Henry Glassie

CHARLES HOMER HASKINS PRIZE LECTURE FOR 2011 A Life of Learning Henry Glassie ACLS OCCASIONAL PAPER, No. 68 ACLS The 2011 Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture was presented at the ACLS Annual Meeting in Washington, DC on May 6, 2011. ©2011 by Henry Glassie CONTENTS On Charles Homer Haskins iv Haskins Prize Lecturers v Brief Biography of vi Henry Glassie Introduction ix by Pauline Yu A Life of Learning 1 by Henry Glassie ON CHARLES HOMER HASKINS Charles Homer Haskins (1870-1937), for whom the ACLS lecture series is named, was the first chairman of the American Council of Learned Societies, from 1920 to 1926. He began his teaching career at the Johns Hopkins University, where he received the B.A. degree in 1887 and the Ph.D. in 1890. He later taught at the University of Wisconsin and at Harvard, where he was Henry Charles Lea Professor of Medieval History at the time of his retirement in 1931, and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 1908 to 1924. He served as president of the American Historical Association in 1922, and was a founder and the second president of the Medieval Academy of America (1926). A great American teacher, Charles Homer Haskins also did much to establish the reputation of American scholarship abroad. His distinction was recognized in honorary degrees from Strasbourg, Padua, Manchester, Paris, Louvain, Caen, Harvard, Wisconsin, and Allegheny College, where in 1883 he had begun his higher education at the age of 13. iv HASKINS PRIZE LECTURERS 2011 Henry Glassie 2010 Nancy Siraisi 2009 William Labov 2008 Theodor Meron 2007 Linda Nochlin 2006 Martin E. Marty 2005 Gerda Lerner 2004 Peter Gay 2003 Peter Brown 2002 Henry A. Millon 2001 Helen Vendler 2000 Geoffrey Hartman 1999 Clifford Geertz 1998 Yi-Fu Tuan 1997 Natalie Zemon Davis 1996 Robert William Fogel 1995 Phyllis Pray Bober 1994 Robert K. Merton 1993 Annemarie Schimmel 1992 Donald W. Meinig 1991 Milton Babbit 1990 Paul Oskar Kristeller 1989 Judith N. Shklar 1988 John Hope Franklin 1987 Carl E. Schorske 1986 Milton V. Anastos 1985 Lawrence Stone 1984 Mary Rosamond Haas 1983 Maynard Mack BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF HENRY GLASSIE Henry Glassie, College Professor Emeritus at Indiana University, received his B.A. from Tulane University, his M.A. from the Coopers- town Graduate Program of the State University of New York, and his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. For most of his career he taught at the University of Pennsylvania, where he served as chair of the Department of Folklore and Folklife, or at Indiana University, where he served as chair of the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology as well as chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. In his effort to transform and advance the discipline of folklore, Glassie divided his contribution between the historical analysis of the built environment and the ethnographic study of creative actions, ranging from drama, narrative, and song, through textiles and ceramics, to painting and sculpture. Glassie's enduring interest in vernacular architecture yielded a regional survey, Patternin the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States (1969); an innovative local study, Folk Housing in Middle Virginia (1976); and a capstone statement, international in scope, Vernacular Architecture (2000), which won the Abbott Lowell Cummings Award of the Vernacular Architecture Forum. His architectural research supported Glassie's public work in historic preservation. He designed sections of three outdoor museums, one in Indiana, one in Virginia, and one in Northern Ireland. Twice he served as president of Bloomington Restorations Incorporated, his city's preservation society. Glassie's comparably sustained concern for art produced a philosophical essay, The Spirit of Folk Art (1989), which was named a notable book of the year by the New York Times; an international vi investigation of ceramic practice, The Potter's Art (1999); and full monographic treatment of a contemporary African painter in Prince Twins Seven-Seven: His Art, His Life in Nigeria, His Exile in America (2010). Prince Twins Seven-Seven, the modern master of the Yoruba tradition, died in June of 2011. For the artist and for the history of art, it is fortunate that, before the great painter's death, Glassie in- terviewed him at length, traveled with him through Nigeria, published a book about him, and curated an exhibition of his work in Philadelphia. The first of Glassie's major ethnographic projects, each lasting a full decade, was conducted in Ireland. It led to five books: All Silver and No Brass (1976); Irish Folk History (1982); Passing the Time in Ballymenone (1982), which won the Chicago Folklore Prize, the Haney Prize in the Social Sciences, and was named a notable book of the year by the New York Times; Irish Folktales (1985), an anthology from the whole island; and The Stars of Ballymenone (2006), a complete study of one community's oral literature. In 2010, he was honored to deliver the address at the National Library in Dublin, celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Irish Folklore Commission. His second ethnographic project, conducted in Turkey, produced a monumental work, Turkish TraditionalArt Today (1993), named a notable book of the year by the New York Times; a slim book, designed as a gift to the many who helped him, Giiniimiizde Geleneksel Tiurk Sanati (1993); and two major exhibitions in Amer- ican museums. For his Turkish work, Glassie was given the Award of Honor for Superior Service to Turkish Culture from the Ministry of Culture of the Turkish Republic, the Fatih University Board of Trustees Recognition for Contributions to Turkish Cultural Life, and the Outstanding Achievement in the Arts Award from the Assembly of Turkish American Associations. In 2010, the munici- pal government made Glassie an Honorary Citizen of Kiitahya, in recognition of his years of research on the Turkish city's ceramic tradition. His third ethnographic project, conducted at the invitation of the Bangla Academy, produced a major book, Art and Life in vii Bangladesh (1997). With a colleague, Firoz Mahmud, he also co- authored Living Traditions, published by the Asiatic Society of Ban- gladesh in 2007, which employed Bangladeshi examples to make the current methods of American folklore research available to the nation's scholars. At the request of the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, he created a massive exhibition, "Contemporary Traditional Art of Bangladesh," at the National Museum in Dhaka. For his work in Bangladesh, Glassie was given the Certificate of Honour from the Ministry of Cultural Affairs of the People's Republic of Bangla- desh, the Crest of Honour from the Islamic University in Kushtia, and the Friend of Bangladesh Award in Recognition of Outstanding Contributions toward Bangladesh from the Federation of Bangla- deshi Associations in North America. Henry Glassie has lectured throughout the United States and Canada, and in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Malta, Turkey, Israel, Kuwait, India, Bangladesh, China, and Japan. A member of the American Folklore Society since his un- dergraduate days, Glassie was named a fellow in 1976 and elected president in 1988. In 2010 he was given the society's award for a lifetime of scholarly achievement. He also served as president of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, and in 2003 the society named its prize for outstanding scholarly achievement the Henry Glassie Award. The father of four and the grandfather of four, Glassie lives with his wife, Pravina Shukla, in the latest of the historic houses he has restored, planning the next project. viii INTRODUCTION Professor Henry Glassie's 2011 Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lec- ture is the twenty-ninth in an annual series named for the first chairman of ACLS. The Executive Committee of the Delegates of ACLS selects the prize winner and lecturer from the many worthy nominations put forward by our community. The lecturer's charge is "to reflect on a lifetime of work as a scholar; on the motives, the chance determinations, the satisfac- tions (and the dissatisfactions) of the life of learning; and to ex- plore through one's own life the larger, institutional life of scholarship. We do not wish the speaker to present the products of one's own scholarly research, but rather to share with other scholars the personal process of a particular lifetime of learning." And what a lifetime of learning it has been and continues to be. You will find in this slim volume Professor Glassie's biography, which details the many achievements that have led his peers to call him "the most erudite, and at the same time the most elo- quent, member of his discipline." The pace of his accomplishment has been brisk: at the age of 35, he was a fellow of the American Folklore Society, with three major books published, and a tenured full professor and chairman of the Department of Folklore and Folklife at the University of Pennsylvania. And those achievements have proved durable: his study of material folk culture of the eastern United States has been reprinted 11 times and been in print continuously for 50 years. Since his retirement from Indiana Uni- versity, Professor Glassie has pursued two major studies: one of Japanese ceramics, and another of the late Nigerian artist Prince Twins Seven-Seven. Professor Glassie's career illustrates the tripartite dedica- tion to research, teaching, and service that has been the ideal of the American university. He has earned several awards for excellence ix in teaching, had one named for him, and served on nearly 200 dis- sertation and thesis committees. He has served on the editorial board or governance committees of five of the scholarly associations that constitute the American Council of Learned Societies.

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