Jim Leary

press release: Please sign up for this event via the library website.

The first 2019 lecture in the Middleton Library Scholar'd for Life series. Professor Emeritus Jim Leary presents a multi-media lecture on the vibrant yet largely neglected folk/ethnic/roots music of diverse peoples in Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest and what that tradition tells us about the American experience.

Jim Leary is a public folklorist who was born and raised in Rice Lake in northwestern Wisconsin. He earned a B.A. in English Literature, Notre Dame; an M.A. in Folklore, University of North Carolina; and a Ph.D. in Folklore and American Studies, Indiana University. Since the early 1970s his research has focused on the traditional songs, stories, customary practices, and handwork of indigenous and immigrant peoples and their mostly rural and working class descendants in America's Upper Midwest, resulting in numerous museum exhibits, folklife festivals, public radio programs, documentary sound recordings, films, essays, and books. Director of UW's Folklore Program from 1999-2009, Leary co-founded and currently directs the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, a populist public humanities center devoted to research, the development of archival collections, and public programs regarding the languages and folklore of the region's diverse peoples.

Copies of his latest book, Folksongs of Another America: Field Recordings from the Upper Midwest, 1937-1946 will be available for purchase, and the evening will conclude with a book signing.