John Holmes McDowell (born 24 September 1946) is a professor in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University Bloomington. He also serves as Director of the Diverse Environmentalisms Research Team (DERT) headquartered at Indiana University. Broadly speaking his work is centered on performance and communication as well as the interplay of creativity and tradition. Geographically most of his fieldwork has been in Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, and Ghana. His interests include Speech play and verbal art; the corrido of Greater Mexico; music, myth, and cosmology in the Andes; ecoperformativity; commemoration; folklorization; ethnopoetics; Latin America; the United States.
Education He graduated from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania in 1969 with a B.A. in music. He received a Ph.D. in anthropology (Folklore) from University of Texas at Austin where his outside minor combined Folklore and Linguistics. His dissertation is titled The Speech Play and Verbal Art of Chicano Children: An Ethnographic and Sociolinguistic Study.
Academic writing He is the author of five books: Children’s RiddlingMcDowell, John Holmes. 1979. Children's Riddling. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (1979), Sayings of the Ancestors: The Spiritual Life of the Sibundoy Indians (1989),McDowell, John Holmes. 1989. Sayings of the Ancestors: The Spiritual Life of the Sibundoy Indians. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. “So Wise Were Our Elders”: Mythic Narratives of the Kamsá (1994),McDowell, John Holmes. 1994. "So Wise Were Our Elders": Mythic Narratives of the Kamsa. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. based on fieldwork with an indigenous community in Colombia, Poetry and Violence: The Ballad Tradition of Mexico’s Costa Chica (2000),McDowell, John Holmes. 2000. Poetry and Violence: The Ballad Tradition of Mexico's Costa Chica. Urbana: University of Illinois. a study of the ballad tradition in southern coastal Mexico, and ¡Corrido! The Living Ballad of Mexico's Western Coast (2015). He was also editor or co-editor of the following books or volumes: Andean Musics. Andean Studies Occasional Papers. V.3 Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (1987),Dover, Robert V.H. and John Holmes McDowell, eds. 1987. Andean Musics. Bloomington: Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Indiana University. Andean Cosmologies through Time: Persistence and Emergence (1992),Dover, Robert V.H., Katherine Seibold, and John Holmes McDowell. 1992. Andean Cosmologies through Time: Persistence and Emergence. Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Stith Thompson’s A Folklorist’s Progress: Reflections of a Scholar’s Life (1996),Thompson, Stith and John Holmes McDowell. 1996. A Folklorist's Progress: Reflections of a Scholar's Life. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Dancing the Ancestors: Carnival in South America (2001).,McDowell, John Holmes and Pravina Shukla. Dancing the Ancestors: Carnival in South America. Bloomington, Indiana University Press. 2001. and Animal Tales of the Caribbean. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2017. Additionally he has published more than 30 articles on subjects ranging from the Mexican corrido to speech play and verbal art to Indigenous folklore of the Andes to children's folklore. He is co-editor of Performing Environmentalisms: Expressive Culture and Ecological Change. University of Illinois press. 2021.
Other academic work He has been involved with video documentaries and website productions related to his scholarship. With his wife Patricia Glushko he produced video documentaries “Que me troven un corrido” ("Write me a corrido") and “Brass Bands of Guerrero” addressing the music of Mexico. He also runs a website on student folklore at Indiana University.Indiana University Student Folklore Website He served as editor for the Journal of Folklore Research from 1986 to 1992, editor of Special Publications of the Folklore Institute from 1990 to 1995 and 1999–2009, and the online Journal of Folklore Research Reviews from 2006–present.
Major prizes and awards Lifetime Achievement Award. American Folklore Society, Children's Folklore Section. Indiana University New Frontiers in the Humanities for "Pioneer Village and Virtual Outdoor Museum Website" (2006) Indiana University College Arts and Humanities Institute for "Inti Raymi: Runa Festival of Cleansing and Renewal" (2006) Named a Fellow of the American Folklore Society (2004)American Folklore Society Fellows National Endowment for the Humanities, Education Division for "Tales On-Line: An Electronic Database of Folk Narrative" (2001) Indiana University Intercampus Research Fund for "Hungarian-American Consciousness" (2001) Summer Faculty Fellowship, Indiana University (1997) Named John Simon Guggenheim Fellow for "Poetry and Violence on Mexico's Costa Chica" (1994)John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation National Endowment for the Humanities, Interpretive Research for "Hispanic Folk Poetry in Performance" (1988–90) Fulbright Lectureship in Ghana, West Africa (1987–1988) Chicago Folklore Prize for Children's Riddling (1978–79)Author Biography from University of Illinois Press Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship (Colombia) (1979)
References
External links Faculty Website--John McDowell Folklore of Student Life Indiana University Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology