Call Number:

C1396

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

• 5 boxes
• 1.6 linear feet

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); Melvin M. Tumin Papers, Box and Folder Number; Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Date:

1942-2007 (inclusive)

Creator:

Murdoch, Iris and Tumin, Melvin M. (Melvin Marvin), 1919-1994

Form:

Correspondence.

Abstract:

Melvin Tumin was a professor of sociology and anthropology at Princeton University. Consists of correspondence, articles, papers, and book reviews by Melvin Tumin, including his dissertation research on the ladino and Pokomám Maya population of San Luis Jilotepeque in Eastern Guatemala. The collection is especially notable for Tumin's correspondence with writers Saul Bellow, Iris Murdoch, and Philip Roth.

Melvin Tumin was a professor of sociology and anthropology at Princeton University. Before coming to Princeton in 1947, Tumin served as director of the Mayor's Commission on Race Relations in Detroit. Noted for his research on segregation and desegregation, he was also one of the first to speak up against what Philip Roth, then a writer-in-residence at Princeton, called "blatant patterns of discrimination against Jews" in the university's student clubs. Tumin retired from Princeton in 1989.

This collection consists of correspondence, articles, papers, and book reviews by Melvin Tumin. Included are typed and handwritten letters, typescripts, offprints, journals, and programs, among others. Also included are research notes, photographs, and a draft of Tumin's dissertation, "San Luis Jilotepeque: A Study in Social Relations" (Ph.D. thesis, Department of Sociology, Northwestern University, 1944) as well as a draft of Tumin's last, unpublished book, "Freedom, Fairness and Wealth." The collection is especially notable for Tumin's correspondence with writers Saul Bellow, Iris Murdoch, and Philip Roth.