AUCA expresses sincere condolences to the family and friends of Professor Mary Schweitzer

May 2, 2023

Mary Schweitzer, 86, died on April 20, 2023, in Rock Hill, South Carolina, USA. She passed peacefully, surrounded by family and friends. 

Mary was born in Dayton, Ohio, on September 15, 1936, to Leonard Joseph Schweitzer and Dorothy  Drexler Schweitzer. She graduated from Georgia Southern College with a degree in sociology and anthropology in 1967. She completed a PhD in cultural anthropology at the New School for Social  Research in New York. She got married, had a son (Hans), and was hired as an Assistant Professor of  Anthropology at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. 

Mary moved to Rock Hill in 1978 to join the faculty at Winthrop College (later Winthrop University).  She taught anthropology at Winthrop for 23 years, earning rave reviews from her students as an intelligent, kind-hearted, and thoughtful instructor who was nevertheless a tough grader. She had many research interests but devoted much of her time to studying communities in remote fishing villages along the northern coast of Peru. While at Winthrop, Mary received Fulbright fellowships to study and teach internationally in Colombia, India, and Albania. She also participated in an exchange program, teaching for a year at the Shanghai International Studies University in China. 

In 2001, Mary retired from full-time teaching at Winthrop and was named professor emerita. She continued teaching occasionally at Winthrop and full-time abroad in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,  Mongolia, and Turkmenistan. In 2013, she served in the US Peace Corps in the Philippines. Through her teaching over the last two decades, Mary inspired a generation of young students from Central  Asia to continue their college and graduate school studies, many of them in anthropology or another social science.  

In 2010, the American University of Central Asia Anthropology Alumni’05 established the ‘Mary  Schweitzer Scholarship for Excellence in Anthropology’ in honour of Professor Schweitzer, who will continue supporting anthropology students in Central Asia. 

We will always carry Mary Schweitzer’s memory in our hearts.

https://www.basscares.com/obituary/Mary-Schweitzer 

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