Bruce Jackson (scholar)


Bruce Jackson is an American folklorist, documentary filmmaker, writer, photographer. He is SUNY Distinguished Professor and the James Agee Professor of American Culture at the University at Buffalo. Jackson has edited or authored books published by major university presses. He has also directed and produced five documentary films. He is an Associate Member of The Wooster Group.

Biography

Jackson was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1936. He served in the United States Marine Corps from 1953–1956, then attended Newark College of Engineering for three years. He received a BA from Rutgers University in 1960 and an MA from Indiana University's School of Letters in 1962. From 1963 through 1967 he was a Junior Fellow in Harvard University's Society of Fellows.
He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Ethnic Traditional Recording, named an Associate Member of the Folklore Fellows by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, and Chevalier in l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. In 2012, the president of France appointed him chevalier in the National Order of Merit. He was president of the American Folklore Society in 1984. He was also chairman of the board of trustees of the American Folklore Center in the Library of Congress, and director, then trustee of the Newport Folk Foundation.
With Diane Christian, he has directed and produced five documentary films: Death Row, Creeley, Out of Order, Robert Creeley: Willy's Reading, and William August May.
In 2017, The Wooster Group produced a play based on his 1964 recordings in Texas prisons: "The B-Side: 'Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons' A Record Album Interpretation." The play has since been performed in Taipei, Gwanju, Portraits from a Prison, American Gulag, Bridging Buffalo, and Mirrors.
His work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Fund for Investigative Journalism, Playboy Foundation, Levi Strauss Foundation, Polaroid Foundation, New York Council for the Humanities and the American Philosophical Society.
He has spent his academic career at the University at Buffalo. He joined it as an assistant professor of English and Comparative literature in 1967, was promoted to associate professor a year later and to professor in 1971. He became SUNY Distinguished Professor in 1990 and Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture in 1997. In 2009 he was appointed James Agee Professor of American Culture. He is also affiliate professor in the UB Department of Media Studies. Since 2015 he has been co-director of University at Buffalo's Creative Arts Initiative.
From 1986 to 1990, Jackson was editor-in-chief of the Journal of American Folklore.

Filmography