Ray B. Browne (1922-2009)

Ray B. Browne, the founder of the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) and the father of the scholarly study of popular culture, died on October 22, 2009, at eighty-seven years of age.

Ray Broadus Browne was born on January 15, 1922, near Millport, Alabama, where he grew up. As a teenager he worked picking cotton in the fields for ten cents a day. During the Depression, his family struggled. Ray joined the army and served in Europe during World War II. After the war he studied literature at the University of Birmingham and the University of Nottingham. He graduated from the University of Alabama in 1943, where he majored in English literature. He earned the master of arts degree in English literature at Columbia University and went on to the doctorate program at UCLA. There he met and worked with Wayland Hand, who encouraged Ray's interest in folklore and became his lifelong friend.

Ray knew poverty and he knew hard work. He also knew tragedy. On Christmas Day, 1964, driving in Alabama with his wife Olwyn (Orde) and their three sons, his car was struck by a teenager who was joyriding in a stolen car. Olwyn, who was pregnant, was killed, as was their youngest son, Rowan. Their other two sons, Glenn and Kevin, survived, and Ray was bedridden for months and bore the scars, both literal and figurative, for the rest of his life. Later he married Alice "Pat" Matthews. Ray and Pat had a daughter, Alicia. Pat became Ray's partner in all ways, as he developed the popular-culture movement both on campus and off. The Ray and Pat Browne Popular Culture Collection at the library at Bowling Green State University stands as a monument to their partnership.

Ray's literary interests and publications included Mark Twain and Herman Melville; in fact, he often compares his southern small-town upbringing to the places and people Twain wrote of. His combined sense of American culture and populism are clearly visible in his lifelong scholarly interest in the folklore he experienced in his own life. Folklore and folk belief as important areas of study resonated strongly with Ray. When he received his doctorate in literature from UCLA in 1956, he had already begun a career as a folklorist and was an active member of the American Folklore Society.

Ray Browne's folklore publications include his work on Alabama ghost stories, A Night with theHants and Other Alabama Folk Experiences (Popular Press, 1976). He wrote Popular Beliefsand Practices from Alabama (University of California Press, 1958) and The Alabama Folk Lyric: A Study in the Origins and Media of Dissemination (Popular Press, 1979). The influence of Wayland Hand is evident in the early publications. Browne also published articles on proverbs and children's games. Much of this research predates but anticipates the performance-centered paradigm that would emerge in the 1970s.

But Ray was a restless intellect. Folklore satisfied his need to validate the lives and lore of common people, but he felt that the vast mass media also required scholarly attention. He said so often, at AFS meetings and elsewhere, and it cost him some friends.

After teaching appointments at the University of Nebraska (where he cites Louise Pound as an inspiration), University of Maryland, and Purdue University, and ready for a change after the devastating automobile accident, he came to Bowling Green State University in Ohio in 1967, where he was to make his most important contributions to the scholarly discourse. Teaching in the Department of English, he founded the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and the Journal of Popular Culture, both in 1967. In 1970 he founded the Popular Culture Association and also the Popular Press for the publication of book-length manuscripts. Ray Browne once told me that he put some thought into the decision to use the term "popular culture." He wanted to bring what he once called a "class-action suit" against academia. The term predates Ray's use of it and can be traced at least as far back as 1854. It was Ray...