Samuel G. Armistead facts for kids

Samuel Gordon Armistead (born August 21, 1927 – died August 7, 2013) was an American expert in many fields. He was an ethnographer (someone who studies cultures), a linguist (someone who studies languages), and a folklorist (someone who studies traditional stories and customs). He was also a historian, a literary critic, and a professor of Spanish. Many people consider him one of the most important Hispanist scholars of his time. A Hispanist is an expert in the language, literature, and culture of Spanish-speaking countries.

Samuel Armistead's Life Story

Samuel Gordon Armistead was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He grew up in a neighborhood called Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. His mother, Elizabeth Tucker Russell Armistead, was a historian and loved learning foreign languages. His family included many lawyers and bankers. When he was a teenager, Samuel had an accident with explosives. This accident caused him to lose an eye and some fingers.

He finished high school at Penn Charter School in 1945. After that, he worked for six months in the U.S. Merchant Marine. This job allowed him to travel to France and the Caribbean. He really wanted to learn Spanish, a language he had liked since he was young. So, he lived in Cuba for a while, where he had family and friends. He studied and became very good at Spanish there. Living in Cuba also made him more interested in Hispanic literature and culture.

In 1945, he started studying Spanish literature at Princeton University. He earned his highest degree, a doctorate, in Spanish literature and Romance languages in 1955. His main project was about an old Spanish epic poem.

He began teaching at Princeton from 1953 to 1955. Later, he became a professor at several other universities. These included the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1956 to 1967, Purdue University in Indiana from 1967 to 1968, and the University of Pennsylvania from 1968 to 1982. Finally, he taught at the University of California, Davis, from 1982 until he passed away in 2013.

In 1957, Armistead started a big project. He wanted to collect and study a huge amount of Spanish oral literature. This means stories, songs, and poems passed down by word of mouth. He worked closely with other famous scholars. These included Joseph H. Silverman and the music expert Israel J. Katz. Together, they focused on the oral traditions of Sephardic communities. These communities were in places like Morocco and the Middle East. He also worked with Manuel da Costa Fontes on traditions from Portugal and Brazil.

Starting in 1975, Sam Armistead did a special study in Louisiana. He looked at the Spanish language spoken by communities there. These communities had been in Louisiana since the 1700s. He wrote a book about this study called The Spanish Tradition in Louisiana (1992). He continued to research more about Louisiana Spanish and its oral stories.

From 2000 to 2002, he helped lead the Spanish and Classics departments at the University of California, Davis. In 2003, he published a large collection of traditional Portuguese songs from the Azores Islands. He was working on more books when he died. He retired from UC Davis in 2010, becoming a professor emeritus.

Armistead passed away on August 7, 2013, in Davis, California. He was 85 years old. His death was due to problems after surgery.

Samuel Armistead's Career and Research

His studies mainly focused on old Spanish language and literature from the Middle Ages. He also studied Hispanic folk literature, which includes traditional stories and songs. He was an expert in comparative literature, comparing writings from different cultures. He also studied folklore, the traditional beliefs and customs of a community. He especially looked at ballads, which are story-songs, from Spain and North Africa.

He was also very good at studying languages that are old or spoken by small groups. For example, he studied the Spanish spoken by the Isleño communities in Louisiana. He also studied Ladino, the language of the Sephardic Jews.

Armistead wrote many books about the traditional literature of the Sephardic Jews. He wrote, co-wrote, or edited over twenty books. He also wrote hundreds of articles. These works covered medieval Spanish literature, modern Hispanic oral literature, and comparative literature.

His research had a big impact in several areas. These included early poetry, medieval history, and Hispanic dialectology (the study of different language forms). He also studied the Spanish epic poems and old traditional Romance songs. He traveled a lot to study the language and oral stories of Sephardic communities. He visited places like Morocco, the Middle East, rural areas in Portugal, Spain, and Israel. He also visited several places in the United States.

He also did important studies on different types of Hispanic oral traditions. These included kharjas (old poems), riddles, paremeología (the study of proverbs), and folktales.

Personal Life

Armistead spent his later years in Northern California. He was married for a time to Maria del Pilar Valcarcel-Calderon. After their divorce, he married Annie Laurie Meltzoff, who was a yoga instructor.

Major Works

Here are some of the books he wrote, in English or Spanish:

• 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), 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 tradition, with Joseph H. Silverman), 1982.
• Musica Y Poesia Popular De España Y Portugal (Music and Popular Poetry of Spain and Portugal, a new edition of a book by Kurt Schindler from 1941), 1991
• Bibliografías del romancero oral 1 (Bibliographies of oral ballads 1), 1992
• The Spanish Tradition in Louisiana: I, Isleño Folkliterature (with music notes 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

Awards and Honors

Samuel Armistead received many awards and honors for his work:

• 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 at 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).

See also

• Sephardic Jews (Judaeo-Spanish)
• Isleños in Louisiana