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Henry Glassie

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Henry Glassie
Born (1941-03-24) March 24, 1941 (age 84)
Children4, including Ellen Adair
AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship
Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture
Academic background
Education
Academic work
DisciplineFolklore, Ethnomusicology
Sub-disciplineAnthropology, American studies, Cultural studies
Institutions
Notable works
  • Passing the Time in Ballymenone (1982)
  • The Spirit of Folk Art (1989)
  • Turkish Traditional Art Today (1993)
  • Vernacular Architecture (2000)
Notable ideasVernacular architecture

Henry Glassie (born 24 March 1941) is an American Folklorist. He is College Professor Emeritus at Indiana University Bloomington, has done fieldwork on five continents and written books on the full range of folkloristic interest, from drama, song, and story to craft, art, and architecture. Three of his books -- Passing the Time in Ballymenone,[1] The Spirit of Folk Art,[2] and Turkish Traditional Art Today[3] -- were named among the "Notable Books of the Year" by The New York Times. Glassie has won many awards for his work, including the Charles Homer Haskins Prize of the American Council of Learned Societies for a distinguished career of humanistic scholarship.[4] A film on his work, directed by Pat Collins and titled Henry Glassie: Field Work, had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019.[5]

Life and career

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Glassie received his B.A. from Tulane University in 1964, his M.A. from the Cooperstown Graduate Program of the State University of New York at Oneonta in 1965, and his Ph.D from the University of Pennsylvania in 1969. After serving as the State Folklorist of Pennsylvania and teaching at Penn State Harrisburg, Glassie began teaching in the Folklore Institute at Indiana University Bloomington in 1970. In 1976, he became the chairman of the Department of Folklore and Folklife at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1988, he returned as a College Professor to Indiana University, where he had appointments in Folklore and Ethnomusicology, American Studies, Central Eurasian Studies, Ancient Near East Studies, and India Studies.[6] He retired in 2008.

Glassie has served as president of the American Folklore Society, the Vernacular Architecture Forum, and his local historic preservation organization, Bloomington Restorations Incorporated. He is married to fellow folklorist Pravina Shukla, a professor at Indiana University, who is a teacher and the author of two major books on dress and adornment, The Grace of Four Moons and Costume. Glassie and Shukla co-authored Sacred Art, an Ethnographic Account of creativity in Northeastern Brazil. Glassie has four children and four grandchildren.[7]

Henry Glassie began doing fieldwork on the songs, stories, and architecture of the Southern Appalachian region in 1961. He has since done fieldwork in several regions of the United States, and in Ireland, England, Sweden, Italy, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, China, Japan, Nigeria, and Brazil. He published his first scholarly paper, an article on the Appalachian log cabin, in 1963. Since then, he has published over 100 articles and a steady stream of books.

Books by Henry Glassie

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  • Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States, 1968.
  • Folk Housing in Middle Virginia: A Structural Analysis of Historic Artifacts, 1976.
  • All Silver and No Brass: An Irish Christmas Mumming, 1976.
  • Irish Folk History: Texts from the North, 1982.
  • Passing the Time in Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Ulster Community, 1982.
  • Irish Folktales, 1985.
  • The Spirit of Folk Art, 1989.
  • Günümüzde Geleneksel Türk Sanatı, 1993.
  • Turkish Traditional Art Today, 1993.
  • Art and Life in Bangladesh, 1997.
  • Material Culture, 1999.
  • The Potter’s Art, 1999.
  • Vernacular Architecture, 2000.
  • The Stars of Ballymenone, 2006.
  • Prince Twins Seven-Seven: His Art, His Life in Nigeria, His Exile in America, 2010.
  • Daniel Johnston: A Portrait of the Artist as a Potter in North Carolina, 2020.

Books co-authored by Henry Glassie

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  • with MacEdward Leach, A Guide for Collectors of Oral Traditions and Folk Cultural Material in Pennsylvania, 1968.
  • with Austin and Alta Fife, eds., Forms upon the Frontier: Folklife and Folk Art in the United States, 1969.
  • with Edward D. Ives and John F. Szwed, Folksongs and Their Makers, 1970.
  • with Linda Dégh and Felix Oinas, eds., Folklore Today: A Festschrift for Richard M. Dorson, 1976.
  • with Firoz Mahmud, Living Traditions, 2007.
  • with Clifford R. Murphy and Douglas Dowling Peach, Ola Belle Reed and Southern Mountain Music on the Mason-Dixon Line, 2015.
  • with Vincent Woods, Borderlines, 2018.
  • with Pravina Shukla, Sacred Art: Catholic Saints and Candomblé Gods in Modern Brazil, 2018.

Honors and awards

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Lectures

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Henry Glassie has lectured throughout the United States and Canada, and in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, France, Malta, Turkey, Israel, Kuwait, India, Bangladesh, China, and Japan.[8]

Exhibitions

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Consulting

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Writings about Glassie

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  • Charles Joyner, “The Narrowing Gyre: Henry Glassie, Irish Folk Culture, and the American South,” in Joyner, Shared Traditions, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999, pp. 166-73.
  • Gregory Hansen, “An Interview with Henry Glassie,” Folklore Forum, 31:2 (2000): 91-113.
  • Mark P. Leone, “Henry Glassie and the General Meaning of Things,” The Public Historian 23:3 (2001): 83-87.
  • Barbara Truesdell, “A Life in the Field: Henry Glassie and the Study of Material Culture,” The Public Historian, 30:4 (2008): 59-87.
  • Ray Cashman, Tom Mould, and Pravina Shukla, “A Folklorist’s Work: Henry Glassie’s Life in the Field,” in Cashman, Mould, and Shukla, eds. The Individual and Tradition, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011, pp. 499-528.

Film about Glassie and his work

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  • Pat Collins. Henry Glassie: Fieldwork. Ireland: South Wind Blows and Harvest Films, 2019.

Archives

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Glassie’s papers, correspondence, and drafts of books, are in the Indiana University Archives.[9]

Glassie’s field recordings from Ireland and the United States are in the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University.[10]

References

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  1. ^ "Notable Books of the Year". The New York Times. 1982.
  2. ^ "Notable Books of the Year". The New York Times. 1990.
  3. ^ "Notable Books of the Year". The New York Times. 1994.
  4. ^ "Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lectures". American Council of Learned Societies. Archived from the original on 2020-04-17. Retrieved 2020-01-05.
  5. ^ Maheux, Michèle. "Henry Glassie: Field Work". TIFF.
  6. ^ Truesdell, Barbara (2008). "A Life in the Field: Henry Glassie and the Study of Material Culture". The Public Historian. 30 (4): 59–87. doi:10.1525/tph.2008.30.4.59.
  7. ^ Jason Baird, Jackson (2009). "Henry Glassie". In Honor of Retiring Faculty. Bloomington: Indiana University. p. 7.
  8. ^ "TIFF: "Henry Glassie: Field Work" Interview w/ Director Pat Collins". Indiewood/Hollywoodn't. 2019-09-11. Archived from the original on 2020-02-03. Retrieved 2020-01-05.
  9. ^ "Henry Glassie papers, 1968-2019". webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu. Retrieved 2020-01-05.
  10. ^ "Glassie Northern Ireland Collection". libraries.indiana.edu. 2019-07-15. Retrieved 2020-01-05.
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