Charlotte Gower Chapman

Who is Charlotte Gower Chapman?

Charlotte Gower Chapman, born Charlotte Day Gower, was an ethnologist and an author. In 1928, she received a Ph.D in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. Later on while working at Lingnan University in China during WWII she was taken prisoner by the Japanese when the US entered the war, but was released by 1942. After, she joined the United States Marine Corps and worked in the Office of Strategic Services until 1947 when she became an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency until her retirement in 1964.

She also published a novel in 1935 titled Milocca: A Sicilian Village, which included a detailed account of everyday life in a small rural Sicilian town. It was one of the first cultural anthropological works of its kind.