Don Yoder (August 27, 1921– August 11, 2015) was an American folklorist specializing in the study of Pennsylvania Dutch, Quaker, and Amish and other Anabaptist folklife in Pennsylvania who wrote at least 15 books on these subjects.[ A professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania,][ ][ Unknown] and is credited with "bringing the idea of "folklife" to the United States".
Early life and education
Yoder was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Academic career
He taught at Union Theological Seminary, Muhlenberg College, and Franklin and Marshall College. At the latter, he co-founded – with Dr. Alfred Shoemaker and Dr. William Frey – the Pennsylvania Dutch Folklore Center and the journal The Pennsylvania Dutchman. In 1950, Yoder, Shoemaker and Frey founded the Pennsylvania Dutch Folk Festival – now the Kutztown Folk Festival. This is the oldest continuously operated annual folklife festival in the United States.
At the festival, Yoder and his colleagues aimed to showcase an entire way of life rather than just the expressive culture of a community (as other American folk festivals did). Taking inspiration from scholarship and museum practice in Germany and particularly Scandinavia ( Volkskunde
In 1956, Yoder joined the University of Pennsylvania.[2006 Don Yoder Lecture Milwaukee Wisconsin] Yoder was key to the creation of the university's Department of Folklore and Folklife,
Yoder wrote about many aspects of folklife studies, specializing in religion, religious music, Fraktur, foodways, costume, and other material culture. His books, especially American Folklife (1976) and Discovering American Folklife (1990) and his articles on folklife studies in the 1960s and 1970s are seminal texts in the field of folkloristics.
Affiliations
Yoder served as president of the American Folklore Society in 1981. An annual lecture at the Society is named in his honour as well as a graduate award.
Yoder was influential in the creation of the American Folklife Center. In 1970, Yoder was one of the witness before Congress as part of the hearings examining the concept of an American Folklife Foundation, where he testified in favour of such a foundation. When the American Folklife Center was founded six years later, Yoder was named as one of its original Trustees.
Collections
The University of North Carolina has a Don Yoder Collection of American Hymnody.
Selected publications
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Yoder, Don (1961). Pennsylvania Spirituals. Lancaster: Pennsylvania Folklife Society. .
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Yoder, Don (1968). 'Foreword' to Johnson, Guy Benton (1968) Folk Culture on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, Hatboro, Pa.: Folklore Associates.
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Yoder, Don (1972). "Folk Cookery," "Folk Costume," and "Folk Medicine" in Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction (ed. Richard Dorson). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. .
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Yoder, Don (1976). American Folklife. London : University of Texas Press. .
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Yoder, Don (1980). Pennsylvania German Immigrants, 1709–1786: Lists Consolidated from Yearbooks of the Pennsylvania German Folklore Society, Genealogical Publishing Company. . .
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Yoder, Don (1990). The Picture-Bible of Ludwig Denig; a Pennsylvania German Emblem Book. New York, N.Y.: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Museum of American Folk Art and the Pennsylvania German Society: Distributed in the United States ... by Rizzoli International Publications. . .
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Yoder, Don (1990). Discovering American folklife: studies in ethnic, religious, and regional culture. Ann Arbor.: UMI Research Press. .
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Yoder, Don and Graves, Thomas E. (2000) Hex Signs: Pennsylvania Dutch Barn Symbols & Their Meanings. New York: E.P. Dutton. . .
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Yoder, Don (2003). Groundhog Day. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole. .
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Yoder, Don (2005). The Pennsylvania German broadside: a history and guide. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press for the Library Co. of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania German Society. .
External links
