All in a life's work

After nearly a half-century as a professor of anthropology, including 37 years on the UW faculty, Dr. Edgar V. Winans retired in March. He leaves the UW as an internationally recognized scholar and teacher, and an expert on African culture, politics and economy.

Throughout his career, Winans has served as a professor at many universities in the United States and abroad. He has also conducted many research trips to East Africa, and was one of the first American anthropologists to concentrate on the diverse region. Winans was able to see many African countries transform from colonial state to independent nation firsthand. Additionally, he has held positions in various U.N. offices and was one of the few non-Africans to work for the government of Kenya.

Winans, who was born in 1930, spent much of his adolescence moving from place to place so his father could supervise major construction projects. From an early age, travel was an integral part of his life. It was a fitting childhood for a man who has since visited more than half the countries in the world.

After finishing high school, in 1948, Winans headed to college at the UC-Berkeley, where he earned good grades and was a member of the football team, until he transferred to UCLA. Following a knee injury that ended his football career, Winans focued on academics. Halfway through his junior year, he decided to major in anthropology after taking a genetics class.

Winans spent his final two years of college immersed in the emerging science, graduating with a bachelor's of arts in 1952 -- in a nation at war. As many college graduates were drafted into service, Winans' good grades allowed him to avoid the Korean War.

Instead, Winans returned to the anthropology department at UCLA. Originally interested in studying Mexico, he took part in a research expedition led by UCLA archaeologist George Brainard the summer after his first year of graduate school. The expedition returned in time for fall quarter, but before most of the material could be analyzed, Brainard died of a heart attack, leaving most of his research unfinished.

"It was a real blow to my work," Winans said. "There was no one at UCLA, or anywhere else, who could have directed the work. So I was rather adrift, casting about and thinking about what I would do instead."

Winans soon enrolled in a seminar taught by Walter Goldschmidt, a UCLA anthropologist who had recently returned from fieldwork in East Africa. Impressed by the seminar and other classes on Africa has would take, Winans decided to concentrate study on East Africa. He learned to speak Swahili, the lingua franca of East Africa. As part of his graduate study, Winans pitched a fieldwork proposal. He was awarded a grant, and packed his bags.

Winans left the United States in 1956 on a two-year field study. His late wife, Patty, pregnant with their first child, accompanied him. The Winans' two children were both born on the trip. Winans traveled to Tanganyika, a former British colony that was being governed under a U.N. mandate and is today the Republic of Tanzania. He spent two years studying the political systems of the peoples along the nation's northern border. Winans recalls the trip fondly.

"Though I've had satisfactory events since then, that remains a kind of crucial one, because that launched the major trajectory of my life," he said.

In 1959, after returning with his family to the United States, Winans earned a doctorate degree from UCLA. In the years following his degree, Winans taught at three UC campuses and made extended research trips to East Africa. During one of his research trips to Tanganyika, the U.N. mandate ended and the former colony became an independent nation. It was a scene similar to ones playing out in nations throughout Africa at the time, as former colonies were finally granted self-governance.

"It was an exciting period," Winans said. "I entered Africa in a period of real roiling and boiling, increasing demands for independence."

After a few more years as an administrator in the UC system, Winans received an offer to join the UW faculty in 1966. Anxious to teach, he jumped at the chance. His original stay proved to be short-lived, as Winans took a sabbatical from the UW in 1968 and began working with the Kenyan Ministry of Planning and Economic Development.

Winans helped oversee the development of the newly independent nation until 1970, when he returned to the United States, though he would revisit Africa the following year, always accompanied by his family.

Winans returned to the UW full-time in 1972, and spent the next several years building a reputation as one of the most renowned lecturers on campus. In the late '70s, Winans again returned to Kenya to work for the Ford Foundation, a non-profit development organization. He spent the next two years in Nairobi, after which the UW told Winans to make a choice: Keep the job and resign his professorship, or return to the UW faculty full-time.

Winans decided to return to Seattle. In the years since, he has been a full-time professor, taking occasional research trips to various places in Africa. Winans has also worked as a consultant for various offices of the United Nations, and has held visiting professorships in Denmark, Sweden and several African countries. He has published a variety of books and papers, from anthropological examinations of the peoples of Tanzania to an economic planning prospectus for the Kenyan government. However, Winans' desire to teach outweighs all of these.

Winans is well known among anthropology students for his affable nature and willingness to help his students. He often serves as a mentor for graduate students.

"He's always been a sort of intellectual father to me," said Clarke Speed, who earned his doctorate degree under Winans' tutelage in 1991. "All of my success is directly related to him."

Speed is a member of the UW anthropology faculty, and actually shares an office with the man who guided him through graduate school a dozen years ago. According to Speed, Winans enjoyed a distinct advantage over other professors and lecturers: life experience.

"All of these people he talks about in his classes, like (former Kenyan President Daniel) arap Moi, all of these leaders, these are all people he has had intimate contact with," Speed said.

As his career draws to a close, Winans finds his chosen path in life to be an entirely satisfying one. Though he has retired from teaching, Winans remains an active participant in the field of anthropology. He is following up on past research with the intention of writing a book on museums and the return of colonial artifacts. He also remains in contact with former students, many of whom are now professors themselves.

"There is a network of people, who are my friends and former students, scattered all over the world," Winans said. "You create a network of friends and colleagues that continues for the rest of your life. What could be better?"