Jack Glazier Papers

Jack S. Glazier was born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana to David Rinkevich (1899-1972) and Rea Rosen Glazier (1901-1958). He attended Purdue University in 1961-62 before transferring to Butler University, where he earned a B.A. degree, Magna Cum Laude, in Sociology in 1965. At the University of California, Berkeley, Glazier earned both the M.A. in 1968 and Ph.D. in 1972 in Anthropology. He had joined the faculty at Oberlin College in 1971, not long after returning to the United States from anthropological fieldwork in an African community on the Mt. Kenya periphery.

Glazier was a professor at Oberlin from 1971 to his retirement in 2013. He was the recipient of numerous grants, including a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. In several books, edited volumes, and numerous articles, he identifies a central concern and thematic unity in all of his research: the problem of how marginal peoples reach for a sense of belongingness, personal efficacy, and communal dignity in the face of an unwelcoming majority. His 2012 book, Been Coming Through Some Hard Times: Race, History, and Memory in Western Kentucky, stimulated a community-wide discussion of race relations in order to ameliorate a long history of estrangement across the color line.

Glazier served a number of terms as chair, first of the department of sociology-anthropology and then the independent department of anthropology, which the college established in 1987. An esteemed teacher, he taught such advanced courses as Culture Theory, Culture Symbol and Meaning, Immigration Then and Now, and Anthropology of sub-Saharan Africa. They addressed a wide range of ethnographic and theoretical issues of central import in a liberal arts education as well as in preparing students for graduate studies. Glazier consistently asked his students to examine the wellsprings of a universal humanity amid cross-cultural differences.

An anonymous donor, in honor of Jack Glazier’s retirement, generously funded an annual lecture in his name. The speakers have so far included Jonathan Rosa, James Watson, Srimati Basu, and Deborah A. Thomas.

Sources Consulted

Oberlin College Archives

Jack Glazier Papers case file, curriculum vitae, 2003.

“Professor Jack Glazier Retires,” The Source, Oberlin College, 5/25/2013.

Note written by Anne Cuyler Salsich.