Dr. Gerald Pocius

Dr. Gerald Pocius
University Research Professor
Education Building, Rm 4034
Department of Folklore
Memorial University of Newfoundland
St. John's, NL
A1B 3X8
Phone: 709-864-8366
Email: gpocius@mun.ca

Dr. Gerald L. Pocius has recently been named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC), considered to be the highest academic honour in Canada. In citing Dr. Pocius's accomplishments, the RSC refers to him as "English Canada's leading interpreter of ordinary objects." By looking at how everyday things are used, the society goes on to comment, Dr. Pocius, "has produced studies both sensitive and rigorous, earning him international standing as a scholar. While trained as a folklorists, he is a true interdisciplinarian."

Dr. Pocius is University Research Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, where he has taught since 1977. He has also taught at Concordia University, University of Victoria, University of Calgary, and Indiana University. He received his BSc at Drexel University (1973), majoring in Sociology and History, his MA at Memorial University (1975) in Folklore, and his PhD at University of Pennsylvania (1979) in Folklore and Folklife. He has been a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow in the U.S., a Winthrop Pickard Bell Lecturer at Mount Allison University, as well as having received five SSHRC grants.

Pocius has researched and written on topics ranging from joke-telling and pop music, to tract housing and religious popular prints. He has worked on many aspects of Newfoundland folklore and popular culture, publishing studies of belief, religion, medicine, narrative, and music. His speciality has been material culture, and he has published widely on gravestones, cemeteries, textiles, folk art, architecture, furniture, and cultural landscapes. While working primarily in Newfoundland and Labrador, he has also conducted fieldwork in the United States, Great Britain, France, and Lithuania.

His book on the landscapes and spaces of one Newfoundland community, A Place to Belong, won the prestigious Chicago Folklore Prize, and the Cummings Award from the Vernacular Architecture Forum in the U. S. His other books include Textile Traditions of Eastern Newfoundland, and A Field Guide to the Vernacular Architecture of St-Pierre et Miquelon. He has edited two books, Living in a Material World: Canadian and American Perspectives in Material Culture, and Directions in Canadian Architecture and published over seventy articles and book chapters. He has served on the editorial boards of Canadian Folklore canadien, New York Folklore, Australian Folklore, Journal of American Folklore, Home Cultures, and Journal of Modern Craft, and is currently editor of the national Canadian journal, Material Culture Review.

Since 2002, he has worked extensively with UNESCO, the Government of Canada, and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador on intangible cultural heritage issues. He prepared background and positions papers on intangible heritage for the Policy Branch of the Department of Canadian Heritage in 1998 and 2002. He represented Canada at a UNESCO experts meeting in Brazil in 2002, devoted to the drafting of UNESCO’s Convention on the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (which came into force in April 2006). Since 2002, he has been a member of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, working primarily on intangible heritage issues. He taught the first courses on intangible heritage in Canada for the University of Victoria’s Cultural Resource Management program in 2005 and 2006. He has recently been involved with advising the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador on intangible heritage strategies; many of these are outlined in the new Cultural Policy Blueprint recently released by the province

He teaches material culture, vernacular architecture, medieval art and architecture, public sector folklore, as well as courses on English material culture at Memorial's Harlow Campus in Essex, England.