Dan Ben-Amos (September 3, 1934 – March 26, 2023) was an Israeli-American folklorist and academic who worked as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he held the Graduate Program Chair for the Department of Folklore and Folklife.
During his sophomore year, dissatisfied with his academic major, he switched to pursue a degree in Hebrew literature with an interest in folklore, studying with Dov Noy.
[5] With its focus on context, Ben-Amos's work helped to usher in a new performance based perceptive in the field of folkloristics.
Before beginning his Assistant Professorship in Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, which he held from 1966 to 1967, Ben-Amos conducted folklore research in Nigeria on the oral tradition of the Edo people in Benin City and its rural surroundings.
[5][7] Dan Ben-Amos's articles appeared in translation in the following languages: Chinese, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, and Turkish.
Volume 1: Tales from the Sephardic Dispersion[10] 2006 National Jewish Book Award, finalist in the Scholarship category for Folktales of the Jews.