About the Author

Wolfgang Mieder is Professor of German and Folklore at the University of Vermont, where he served for thirty-one years as the chairperson of the Department of German and Russian. He is an internationally acknowledged proverb scholar, the author of the two-volume International Bibliography of Paremiology and Phraseology (2009), and the founding editor of Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship (since 1984). His numerous books and articles are concerned with cultural, folkloristic, historical, linguistic, literary, philological, social, and political topics. Among his books related to the present volume are The Politics of Proverbs: From Traditional Wisdom to Proverbial Stereotypes (1997), The Proverbial Abraham Lincoln (2000), «No Struggle, No Progress»: Frederick Douglass and His Proverbial Struggle for Civil Rights (2001), «Call a Spade a Spade»: From Classical Phrase to Racial Slur (2002), Proverbs: A Handbook (2004), «Proverbs Are the Best Policy»: Folk Wisdom and American Politics (2005), «Proverbs Speak Louder Than Words»: Folk Wisdom in Art, Culture, Folklore, History, Literature, and Mass Media (2008), and «Yes We Can»: Barack Obama’s Proverbial Rhetoric (2009).