| William Bascom | |
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William Bascom
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| Born | 23 May 1912 Princeton, Illinois |
| Died | September 11, 1981 |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | folklore, cultural anthropology |
| Institutions | Lowie Museum of Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley |
| Alma mater | Northwestern University |
| Doctoral advisor | Melville J. Herskovits |
| Known for | studies of Yoruba culture and religion; "four functions of folklore" |
William R. Bascom (born Princeton, Illinois, 1912 - died September 11, 1981) was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and museum director.
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Bascom completed his B.A. at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and earned his Ph.D. in anthropology at Northwestern University under Melville J. Herskovits in 1939. He taught at Northwestern, Cambridge University, and the University of California at Berkeley, where he was also Director of the Lowie Museum of Anthropology. During World War II, he joined the O.S.S. and together with Ralph Bunche co-authored an unsigned volume, A Pocket Guide to West Africa in 1943.
Bascom was a specialist in the art and culture of West Africa and the African Diaspora, especially the Yoruba of Nigeria. Several of his articles on folkloristics serve as texts in graduate courses in folklore.
In a major article published in 1954, Bascom argued that folklore can serve four primary functions in a culture: