More about Professor Howard Sacks

His publications have appeared in American Quarterly, American Music, Theatre Survey, the Journal of American Folklore, Contemporary Sociology, Social Forces, Symbolic Interaction, the John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly, as well as numerous magazines and newspapers. His book, Way Up North in Dixie: A Black Family's Claim to the Confederate Anthem (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2003 [1993]), was hailed in the Nation as "the fullest, most finely detailed account of the musical life of a nineteenth-century African American family anywhere in the United States," and received a 1994 Ohioana Book Award.

Sacks has served on panels of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as on the board of directors of the National Council for the Traditional Arts, and consults regularly with organizations and communities on arts and cultural activities.

As director of Kenyon's Rural Life Center, Professor Sacks regularly guides projects involving the local community. He has received over thirty grants for scholarly research and public programs, including five award-winning projects on regional life: Seems Like Romance to Me: Traditional Fiddle Tunes from Ohio; The Community Within: Black Experience in Knox County, Ohio; Rural Delivery: Family Farming in Knox County, Ohio; Life along the Kokosing; and, Where Does Our Food Come From?. Professor Sacks was twice awarded an NEH Fellowship for College Teachers for his scholarly research.

Howard Sacks is also well known in the area as a guitarist and singer whose repertoire includes blues, country, and rockabilly. He has appeared on three recordings.