Folklorist primarily remembered for his work on the folk-revival movement and on
politics and American folklore. Reuss was a native of New York City, did his
undergraduate work at Ohio Wesleyan University and his graduate work in folklore at
Indiana University. He taught for several years at Wayne State University in Detroit until
budget cuts resulted in his position being terminated. He then taught at several schools,
including Indiana University, until he decided to shift vocations. In 1981 he received a
master of social work degree from the University of Michigan, and thereafter he worked
in that field.
Aldiough Reuss published many articles, his most important work, American Folklore
and Left-Wing Politics, 1927–1957, remains unpublished. Shortly after finishing this
work as his Ph.D. dissertation in 1971, he submitted it to a university press that accepted
it, providing that certain extensive revisions were made. Having just undergone the rigors
of writing the dissertation, Reuss decided not to undertake this revision immediately; as a
result, the manuscript became something of an underground classic. This dissertation
reflected his long-standing interest that began when, as a teenager, Reuss participated in
the folk-revival movement of the late 1950s. Later he worked as a volunteer for Sing Out!
and Broadside, two important revival magazines; he also acquired an impressive personal
library that included many revival publications. Reuss became interested in the history of
the movement in which he had participated, and he wrote papers on the subject both for
his undergraduate and graduate classes. This was at a time (during the late 1960s to
1970s), when most professional folklorists considered the folk-revival movement
irrelevant to their academic discipline.
Reuss had a number of other passions, including the history of folklore studies, as
evidenced by his establishing a journal, Folklore Historian (1983). Concurrent with this
was a strong interest in the role of women in American folklore scholarship. He also
founded the Michigan chapter of the Committee to Combat Huntington’s Disease and
became a member of that organization’s national board. The apparent lack of records
concerning the history of his own family and that of his wife led Reuss into extensive
genealogical work as well. A long-time hobby of collecting baseball cards gained him
such national attention that in 1971 he was featured in a front-page story in the Wall
Street Journal.
In 1987, the year after Reuss’ death, the Folklore and History Section of the American
Folklore Society established a prize in his name for the best student paper dealing with
the history of folklore studies.
W.K.McNeil
References
Green, Archie, ed. 1993. Songs about Work: Essays in Occupational Culture for Richard A.Reuss.
Special Publication of the Folklore Institute No. 3. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
Reuss, Richard A. 1983. Songs of American Labor, Industrialization, and the Urban Work
Experience: A Discography. Ann Arbor: Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, University
of Michigan.