David E. Whisnant (1938–2024)

David Eugene Whisnant died peacefully and gently at his home in Chapel Hill, NC on December 10, 2024. He was 86.

Dr. Whisnant graduated with a PhD in English from Duke University in 1965. Soon after, he joined the English department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he met Archie Green. Alongside Green and other Illinois ethnomusicology colleagues, he began to explore the expressive culture of his beloved mountains, and of working people both there and elsewhere: “coal mining songs, early country music, blues and ballad singers, fiddlers and banjo pickers, honky-tonk and western swing, Cajun singers and corridos.” Gradually, the outlines of an analytical framework incorporating politics, history, and culture – one that would define his work in what came to be called “Appalachian Studies” and beyond – began to coalesce.

Dr. Whisnant co-founded the North Carolina Folklife Institute in 1972. In 1975, he joined the American Studies department at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). He roamed the countryside seeking traditional performers for the Maryland State Arts Council to feature at its 1970s Maryland Folklife Festivals. Also in the 1970s, he consulted and worked on staff for several Smithsonian Festivals of American Folklife and for the National Folk Festival at Wolf Trap Farm Park. He launched and directed UMBC’s Traditional Music Concerts series, bringing a rich variety of traditional musicians from across Maryland – and beyond – to campus to perform for local audiences.

Dr. Whisnant moved back to North Carolina in 1988 to join the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) as Professor of English. With his connections in the area and UNC’s strengths in folklore, folklife, and southern traditional and country music, he hoped to find intellectual community in Chapel Hill, and he taught there until 2000. Throughout his career, he won fellowships and awards from the NEH, Rockefeller Foundation, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, American Folklore Society, North Carolina Folklore Society, the Appalachian Studies Association, and the National Council on Public History. His books include Modernizing the Mountaineer: People, Power, and Planning in Appalachia, All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region, and Rascally Signs in Sacred Places: The Politics of Culture in Nicaragua. He was also a former AFS member.

Read Anne Mitchell Whisnant’s obituary for her husband to learn more about Dr. David Eugene Whisnant’s life as researcher, writer, teacher, blogger; builder and fixer; devoted husband and father; and lifelong learner.