Fishwick, Marshall William 1923-2006

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born May 7, 1923, in Roanoke, VA; died of complications from a blood disease, May 22, 2006, in Blacksburg, VA. Educator and author. Fishwick was a pioneering professor of popular culture and a founder of the Popular Culture Association. His undergraduate work was completed at the University of Virginia in 1943; next, he earned a master's at the University of Wisconsin in 1946 and a doctorate from Yale University in 1949. He would also pursue postgraduate work in Denmark and Germany. Joining the faculty at Washington and Lee University in 1950, where he taught until 1967, Fishwick would go on to teach at Lincoln University for two years and was a professor of history at Temple University from 1970 to 1976. He finished off his career at Virginia Polytechnic University from 1976 until his retirement in 2003. Not only was Fishwick one of the first to consider popular culture an appropriate subject for formal academic study, but his teaching methods were also unconventional and inspiring to his students. He regularly employed film and sound recordings in his lessons, and his entertaining lecture style made him popular in the classroom. Fishwick was also a respected scholar and prolific author. Among his over three dozen written and edited texts are American Heroes (1954), Parameters of Popular Culture (1974), Around the Word in Forty Years (1984), Great Awakenings: Popular Religion and Popular Culture (1995), and Popular Culture: Cavespace to Cyberspace (1999).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, May 28, 2006, p. B15.

Washington Post, May 26, 2006, p. B6.