Pennsylvania State University faculty

Samuel Preston Bayard (April 10, 1908, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – January 10, 1997, in State College, Pennsylvania) was an American folklorist and musicologist. He received a B.A. in English from Pennsylvania State University in 1934 and later earned an M.A. from Harvard University.
He collected fiddle and fife tunes in southwestern Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia from 1928 to 1963. He is known for his interest in the melodies of traditional music at a time when often only the texts were collected. He introduced the concept of "melodic families", which are groups of tunes that appears to be structurally related. He traced the origins of many traditional American fiddle tunes back to the British Isles.
In addition to his work on fiddle tunes, he was the expert on the use of the fife in traditional American music. He is fondly remembered by former students for his large collection of snuffboxes, which he used regularly.
He established the folklore program at Pennsylvania State University, and taught there from 1945 to 1973
He was a fellow of the American Folklore Society, and its president from 1965 to 1966.
He died on January 10, 1997, in State College, Pennsylvania. An award in his name has been established at Penn State for graduate students in comparative literature.

Erich Auerbach (November 9, 1892 – October 13, 1957) was a German philologist and comparative scholar and critic of literature. His best-known work is Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, a history of representation in Western literature from ancient to modern times frequently cited as a classic in the study of realism in literature. Along with Leo Spitzer, Auerbach is widely recognized as one of the foundational figures of comparative literature.

Carolyn Wood Sherif (1922–1982) was an American social psychologist who helped to develop social judgment theory and contributed pioneering research in the areas of the self-system, group conflict, cooperation, and gender identity. She also assumed a leading role in psychology both nationally as well as internationally. In addition to performing seminal social psychology research, Wood Sherif devoted herself to teaching her students and was recognized for her efforts with an American Psychological Association award named in her honor that is presented annually.