Henry Glassie


Henry Glassie, 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, The Spirit of Folk Art, and Turkish Traditional Art Today -- 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. 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.

Life and career

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 in 1965, and his Ph.D from the University of Pennsylvania in 1969. After serving as the State Folklorist of Pennsylvania and teaching at the Capitol Campus of Pennsylvania State University, Glassie began teaching in the Folklore Institute at Indiana University 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, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and India Studies. 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 an award-winning 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.
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

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.

Exhibitions

Glassie’s papers, correspondence, and drafts of books, are in the Indiana University Archives.
Glassie’s field recordings from Ireland and the United States are in the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University.