University of California , Los Angeles
Who did Samuel G. Armistead work for from 1956 to 1967?
Samuel G . Armistead Samuel Gordon Armistead ( August 21 , 1927 – August 7 , 2013 ) was an American ethnographer , linguist , folklorist , historian , literary critic and professor of Spanish . He is considered one of the most notable Hispanist scholars of the second half of the 20th and early 21st century . Biography . Samuel Gordon Armistead was born in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania and was raised in Chestnut Hill , Philadelphia . His mother , Elizabeth Tucker Russell Armistead , was a historian and student of foreign languages ; and he had , at least , one brother , Harry Armistead . He came from a family of lawyers and bankers . As a teenager , Armistead suffered an accident with explosives that caused the loss of an eye and some fingers . He graduated from Penn Charter School in 1945 . Afterwards he spent six months in the U.S . Merchant Marine and traveled to France and the Caribbean . Guided by his desire to learn Spanish ( the language having attracted him since his adolescence ) , he lived in Cuba , where he had relatives and friends , for several seasons , studying and perfecting his Spanish . His stay in Cuba also whetted his appetite for Hispanic literature and culture . Beginning in the fall of 1945 he studied Spanish literature at Princeton University , receiving his doctorate in Spanish literature and Romance languages in 1955 with a thesis entitled La gesta de las mocedades de Rodrigo : Reflections of a Lost Epic Poem in the Cronica de los Reyes de Castilla and the Cronica General de 1344 , written under the direction of Américo Castro . By this time he had begun his teaching career at Princeton ( 1953–1955 ) . Ultimately he became a professor at the University of California , Los Angeles ( UCLA ) ( 1956 - 1967 ) , Purdue University in Indiana , ( 1967 - 1968 ) , the University of Pennsylvania ( 1968 - 1982 ) , and the University of California , Davis , where he taught from 1982 until his death in 2013 . In 1957 , Armistead initiated a collaborative project to collect , edit and study the massive body of Hispanic oral literature from a comparative literature perspective . He worked closely with another eminent Hispanist scholar , Joseph H . Silverman ( 1924–1989 ) , and the musicologist Israel J . Katz ( born 1930 ) , with both of whom he developed an extensive body of work that focused primarily on the oral literature of the Sephardic communities of Morocco and the East . He also worked closely with Hispanist Manuel da Costa Fontes on studies focusing especially on the oral traditions of Portugal and Brazil . Beginning in 1975 , Sam Armistead conducted a field study on the Hispanic linguistics of Spanish colonial communities in Louisiana , communities that have existed in that state since the 18th century and still do . The book he published from that study is The Spanish Tradition in Louisiana ( 1992 ) . More recently he was engaged in researching additional aspects of Louisiana Spanish and its oral literature . Between 2000 and 2002 he was co-chair of the Departments of Spanish and Classics at the University of California , Davis . In 2003 he published a six-volume collection of Portuguese traditional romances from the Azores Islands , and he was at work on subsequent volumes . at the time of his death . He retired in 2010 from UC Davis , as professor emeritus . Armistead died on August 7 , 2013 , at 85 years old , in Davis , California , due to complications from surgery . Career . His studies were especially focused on medieval Spanish language and literature , Hispanic folk literature , comparative literature and folklore . He studied ballads of Spain and North Africa . He excelled also in his studies of minority and archaic ( but still existing ) languages , such as the Spanish language of the Isleño communities in Louisiana and , especially , the Sephardic Jews language , Ladino . Armistead was author of a multi-volume series concerning the traditional literature of the Sephardic Jews and is author , co-author , editor , or co-editor of over twenty books and several hundred articles on medieval Spanish literature , modern Hispanic oral literature , and comparative literature . His research fields that have had special impact include early poetry , medieval history , Hispanic dialectology , the Spanish epic and Romance , old and traditional . He conducted numerous field surveys on the language and oral literature of the Sephardic communities of Morocco , the Middle East , rural communities in Portugal , Spain and Israel , and several sites in the United States . In addition , he performed pioneering studies on various genres of Hispanic oral tradition , such as the kharjas , riddles , the paremeología and folktales . Personal life . Armistead spent his last years in Northern California . He was married for some time with Maria del Pilar Valcarcel-Calderon . After his divorce , he married Annie Laurie Meltzoff , a yoga instructor . Works . His books , written either in English or in Spanish , are : - Judeo-Spanish Ballads from Bosnia ( with Joseph H . Silverman ) , 1971 - Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews , Vol . I : The Judeo-Spanish Ballad Chapbooks of Yacob Abraham Yona ( with Joseph H . Silverman ) , May 1 , 1972 - Romances judeo-españoles de Tánger ( Judeo-Spanish Romances of Tangier , with Joseph H . Silverman ) , 1977 - El romancero judeo-español en el Archivo Menéndez Pidal ( The Judeo-Spanish ballads in the Archive Menéndez Pidal , with several authors ) ( 1978 ) - Tres calas en el romancero ( Three bays in the ballads , with Joseph H . Silverman ) , 1979 - Hispania Judaica : Studies on the history , language , and literature of the Jews in the Hispanic world ( with Joseph H . Silverman and Josep M . Sola-Solé ) , 1980 - Judeo-Spanish Ballads from New York ( with Joseph H . Silverman ) , 1981 - Seis romancerillos de cordel sefardíes ( Six ballads of Sephardic string , with Silverman and Iacob M . Hassán ) , 1981 - En torno al romancero sefardí : hispanismo y balcanismo de la tradición judeo-española ( Around the Sephardic ballads : Hispanism and Balkanism of the Judeo-Spanish ( with Joseph H . Silverman ) , 1982 . - Musica Y Poesia Popular De España Y Portugal ( Music and Popular Poetry of Spain and Portugal , reedition of book written by Kurt Schindler in 1941 ) , 1991 - Bibliografías del romancero oral 1 ( Bibliographies of oral ballads 1 ) , 1992 - The Spanish Tradition in Louisiana : I , Isleño Folkliterature ( with musical transcriptions by Israel J . Katz ) , 1992 - Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews ( three volumes , with Joseph H . Silverman and Israel J . Katz ) , 1972 - 1994 . - La tradición épica de las Mocedades de Rodrigo ( The epic tradition of Rodrigo Mocedades ) , 1999 Honors and awards . - Medieval Academy of America ( Fellow , 1973 ) - Doctor of Humane Letters ( Georgetown University , 1990 ) - American Folklore Society ( Fellow , 1991 ) - National Jewish Book Award in the Jewish Folklore and Anthropology category for Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews with Joseph H . Silverman ( 1994 ) - Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española ( corresponding member , 1998 ) - U.C . Davis Faculty Research Lecturer ( 1998–1999 ) - Premio Internacional ( International Award ) Elio Antonio de Nebrija , received in the University of Salamanca ( 1999 ) . - Distinguished Lecturer in Medieval Studies ( Arizona State University , Tempe , 2000 ) - U.C . Davis Distinguished Professor ( 2003 ) - Elected foreign Corresponding Member - Named a corresponding member of the Real Academia Española ( June 2009 ) - Awarded Doctor honoris causa , Universidad de Alcalá ( Madrid , December 2010 ) .