Browse the Paul Radin Papers on archive.
Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2025 3:01 pm
Dr. Paul Radin (1883-1959) is considered to be one of the formative influences in contemporary anthropology and ethnography in the United States and Europe. The bulk of the Paul Radin Papers consists of surveys from Radin’s supervision of over 200 workers who interviewed ethnic groups in the San Francisco Bay Area for the State Emergency Relief Administration of California (SERA) over a period of nine months in 1934-1935.
Known as SERA project 2-F2-98 (3-F2-145), its abstract was published in 1935 as The Survey of San Francisco’s Minorities: Its Purpose and Results. The stated purpose was a cultural survey to find employment for “white collar” unemployed workers on temporary relief. Radin’s focus was “to study the steps in the adjustment and assimilation of minority phone number dataset groups in San Francisco and Alameda counties.” Bypassing a typical questionnaire method, Radin instead had the amateur interviewers record anything and everything which the interviewees wished to say. The results appear in a narrative format—sometimes in the form of poetry and short stories—and encompass all manner of immigrant experiences. Survey materials include typed and handwritten interviews and research on ethnic groups. Some interviewers identify themselves, and their report appears in their own hand.
A portion of the Paul Radin Papers includes SERA worker Jon Y. Lee’s papers including material for The Golden Mountain. Lee was the son of Chinese immigrants who settled in Oakland, California. Radin hired Lee as a fieldworker to collect Chinatown traditions in Oakland, California. Today, Lee is recognized as the first Asian American to work professionally as a folklorist.
With this collection online, international scholars can now easily access narratives about the immigrant experience from their country/region to assist with their diaspora studies. The typed descriptions allow for OCR discovery and for one to gather more information on the San Francisco immigrant experience in the 1910s and 1920s.
Known as SERA project 2-F2-98 (3-F2-145), its abstract was published in 1935 as The Survey of San Francisco’s Minorities: Its Purpose and Results. The stated purpose was a cultural survey to find employment for “white collar” unemployed workers on temporary relief. Radin’s focus was “to study the steps in the adjustment and assimilation of minority phone number dataset groups in San Francisco and Alameda counties.” Bypassing a typical questionnaire method, Radin instead had the amateur interviewers record anything and everything which the interviewees wished to say. The results appear in a narrative format—sometimes in the form of poetry and short stories—and encompass all manner of immigrant experiences. Survey materials include typed and handwritten interviews and research on ethnic groups. Some interviewers identify themselves, and their report appears in their own hand.
A portion of the Paul Radin Papers includes SERA worker Jon Y. Lee’s papers including material for The Golden Mountain. Lee was the son of Chinese immigrants who settled in Oakland, California. Radin hired Lee as a fieldworker to collect Chinatown traditions in Oakland, California. Today, Lee is recognized as the first Asian American to work professionally as a folklorist.
With this collection online, international scholars can now easily access narratives about the immigrant experience from their country/region to assist with their diaspora studies. The typed descriptions allow for OCR discovery and for one to gather more information on the San Francisco immigrant experience in the 1910s and 1920s.