Earlier this month, ACS faculty and students gathered in Dr. Harold Scheub’s honor for the reading of his Memorial Resolution by Prof. Matthew Brown.
Dr. Scheub was a leading scholar in African oral traditions and folklore and an unforgettable orator who used his unique gifts to bring the culture and stories of Africa to life for generations of UW students. Over the course of his 43-year career as the Evjue-Bascom Professor of Humanities in the Department of African Languages and Literature (now the Department of African Cultural Studies), he published more than two dozen books and over 70 articles. Scheub was known for his distinctive and memorable teaching style and routinely held forth to rooms of more than 500 students.
Scheub’s path to African storytelling was as remarkable as the tales he studied. After serving as a jet mechanic in the Korean War, he spent two years teaching in Uganda just before that country’s independence. Captivated by the continent’s rich traditions, he returned to South Africa during his graduate studies at UW–Madison. There, he spent four years walking 1,500 miles along the eastern coast, carrying nearly fifty pounds of recording equipment to capture the poetry, tales, and myths of the Xhosa, Zulu, Ndebele, Swati, and Sotho peoples. In total, he walked more than 6,000 miles through South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, and Lesotho to record oral traditions. These stories became the foundation for his celebrated African Storyteller course, which he began teaching in the 1970s to be experienced by 18,000 students over the course of his career.
Beyond his scholarship and teaching, Scheub also served as department chair three times, won numerous teaching, research, and service awards, and in 2011 established the Professor Harold Scheub Great People Scholarship Fund to support UW–Madison students with financial need. During the 2000s, he became the opening speaker for UW’s SOAR sessions, welcoming new students to campus each summer with the same memorable storytelling style that defined his lectures. Known for holding forth in lecture halls of more than 500 students, Scheub captivated audiences with his unmatched oratory but also demanded respect and attentiveness, famously locking the doors to his lectures so that latecomers would have to listen from the hallway.
Dr. Scheub’s scholarship, teaching, and mentorship continue to shape the Department of African Cultural Studies and the thousands of students whose lives he touched. His legacy endures in the stories he preserved, the students he inspired, and the future scholars supported through his scholarship fund.