Jay Ruby (October 25, 1935 – February 23, 2022) was an American scholar who was a professor in the Department of Anthropology at
Temple University
Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist ministe ...
until his retirement in 2003. He received his B.A. in history (1960) and Ph.D. in anthropology (1969) from the
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...
.
Ruby was a leader in the field of
visual anthropology
Visual anthropology is a subfield of social anthropology that is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnography, ethnographic photography, film and, since the mid-1990s, new media. More recently it has been used by historians ...
. He died on February 23, 2022, at the age of 86.
Fieldwork and research
As an archaeologist, Ruby conducted excavations in the American Southwest, West Mexico and the Republic of the Sudan. As a music critic and journalist, he interviewed pop music musicians, wrote album reviews and articles for the magazine ''Jazz and Pop''. As an ethnographer of visual culture, he conducted long term participant-observation in Central Pennsylvania and Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. Larry Gross, USC and Ruby edited enhanced ebook, ''The Complete Sol Worth''. In the fall of 2008, Ruby began a study of Bohemian Southern California that resulted in three books (see below).
Filmography
*''A Country Auction: The Paul V. Leitzel Sale'' (1983)
*''Can I Get A Quarter?'' (1983)
*''Rebekah and Sophie: A Lesbian Family'' (2005)
*''Taylor Family Portrait'' (2005)
*''Dear Old Oak Parkers'' (2006)
*''Oak Park Regional Housing Center'' (2006)
*''Val'' (2006)
*''Country Auction Study Film: Reflexive Musings'' (2010)
Major publications
*Editor, A Crack in the Mirror: Reflexive Perspectives in Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1982
*Editor, Robert J. Flaherty, A Biography. Written by Paul Rotha. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1983
*Editor with Larry Gross and John Katz. Image Ethics: The Moral Rights of Subjects in Photographs, Film and Television. New York: Oxford University Press. 1988
*Editor, The Cinema of John Marshall, Routledge. 1993
*Secure the Shadow: Death and Photography in America. Cambridge: MIT Press. 1995
*The World of Francis Cooper: Nineteenth Century Pennsylvania Photographer. University Park: Penn State University Press. 1999
*Picturing Culture: Essays on Film and Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2000 ()
*Editor with Larry Gross and John Katz. Image Ethics in the Digital World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2003
*Editor with Marcus Banks. Made to Be Seen: Historical Perspectives on Visual Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2011
*Coffee House Positano: A Bohemian Oasis in Malibu 1957–1962. Boulder: University of Colorado Press. 2013 ()
*Editor with Larry Gross. The Complete Sol Worth.Los Angeles:USC Annenberg Press. 2013 ()
* The Property: Malibu's Other Colony. 2016. ()
*Editor, Bohemia in Southern California. ()
See also
*
Tim Asch
Timothy Asch (July 16, 1932 – October 3, 1994) was an American anthropologist, photographer, and ethnographic filmmaker. Along with John Marshall and Robert Gardner, Asch played an important role in the development of visual anthropology. He ...
*
Barbara Myerhoff
Notes
References
*Ruby, Jay
"The Professionalization of Visual Anthropology in the United States - The 1960s and 1970s". Visual Anthropology Review, vol. 17, No. 2:5-12, 2002.
. ''Picturing Culture: Essays on Film and Anthropology''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
. ''Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media & Culture'', vol. 3 no 2 (1990).
. In ''Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology'', David Levinson and Melvin Ember, editors. New York: Henry Holt and Company, vol. 4:1345–1351, 1996.
. ''A Crack in the Mirror: Reflexive Perspectives in Anthropology.'' Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.
. ''Semiotica 30½'' (1980), pp. 153–179.
External links
Personal Website
*
'
*
ttp://www.der.org/films/filmmakers/jay-ruby.html Documentary Educational Resources Filmmaker Profile
University of California, Los Angeles alumni
A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ruby, Jay
1935 births
2022 deaths
American anthropologists
Visual anthropologists
Temple University faculty