Ray B. Browne
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Ray Broadus Browne (
Early life
Ray Browne was born in
College and World War II
Browne attended the University of Alabama due to the encouragement of a high school teacher, Elbert Coleman, and the financial support of his sister Joan. Following graduation, he immediately entered the U.S. Army and served in an artillery corps in the European theater in World War II. His unit entered Europe at Marseille and was part of the allied thrust that drove the Germans back into Germany. His corps was in Germany at the war’s end.
Following the war, Browne was one of thousands of GIs who stayed in Europe for a year. He studied
Early academic life
Browne returned to the United States and entered the master's program at
Upon graduation from UCLA, Browne took a job as an assistant professor at the
Primary academic life
In his early years at B.G.S.U., Browne founded the
Browne was named a Distinguished University Professor at BGSU in 1977 and taught there until his retirement in 1992.
In 1970, Browne founded the
In 1969, Browne founded and began to develop the Popular Culture Library at B.G.S.U. This library now holds 190,000 catalogued books and many hundreds of thousands of additional materials (e.g., comic books, fanzines, photos, games, postcards, posters). It is one of the most important collections of popular culture artifacts in the world. The library is now named the Ray and Pat Browne Popular Culture Library.
In 1970, Browne founded the Popular Culture Association as an organization to promote the study of popular culture. In 1979, he founded the American Culture Association to promote specifically the study of
In 1971, Browne organized the first national conference of the Popular Culture Association. This conference showcased the broad conceptual thinking and foundational ideas that would lead to the widespread teaching of popular culture at American and international universities. The conference grew quickly in size and participation, and for many years has featured the presentation of more than 2000
In 1979, Browne helped organize the first national conference of the American Culture Association. This conference is held in conjunction with the Popular Culture Association Conference and marked its 30th anniversary with the 2009 conference.
Browne had numerous colleagues with whom he worked in developing the academic study of popular culture, including
Works
Ray Browne's works through the years laid the conceptual foundations for the study of popular culture. Among his key foundational works are his essay "Popular Culture: Notes Toward a Definition", which first appeared in the book Popular Culture and Curricula (1972, edited by Ray Browne and Ronald Ambrosetti), and books such as Popular Culture and the Expanding Consciousness (1973), Challenges in American Culture (1970, with Larry Landrum and W.K. Bottorff), The Popular Culture Explosion (1972, with David Madden), Heroes of Popular Culture (1972, with Marshall Fishwick and Michael Marsden), Icons of Popular Culture (1970, with Marshall Fishwick), Icons of America (1978, with Marshall Fishwick), Rituals and Ceremonies in Popular Culture (1980), Objects of Special Devotion: Fetishism in Popular Culture (1982), Against Academia (Popular Press, 1989; a semi-autobiographical book), Dominant Symbols in Popular Culture (1990, with Marshall Fishwick and Kevin O. Browne), Continuities in Popular Culture: The Present in the Past & the Past in the Present and Future (1993, with Ronald Ambrosetti), Popular Culture Studies Across the Curriculum (2005), Profiles of Popular Culture: A Reader (2005), and Mission Underway: The History of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association and the Popular Culture Movement 1967–2001 (2002).
Other books of note by Ray Browne include Melville's Drive to Humanism (1971), Popular Beliefs and Practices from Alabama (1958), Dimensions of Detective Fiction (1976, with Larry Landrum and Pat Browne), A Night With the Hants & Other Alabama Folk Experiences (1976), The Many Tongues of Literacy (1992), Ordinary Reactions to Extraordinary Events (2001, with Arthur Neal), The Detective as Historian: History and Art in Historical Crime Fiction (2000, with Lawrence Kreiser), and The Guide to United States Popular Culture (2001, with Pat Browne), among many others.
Browne also published hundreds of essays and articles in academic journals and published hundreds of book reviews, most notably in the Journal of American Culture.
International conferences and travel
As a means of promoting the academic study of popular culture internationally, Ray and Pat Browne organized numerous conferences in the United Kingdom from 1978 until 2001. These included a 1978 conference at Chichester, a 1980 conference at Winchester, 1993 at York, 1995 at Oxford, 1997 at York, 1999 at Cambridge, and 2001 at Cambridge.
In addition to their international conferences, Ray and Pat made two round-the-world trips on behalf of the
The term "popular culture"
Ray Browne was credited with coining the term "popular culture" in 1967; however, he did not originate this term.
Publicity
Browne's work in popular culture was recognized not only in academia, but also by news organizations. Through the years he appeared twice on the
Personal life and death
Browne married Olwyn Carmen Orde in 1952. They had three children: Glenn (born 1956), Kevin (born 1958), and Rowan (born 1961). Olwyn and Rowan were killed in an automobile accident in 1964.
Browne was re-married in 1965 to Alice Maxine (Pat) Matthews (born 1932). They had a daughter, Alicia (born 1967). Pat helped Browne develop the popular culture movement through her management of the Popular Press and her role as a principal organizer of the Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association conferences and the international popular culture conferences from the 1970s until her retirement in 2002. She also edited the scholarly journal Clues: A Journal of Detection for many years. Ray and Pat together edited the compendium volume The Guide to United States Popular Culture (Popular Press, 2001).
Ray and Pat Browne lived in retirement in Bowling Green, Ohio where Browne continued to write and serve as book review editor for the Journal of American Culture until his death.
Browne died in his home in Bowling Green, Ohio on October 22, 2009.
Notes
- ^ Obituaries in the news, Archived 2020-04-17 at the Wayback Machine Associated Press, October 24, 2009
- ^ Although the Oxford English Dictionary lists the first use as 1854, it appears in an address by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi in 1818: Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich (1818). The Address of Pestalozzi to the British Public.
I see that it is impossible to attain this end without founding the means of popular culture and instruction upon a basis which cannot be got at otherwise than in a profound examination of Man himself; without such an investigation and such a basis all is darkness.
References
- Hoppenstand, Gary, "Ray and Pat Browne: Scholars of Everyday Life" in Pioneers in Popular Culture (Popular Press, 1999).