Norma Joyce Diamond

Background

Norma Diamond was born on February 12, 1933, in New York. She was a daughter of Simon Bernard and Mary (Carush) Diamond. Her father migrated to the United States at 17 from Romania and her mother came from Odessa.

Education

Norma Diamond studied at Queens College for two years. Then she moved to the University of Wisconsin where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1954. Later she studied at Cornell University and received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1966.

Career

Norma Diamond started her career in 1963 when she took up the post of an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. She held this post until 1970 and then became an associate professor. She taught American literature as a "foreign expert" at the Institute of Modern American Literature of Shandong University from 1979 to 1980. The subject of her studies was Taiwan. She wrote a single-authored monograph, K'un Shen: A Taiwan Village and many seminal articles.

Achievements

• Norma Diamond was known as an American anthropologist, writer, and educator. She was famous for her works devoted to Chinese and Taiwan society. Her most famous work is a book K'un Shen: A Taiwan Village.
  
  She worked as a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, being the first woman to be a tenure track professor in Anthropology.

Works

More photos

• book

  • K'UN Shen: A Taiwan Village 1969

Views

Norma Diamond was an early feminist anthropologist. In 1970 she initiated a course called "Second Sex/ Third World". It was the first course in the comparative ethnography of women to be taught in the United States. She also maintained a critical view of the Chinese revolution, especially its effects on women. Diamond wrote an article “Collectivization, Kinship, and the Status of Women in Rural China” where she examined the feminist dogma that since China proclaimed women as equal to men, it could be viewed as a model for western societies.

In her works, she speaks about Marxist approaches, however, Diamond emphasis on economic issues, rather than culture or ideology.

Membership

Norma Diamond was a member of American Anthropological Association, Association for Asian Studies and Society for Applied Anthropology.

Diamond was a founding member of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, which organized Asia specialists to oppose American involvement in Vietnam.

Connections

Father:

Simon Bernard

Mother:

Mary Diamond