Abstract
This study traces Franz Boas’s influence on the Mexican Renaissance, especially as it manifested in the cultural and academic contributions of Mariana Yampolsky and Anita Brenner, two Mexican–American women. It claims a direct lineage between the German-Jewish emancipation of the mid-nineteenth century, American anthropology as it was established at the turn of the twentieth century, and Mexican nationalist art movements of the postrevolutionary period. In this context, the participation of Yampolsky and Brenner illustrates a gendered and Jewish manifestation of the transnational legacy of American anthropology. Through a study of their own published works as well as popular and scholarly accounts of their cultural contributions in Mexico and the USA, it is apparent that the troubled legacy of the German Enlightenment extends to Renaissance Mexico and its nationalistic efforts to address marginalized elements of society, with equally inconclusive results for the minorities involved. Finally, the study situates the Mexican Renaissance within the historically coterminous
Feminismo Americano
movement and the establishment of a modern Jewish community in Mexico.