Barbara Myerhoff

Barbara Myerhoff (February 16, 1935 – January 7, 1985) was an American anthropologist and filmmaker known for her pioneering contributions to the anthropology of aging, ritual, symbolism, and cultural identity through reflexive ethnography and visual media. Her work emphasized storytelling, personal narratives, and the resilience of marginalized communities, most notably elderly Jewish immigrants and indigenous groups.

Myerhoff's most acclaimed book, Number Our Days (1978), is an ethnographic study of elderly Jewish residents at the Aliyah Senior Citizens' Center in Venice, California, exploring themes of continuity, memory, and meaning-making in later life. The research inspired the Academy Award-winning documentary short Number Our Days (1977), directed by Lynne Littman, which also received two Emmys. Earlier, her dissertation-based fieldwork among the Huichol Indians of Mexico produced Peyote Hunt: The Sacred Journey of the Huichol Indians (1974), an examination of their peyote pilgrimage ritual that earned a National Book Award nomination.

As a professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California from 1968 until her death, Myerhoff chaired the department from 1976 to 1980 and helped establish one of the first programs in visual anthropology. Her scholarship advanced reflexive approaches in anthropology, highlighting gender dynamics in aging, secular and domestic rituals, and the value of studying familiar cultural contexts, influencing gerontology, folklore, and gender studies. After her diagnosis with lung cancer, she turned the camera on her own experience within the Jewish community of Fairfax, Los Angeles, in the posthumously released documentary In Her Own Time (1986). She died on January 7, 1985, at age 49.