Folklore professor awarded Haskins

The American Council of Learned Societies has awarded Professor Emeritus Henry Glassie the Charles Homer Haskins Prize for a lifetime of scholarly achievement.

“For a folklorist to win the Haskins prize is just energizing for all of us,” folklore professor John McDowell said. “It’s just a tremendous accomplishment.”

He said Glassie spent his career studying cultures in nearly every continent. Over the years, he has researched and written about folklore in places all over the globe including Virginia, Ireland, Turkey, Bangladesh, Japan and Nigeria.

“With Glassie you see an outward spiral from his initial interest of material culture and folk architecture to the vernacular culture,” McDowell said. “He is a wonderful writer, he has a way of expressing his ideas that is graceful, yet capable.”

Glassie began documenting folklore as the state folklorist of Pennsylvania. He then taught at the University of Pennsylvania before coming to IU. He served as the chairman of the folklore department at both institutions. He also has been president of the American Folklore Society and president of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.

The ACLS is a nonprofit private organization composed of 70 scholarly organizations from around the country. It is considered the major representative organization of scholarship in the humanities. The award was named after the ACLS’s first chairman and is a highly prestigious honor bestowed to individuals who excel in their field of research within the humanities and social science disciplines.

“This means a lot for IU because basically he is being recognized as one of the greatest scholars in his field,” folklore professor Jason Baird Jackson said. “He is the first folklorist to receive this award.”

Glassie will be delivering the 2011 Haskins Prize Lecture at the ACLS’s annual meeting as part of its annual Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture series.

“He was chosen because of his ability to work outwards from the objects people use every day to eventually see all of culture as a unified pattern,” McDowell said. “You probably won’t be able to find another scholar who has done this type of work in such a distinct way in so many different places.”