Muriel "Miki" Crespi Papers, 1929-2004 | University of Illinois Archives

Papers of Muriel 'Miki" Crespi (née Kaminsky; 1929-2003). Contains: correspondence; ethnographic fieldwork materials (including: field notes; audiovisual recordings; photographs, proofs, and transparencies; data tables; and collected primary source materials); grant applications and funding reports; maps; published and unpublished academic papers; notebooks and academic papers from her undergraduate and graduate studies; and reports and evaluations for academic institutes and government agencies.

Crespi received her Ph.D in Anthropology from the University of Illinois -- Urbana-Champaign in 1968. For her dissertation, she researched traditional hacienda systems in Ecuador. She continued to conduct postdoctoral research in Ecuador with funding from the City College of New York (1969), the National Institute of Mental Health (1970), and a Fulbright-Hays Lectureship Award (1977). Her fieldwork materials created for her research in Ecuador document: agrarian data; conversations with Ecuadorian laborers and landowners; cultural and religious festivities; the impact of and reactions to agrarian reforms in Ecuador beginning in 1964, and the role of women in politics and agriculture in this period; genealogical data; and Ecuadorian's conceptions of race and ethnicity. Contents related to her work in Ecuador additionally include: her dissertation (including earlier drafts); audiovisual recordings; photographic materials; Ecuadorian newspapers and publications; and research proposals. The collection additionally contains select books from Crespi's personal library related to anthropology and the history of Latin America and Indigenous Peoples.

Before she started working for the National Parks Service in 1981, Crespi taught and researched for Hunter College (CUNY), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Brown University. During this time, she conducted ethnographic research about immigrants from the Azores in the New England region, and taught them citizenship courses. She additionally assessed and wrote curricula for bilingual education programs for colleges in Rhode Island and New Jersey. Contents related to these activities include: instruction materials and course syllabi; institutional reports and evaluations; grant applications and funding reports; and published and presented papers, as well as unpublished papers.