Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt

Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt (born December 12, 1944) is an American folklorist, anthropologist, and historian.

She took her bachelor's degree in anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1972, followed by a master's degree in folklore at the University of California, Berkeley in 1978. Following her PhD at Berkeley in 1982, defending the thesis American Folkloristics: The Literary and Anthropological Roots, she was employed at Davidson College in 1983. She held the titles of associate professor from 1988, professor from 1995 and Paul B. Freeland Professor of Anthropology from 1998 to 2001.

Having chaired the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Davidson College, Zumwalt Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean at Agnes Scott College from 2001 to 2010. Zumwalt was elected as a fellow of the American Folklore Society in 1996, serving as president from 1999 to 2001.

Among her monographies are Wealth and Rebellion: Elsie Clews Parsons, Anthropologist and Folklorist  from 1992. Among her co-edited volumes are Ritual Medical Lore of Sephardic Women: Sweetening the Spirits and Healing the Sick with Isaac Jack Lévy in 2002.

Her two-volume biography of Franz Boas, constisting of The Emergence of the Anthropologist from 2019 and Shaping Anthropology and Fostering Social Justice from 2022, was extensively reviewed.