Bruce Jackson (scholar)
Bruce Jackson was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1936, served in the Marines from 1953-1956, attended Newark College of Engineering (now New Jersey Institute of Technology) for three years, received a BA from Rutgers University in 1960, and an MA from Indiana University’s School of Letters in 1962. From 1963 through 1967 he was a Junior Fellow in Harvard University’s Society of Fellows.
He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1971), was nominated for a Grammy (1974), named an Associate Member of the Folklore Fellows by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters (1995), and Chevalier in l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2002. He was president of the American Folklore Society (1984), chairman of the board of trustees of the American Folklore Center in the Library of Congress (1988-89, trustee 1984-89), and director, then trustee of the Newport Folk Foundation (1965—).
He is the author or editor of 25 books, some of which are Pictures from a Drawer: Prison and the Art of Portraiture (Temple University Press, 2009), The Story is True: The Art and Meaning of Telling Stories (Temple University Press 2009), Late Friends (Center Working Papers 2005), Disorderly Conduct (University of Illinois Press, 1992), Fieldwork (University of Illinois Press, 1987), Law and Disorder: Criminal Justice in America (University of Illinois Press 1985), Death Row (with Diane Christian, Beacon Press, 1980), The Programmer (Doubleday, 1979), Killing Time: Life in the Arkansas Penitentiary (Cornell University Press, 1977), “Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me”: Narrative Poetry from Black Oral Tradition (Harvard University Press, 1974); Wake Up Dead Man: Afro-American Worksongs from Texas Prisons (Harvard University Press, 1972), In the Life: Versions of the Criminal Experience (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972), and A Thief’s Primer (Macmillan, 1969).
With Diane Christian, he has directed and produced five documentary films: Death Row (1979), Creeley (1988), Out of Order (1983), Robert Creeley: Willy’s Reading (1982), and William August May (1982).
His photographs have been widely published and exhibited. The most recent exhibitions are Portraits from a Prison (Arkansas Studies Institute, 2009), Cummins Wide (Albright-Knox Art Gallery 2009 and Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University, 2008), American Gulag (Lega di Cultura di Piadena and Circolo Gianni Bosio, Rome, 2007), Bridging Buffalo (Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, 2006-2007), and Mirrors (Nina Freudenheim Gallery, 2004).
His work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Fund for Investigative Journalism, Playboy Foundation, Levi Strauss Foundation, Polaroid Foundation, New York Council for the Humanities, American Philosophical Society, and other agencies and foundations.
He has spent his entire academic career at the University of Buffalo. He joined it as an assistant professor of English and Comparative Literature in 1967, was promoted to associate professor a year later and to professor in 1971. He became SUNY Distinguished Professor in 1997 and Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture in 1997. He has been also been adjunct professor in the UB School of Law and Jurisprudence, and the departments of Media Studies, and Sociology.
Since 2002, he has been editor and publisher of the political web journal [1] Buffalo Report. In the past few years, his articles have appeared frequently in Artvoice and Counterpunch. He has also published articles and photographs in Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, New York Times Magazine, Film Comment, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, Texas Observer, Rolling Stone, Ácoma, Antioch Review, Sing Out!, Minnesota Review, Nation, New Republic, Criminal Law Bulletin, Latino-America, Senses of Cinema and other periodicals. From 1986-1990 he was editor of Journal of American Folklore.