Henry Glassie

Henry H. Glassie is College Professor Emeritus of Folklore and Ethnomusicology in the Arts and Culture faculty at Indiana University Bloomington. Born in 1941 in Washington, D.C., he received his B.A. in English and Anthropology from Tulane University in 1964, his M.A. from the Cooperstown Program of the State University of New York in folk culture in 1965, and his Ph.D. in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania in 1969. From 1967 to 1969, during his doctoral work, Glassie served as the State Folklorist of Pennsylvania, the only such position in the United States at the time. His career includes instructor and assistant professor roles at the University of Pennsylvania from 1964 to 1970, professor at Indiana University’s Folklore Institute from 1970 to 1976, and professor and chair of the Department of Folklore and Folklife at the University of Pennsylvania from 1976 to 1988. In 1988, he returned to Indiana University as professor, Co-Director of the Turkish Studies program, with adjunct appointments in Central Eurasian Studies, American Studies, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and India Studies, retiring in 2008 with his emeritus title.

Glassie has conducted fieldwork across five continents, including the United States (Virginia, Delaware, New York), Northern Ireland, Turkey, Bangladesh, Brazil, and Nigeria, specializing in material culture, vernacular architecture, folk art, and oral traditions. Key publications include Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States (1969), Folk Housing in Middle Virginia (1976), All Silver and No Brass (1983), Passing the Time in Ballymenone (1982, winner of the Chicago Folklore Prize and Haney Prize in the Social Sciences), Irish Folk History (1982), Turkish Traditional Art Today (1993, New York Times notable book and Award for Outstanding Achievement from the Assembly of Turkish American Associations), Material Culture (1999), Vernacular Architecture (2000, Cummings Award for best book on North American architecture), The Stars of Ballymenone (2006), Prince Twins Seven-Seven (2010), Sacred Art (2017, co-authored with Pravina Shukla), and Folk Art (2023, co-authored with Pravina Shukla). He received Indiana University’s Teaching Excellence Recognition Award, the American Council of Learned Societies’ Charles Homer Haskins Prize, and the American Folklore Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Glassie organized the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, served on the National Endowment for the Arts’ first Folk Arts panel, consulted for museums including Conner Prairie and Plimoth Plantation, curated exhibitions at the Museum of International Folk Art, Indiana University Art Museum, and National Museum of Bangladesh, and held presidencies in the Vernacular Architecture Forum and American Folklore Society, as well as appointment to the National Council on the Humanities by President Clinton.