Author Zora Neale Hurston's anthropological work challenges assumptions about race, gender and cultural superiority that had been defined by the field in the 19th century. She gained renown in the Harlem literary circles, but Hurston was also discovering anthropology at Barnard College with the renowned Franz Boas. She would make several trips to the American South and the Caribbean, documenting the lives of rural Black people and collecting their stories. She studied her own people, an unusual practice at the time, and during her lifetime became known as the foremost authority on Black folklore.