Early in the Troubles, Henry Glassie came into a community of active story-tellers in County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. There he discovered a world about to be lost. Over the course of ten years’ research Glassie recorded the life and art, the folklore, history, and common work, but particularly the stories of that tiny community -- and of an Ireland about to disappear. A film celebrating Glassie’s contribution to Irish and world anthropology, directed by Pat Collins and titled Henry Glassie: Field Work, had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019.
Glassie is a College Professor at Indiana University, who has also done fieldwork in the US, England, Sweden, Italy, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, China, Japan, Nigeria, and Brazil. He has served as president of the American Folklore Society and the Vernacular Architecture Forum. Glassie has won many awards for his work, including the Charles Homer Haskins Prize of the American Council of Learned Societies for a distinguished career of humanistic scholarship. He is married to fellow folklorist and ethnomusicologist Pravina Shukla.
The Irish Influence is produced with the generous help of the Irish Consulate of Boston, as well as Boston College and Boston College Ireland.