Marshall Fishwick, 82; Professor Pioneered Study of Pop Culture
Marshall Fishwick, 82, a professor and pioneer in the study of popular culture, died Monday at his home in Blacksburg, Va., of complications from a blood disease.
Fishwick co-founded the Popular Culture Assn. in the late 1960s and published hundreds of works. He began his teaching career at Washington and Lee University in 1949 and retired from Virginia Tech in 2003.
Best-selling author Tom Wolfe, a student of Fishwick’s at Washington and Lee, called Fishwick the best professor and “most magnetic teacher” he ever had. He said he was inspired to pursue a graduate degree in American studies at Yale University because Fishwick had.
“To ask a scholar to define popular culture is like asking a fish to define water,” Fishwick once said. “The point is we’re in it all the time. We’re immersed in it.”
Colleague Sam Riley said he was taken aback when he first saw Fishwick teach a class. Fishwick discarded traditional methods, using multiple tape recorders and movie projectors.
“He would talk a blue streak, leaping back and forth among the various machines,” Riley said. “The students, of course, loved it.”
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