It is with great sadness that acknowledge the recent passing of folklorist, music scholar, and Penn Press author and former Faculty Editorial Board member Roger D. Abrahams. Penn Press Director Eric Halpern writes:
There will be many tributes to Roger D. Abrahams from his colleagues and students. We will remember him fondly in addition as a friend of Penn Press. Roger served on the Faculty Editorial Board from 1990 to 2004, as chair for a number of those years, and long afterward, as chair emeritus, chose often to attend the monthly FEB meetings. He was always a generous, constructive, well-informed critic of the publication proposals put forward for the Board's consideration. Roger was also a Penn Press author, submitting to the same editorial process to which he in part was responsible for subjecting others: in 2005 we published his Everyday Life: A Poetics of Vernacular Practices and a year later, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Blues for New Orleans: Mardi Gras and America's Creole Soul, which he wrote in collaboration with Nick Spitzer, John F. Szwed, and Robert Farris Thompson. Both are books we remain proud to have published.
Beyond the professional association, Roger made deep, lasting personal connections with members of the Penn Press staff. We will miss him.
