Brooklyn College is proud to announce a transformative act of generosity from distinguished alumnus and pioneering anthropologist Sidney Greenfield ’54, whose $1 million commitment to the Brooklyn College Foundation will establish the Jennifer B. Greenfield Professor of Cultural Anthropology in the School of Natural and Behavioral Sciences.
For Greenfield, giving back to the institution that helped launch his career is both an act of gratitude and a deeply personal tribute. The professorship honors his late daughter, Jennifer Beth Greenfield (1958–84), a gifted young scholar whose passion for cultural anthropology was cut short when after completing a master’s degree she was killed in an automobile accident before beginning her doctoral. By bearing her name, the professorship ensures that her intellectual curiosity and commitment to understanding cultures and communities will continue to inspire future scholars.
“Sidney Greenfield’s gift honors his daughter and strengthens study that will guide future scholars,” said President Michelle J. Anderson. “We thank him for a commitment that will shape learning for years to come.”
Greenfield is thankful to Brooklyn College for helping him discover anthropology and providing the intellectual foundation for a career that has taken him around the world.
“The education I received at Brooklyn College transformed my ambitions and set me on a path of lifelong scholarship,” said Greenfield. “Establishing this professorship in memory of my daughter, Jennifer, is deeply meaningful to me. She possessed a genuine love of anthropology and an enduring curiosity about the world. I hope the Jennifer B. Greenfield Professor of Cultural Anthropology will ensure that her spirit lives on through the work of faculty and students who seek to better understand cultures, communities, and the human condition.”
A Scholar Shaped by Brooklyn College
A 1950 graduate of Franklin K. Lane High School, Greenfield arrived at Brooklyn College intending to study to become an accountant. He graduated magna cum laude with honors in economics in 1954, was elected to Alpha Kappa Mu in 1953 and to Phi Beta Kappa in 1954. Having “discovered” anthropology in his senior year at Brooklyn College he went on the earn a Ph.D. at Columbia University where he studied under renowned economic historian Karl Polany and anthropologist Conrad Arensberg. His economics major at Brooklyn College drew the attention of Arensberg and Polanyi who invited him to join a seminar they offered that had a long-term influence on his research. Greenfield’s dissertation research, conducted in Barbados, examined family organization—an early sign of the interdisciplinary approach that would define his career.
Approved by the CUNY Board of Trustees in April 2025, the Jennifer B. Greenfield Professor of Cultural Anthropology will now help Brooklyn College attract and support outstanding faculty members while expanding opportunities for students to engage in innovative scholarship. Anthropology Professor Patricia Antoniello will serve as the inaugural holder of the chair, bringing her long record of teaching, mentorship, and community-engaged scholarship to this new role.
In creating this enduring legacy, Greenfield has made an investment not only in Brooklyn College, but also in the future of anthropology and in the generations of students who will carry that work forward.
A Career of Global Reach and Intellectual Range
Greenfield’s scholarly life has been marked by deep, sustained engagement with the cultures of the Atlantic world. His early academic appointment at Purdue University took him to Minas Gerais, Brazil, where he spent a summer studying and advising on USAID’s emerging agricultural extension program. Brazil became his lifelong intellectual home: He has returned 23 more times for extended research visits.
His work also took him to Portugal in 1972–73, where he investigated the origins of the Portuguese Atlantic slavery system and the patronage and clientage structures of 15th-century Portuguese society.
In 1963, Greenfield joined the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Departments of Sociology and Anthropology, where he spent 34 years and served as department chair of the Anthropology Department from 1990 to 1993. His scholarship spans an extraordinary range: family and kinship, patronage and politics, plantation slavery, entrepreneurship, Spiritist (Kardecist) surgery, religion and healing, spirit mediumship, syncretic religions, and the rise of Evangelical Protestantism in Brazilian politics.
He is the author or editor of nine books, producer and director of five video documentaries, and the author of approximately 150 articles and reviews. Representative works include Spirits With Scalpels: The Cultural Biology of Religious Healing in Brazil (2008), Reinventing Religions: Syncretism and Transformation in Africa and the Americas (2001), and Entrepreneurship and Social Change (1986).
Greenfield continues to serve as co-chair of the Columbia University Seminars on Brazil, Studies in Religion and Contents and Methods in the Social Sciences. He is past president of the Association of Senior Anthropology and the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness, both sections of the American Anthropological Association.
In 1954, Greenfield married Eleanor “Ellie” Stolz (1936–2023), whom he met at summer camp when she was 16. Ellie, a Hunter College (CUNY) and University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee graduate, taught in the Milwaukee Public Schools and was known for her skill in evaluating children with learning disabilities. After Sidney’s retirement from UW–Milwaukee, the couple returned to New York in 1997.
Through this remarkable gift, Greenfield has ensured that both Brooklyn College and the memory of his daughter, Jennifer, will continue to inspire discovery, scholarship, and cross-cultural understanding for generations to come.
