Tiv
Off and on from 1949 to 1953 Bohannan and her husband lived among the Tiv tribe of southeastern Nigeria. They would be the subject of her major works.
"Shakespeare in the Bush" is often anthologized because of its subject matter and unique perspective. Bohannan, while living in a small village in Nigeria, attempts to tell the story of Hamlet to a group of villagers. The cultural and language barriers between the two parties result in an entirely different telling of this most famous of English plays, with her audience left puzzling over Westerners' inability to understand their own literature. Thus, the essay is often used by students of anthropology, linguistics, and literary theory as a means of understanding how perspective affects perception and expectation.
Return to Laughter, which she wrote under the name Elenore Smith Bowen, remains a well-reviewed work, and it is based on Bohannan's fieldwork in Nigeria. Bohannan used a pseudonym for this book, presumably because she felt its popular tone and autobiographical format were inappropriate for her professional reputation. Bohannan's pseudonym was composed in part from her mother's first name, "Elenore", and her own maiden name "Smith". However, many reviews of Return to Laughter, noted it as her work, and later editions were published without the pseudonym.
Other works written about the Tiv include Tiv Economy, for which Bohannon and her husband received the Herskovitz Prize in 1969.
Read more about this topic: Laura Bohannan