John Holmes McDowell

John Holmes McDowell
Born1946
NationalityAmerican
OccupationProfessor
Academic background
Alma materUniversity of Texas at Austin
Academic work
DisciplineAnthropologist
Sub-disciplineFolklore
InstitutionsIndiana University Bloomington

John Holmes McDowell (born 24 September 1946) is a Professor in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University Bloomington. He also serves as Director of the Diverse Environmentalisms Research Team (DERT) headquartered at Indiana University. Broadly speaking his work is centered on performance and communication as well as the interplay of creativity and tradition. Geographically most of his fieldwork has been in Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, and Ghana. His interests include Speech play and verbal art; the corrido of Greater Mexico; music, myth, and cosmology in the Andes; ecoperformativity; commemoration; folklorization; ethnopoetics; Latin America; the United States.