Academic Career
While working on the Navajo Reservation he attended Arizona State University until 1968. At the University of Chicago, he earned his MA and Ph.D. in Anthropology in 1970, two years after enrolling. After one year at Yale University, Witherspoon returned to the Dine and focused on research and teaching. His publication record in the early 1970s caught the attention of anthropologists, and he was hired in 1975 by the University of Michigan. In 1979 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. From 1982 to 1987 he lived among the Navajo. He taught at, and was director of, The Navajo Language Institute, part of the Navajo Academy near Farmington, New Mexico.. In 1987 Witherspoon accepted an offer from the University of Washington, where he chairs the American Indian Studies Department.
His book Language and Art in the Navajo Universe is his most significant work. Sheep in Navajo Culture and Social Organization was placed in the centennial version of American Anthropologist as an example of one of the best articles in the field of anthropology in the last 25 years.
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