Awards

National Academies (1954)

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Guggenheim Fellow (1947)

About Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin

Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin joined the faculty at IU Bloomington as a part-time instructor in anthropology in 1943. She was an honorary fellow from 1944 to 1946, a visiting instructor, a visiting lecturer in 1950, and became a full professor in history in 1956. She was appointed to the faculty of the Graduate School in 1957 and as a fellow of the Folklore Institute in 1963. She directed the Great Lakes-Ohio Valley Research Project from 1956 to 1969, which was financed and funded by Eli Lilly through the Indiana Fellowship at Yale University. The resources assembled by Wheeler-Voegelin and her eight-person research team are housed and available for onsite research at the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology at IU. Wheeler-Voegelin retired from IU in 1969 as professor emeritus of history.

Wheeler-Voegelin graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a bachelor's degree (1923) and a master's degree in anthropology (1930). She obtained a Ph.D. in anthropology in 1939, becoming the first woman to do so from Yale University. She published more than 30 books, articles, and reviews throughout her career. She was a life member of the American Folklore Society (president, 1948) and editor of the society's quarterly journal, Journal of American Folklore (1941-1946). She was a member of the American Anthropological Association (executive secretary, 1949-1951), founded the American Society for Ethnohistory (1954), and was the first editor of the society's journal, Ethnohistory (1954-1964). She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study the unwritten history and mythology of American Indians and Eskimos (1947), the Chicago Folklore Society Prize (1950), elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1954), and inducted as an American Folklore Society Fellow (1960). The Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Book Award was established in her honor by the American Society for Ethnohistory (1981).

Wheeler-Voegelin passed away on July 10, 1988.