that any ordered approach to life had ever made to Ruth Benedict."<ref name="Meadsea">Mead, in Benedict 1959: 3–17.</ref> After working with Goldenweiser for a year, he sent her to work as a graduate student with Franz Boas at [[Columbia University]] in 1921. She developed a close friendship with Boas, who took on a role as a kind of father figure in her life. Benedict lovingly referred to him as "Papa Franz."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/ruthbenedict.html |title=Ruth Benedict |publisher=Webster.edu |date=17 September 1948 |access-date=2 November 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131106002751/http://www2.webster.edu/~woolflm/ruthbenedict.html |archive-date=6 November 2013}}</ref>

Boas gave her graduate credit for the courses that she had completed at the New School for Social Research. Benedict wrote her dissertation, "The Concept of the Guardian Spirit in North America," and received the PhD in anthropology in 1923.<ref name="Young 2005"/> Benedict also started a friendship with [[Edward Sapir]], who encouraged her to continue the study of the relations between individual creativity and cultural patterns. Sapir and Benedict shared an interest in poetry and read and critiqued each other's work; both submitted to the same publishers and both were rejected. Both also were interested in psychology and the relation between individual personalities and cultural patterns, and in their correspondences, they frequently [[psychoanalysis|psychoanalyzed]] each other. However, Sapir showed little understanding for Benedict's private thoughts and feelings. In particular, his conservative gender ideology jarred with Benedict's struggle for emancipation. While they were very close friends for a while, the differences in worldview and personality ultimately led their friendship to strain.<ref>{{cite book|author-last=Darnell |author-first=Regna |title=Edward Sapir: linguist, anthropologist, humanist |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |year=1989 |location=Berkeley |pages=172–183 |isbn=978-0-520-06678-6}}</ref>

Benedict taught her first anthropology course at Barnard College in 1922 and among the students was Margaret Mead. Benedict was a significant influence on Mead.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Iwp3UEKofi8C |title=Handbook of Research in The Social Foundations of Education |page=79 |author-first=Steven E. |author-last=Tozer |publisher=Taylor & Francis |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-203-87483-7}}</ref>

Boas regarded Benedict as an asset to the anthropology department, and in 1931, he appointed her as assistant professor in anthropology, something that was impossible until her divorce from Stanley Benedict that same year.

One student who felt especially fond of Ruth Benedict was [[Ruth Landes]].<ref name="Cole, Sally 2002">Cole, Sally. "Mrs Landes Meet Mrs. Benedict." American Anthropologist 104.2 (2002): 533–543. Web. 12 January 2010.</ref> Letters that Landes sent to Benedict state that she was enthralled by the way in which Benedict taught her classes and with the way that she forced the students to think in an unconventional way.<ref name="Cole, Sally 2002"/>

When Boas retired in 1937, most of his students considered Ruth Benedict to be the obvious choice for the head of the anthropology department. However, the administration of Columbia was not as progressive in its attitude towards female professionals as Boas had been, and the university president, [[Nicholas Murray Butler]], was eager to curb the influence of the Boasians whom he considered to be [[political radicalism|political radicals]]. Instead, [[Ralph Linton]], one of Boas's former students, a [[World War I]] veteran and a fierce critic of Benedict's "Culture and Personality" approach, was named head of the department.<ref>Sydel Silverman. 2004. Totems and Teachers: Key Figures in the History of Anthropology. Rowman Altamira p. 118</ref> Benedict was understandably insulted by Linton's appointment, and the Columbia department was divided between the two rival figures of Linton and Benedict, both accomplished anthropologists with influential publications, neither of whom ever mentioned the work of the other.<ref>Ernestine Friedl. 1995. The Life of an Academic: A Personal Record of a Teacher, Administrator, and Anthropologist Annual Review of Anthropology. Vol. 24: 1–20</ref>