University of Pennsylvania - Folklore and Folklife - Center for Folklore and Ethnography

For more information about the Center for Folklore & Ethnography,at UPenn, contact Professor Mary Hufford at mhufford@sas.upenn.edu.

To be added to the CFE mailing list, contact Joyce Roselle, at jroselle@sas.upenn.edu

For assistance with the Folklore and Folklife website, contact Linda Lee at lindalee@sas.upenn.edu.

Past Directors of the Center for Folklore & Ethnography

Roger D. Abrahams, Founding Director

Roger came back to Penn in 1986 after being at Texas for 19 years and at Scripps and Pitzer Colleges in Claremont, California, for another six. His research interests have included work on folksong and ballad, African-American folklore, proverb and riddle study, childrens folklore, folklore theory and, most recently, festival and ritual. Instrumental to the creation of the Center for Folklore and Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania in June of 1999, Roger was the first person to articulate and implement its tripartite mission: to create practical fieldwork programs for students, to co-ordinate conferences and seminars of regional, national and international significance, and to collaborate with local folklore institutions on ethnographic projects reflecting regional cultural diversity. In of the spring of 2002, he retired from the University of Pennsylvania and will teach graduate-level courses for the Folklore and Folklife Graduate Program only occassionally. During the Fall of 2001, Roger ceded the directorship of the Center for Folklore and Ethnography to Dr. Mary T. Hufford.

<< Return to the previous page