Ben-Amos, Dan 1934-

views updated

BEN-AMOS, Dan 1934-

PERSONAL: Born September 3, 1934, in Tel Aviv, Palestine (now Israel); immigrated to the United States, 1961; son of Zalman (a construction worker) and Rivka (a homemaker; maiden name, Feinzilber) Ben-Amos; married Paula D. Girschick (an anthropologist), 1960 (marriage ended); married Batsheva Spiegle, 1984; children: Ilana, Ariel, Itamar. Ethnicity: "Jewish." Education: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, B.A., 1961; Indiana University, M.A., 1964, Ph.D., 1967.

ADDRESSES: Home—539 East Durham St., Philadelphia, PA 19119. office—Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, 835 Williams Hall, 255 South 36th St., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305; fax: 215-573-9617. E-mail—dbamos@ sas.upenn.edu.

CAREER: Educator and folklorist. University of California, Los Angeles, assistant professor of anthropology, 1966-67; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, assistant professor, 1967-70, associate professor, 1970-77, professor of folklore and of Asian and Middle Eastern studies, 1977—, acting chair of folklore and folklife program, 1973-74, chair, 1982-84. Indiana University, assistant professor, summer, 1970. Midwest Universities Consortium for International Activities, intern, with field research in Benin City, Nigeria, 1965-66; also conducted field research in Israel. Social Science Research Council, member of joint committee on African studies, 1976.

MEMBER: International African Institute, International Association for Semiotic Studies, World Union of Jewish Studies, American Folklore Society (fellow), American Anthropological Association (fellow), Association of Jewish Studies, African Studies Association, Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters (folklore fellow).

AWARDS, HONORS: Annual prize from Israeli Society for Folk Narrative Research, 1958-59; grants from National Science Foundation, 1968, 1970, National Institute of Mental Health, 1968, and African Studies Association, 1971; fellowships from American Council of Learned Societies, 1972-73, Guggenheim Foundation, 1975-76, and National Endowment for the Humanities, 1980-81.

WRITINGS:

(With Dov Noy) Folktales of Israel, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1963.

(Editor, with Jerome R. Mintz, and translator) In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov: The Earliest Collection of Legends about the Founder of Hasidism, Shivhei ha-Besht, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1970.

(Editor, with Kenneth S. Goldstein) Thrice-Told Tales: Folktales from Three Continents, Hammermill Paper Co., 1970.

(With Kenneth S. Goldstein) Folklore: Performance and Communication, Mouton (The Hague, Netherlands), 1975.

(Editor) New Theories in Oral Literature: Literary Forms in Social Context, Tel Aviv University (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1975.

Sweet Words: Storytelling Events in Benin, Institute for the Study of Human Issues (Philadelphia, PA), 1975.

(Editor) Folklore Genres, University of Texas Press (Austin, TX), 1976.

Folklore in Context: Essays, South Asia Books (New Delhi, India), 1982.

(Editor and author of introduction) Micah Joseph Berdichevsky, Mimekor Yisrael: Classical Jewish Folktales, translation by I. M. Lask, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1990.

(Editor, with Liliane Weissberg) Cultural Memory and the Construction of Identity, Wayne State University (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Contributor to books, including African Folklore, edited by Richard M. Dorson, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1972; Folklore in the Modern World, edited by Richard M. Dorson, Mouton (The Hague, Netherlands), 1978; Forms of Folklore in Africa, edited by Bernth Lindfors, University of Texas Press (Austin, TX), 1977; Folklore Studies in the Twentieth Century, edited by Venetia Newall, Rowman & Littlefield (Totowa, NJ), 1980; and Studies in Jewish Folklore, edited by Dov Noy and Frank Talmage, Association for Jewish Studies, 1980. Past associate editor of "Monographs in Folklore and Folklife," University of Pennsylvania; editor of "Translations in Folklore Studies and Texts," Institute for the Study of Human Issues; coeditor of American Folklore Society publication series, 1973. Contributor of articles and reviews to scholarly journals, including Prooftexts: Journal of Jewish Literary History. Associate editor, Research in African Literatures; member of advisory board, Genre.