UNC Curriculum in Folklore: People Faculty Student and Alumni/ae News: Careers in Folklore

 
   

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All faculty members hold appointments in their home departments. Core faculty are those who have a strong interest in folklore, as shown in their research, publications, and attendance at professional meetings, and generally teach half in folklore and half in their home department. They carry out most of the necessary administrative tasks in the Curriculum and currently include:

Bob Cantwell (American Studies) — Folklore theory, Southern music, folk revival studies.

Bill Ferris (History) — author of over 100 publications in fields of folklore, American literature, fiction, and photography, Dr. Ferris is interested in all manifestations of Southern culture from Faulkner to moon pies! Former director of the National Endowment for the Humanities; former director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi; editor of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.

Marcie Ferris (American Studies) — southern Jewish history, American foodways, women’s studies, material culture of the American South. Current research: social history analysis of the role of food in southern society as expressed through the voices of southerners and of outsiders who visited the region.

Trudier Harris (English) — African American folklore, folk church traditions, narrative. Current research: stereotypic images of African American women in African American literature, oral tradition and popular culture.

Glenn Hinson (Anthropology) — African American expressive culture, health and belief systems, public folklore, ethnographic practice. Current research: African American oral poetry; dream and vision songs among sanctified Christians; historiography of the Nat Turner uprising.

Jocelyn Neal (Music) — Country music, twentieth-century music theory and popular music, country dance and music relationships.

Daniel Patterson (emeritus) — Folksong, folklore documentaries, Southern folklore. Current research: ballads and narratives of Frankie Silver; gravestones and Presbyterian Scots-Irish culture.

Kathy Roberts (American Studies)-- Material culture, Back-to-the-land movement, vernacular architecture.

Patricia Sawin (Anthropology) — Narrative, discourse, and ethnography of speaking, festival, gender, politics of culture; Appalachia, French Louisiana, Guatemala. Current research: racial division and negotiation in small town mardi gras; cultural and linguistic preservation and tourism in Guatemala.

Charles Zug (emeritus) — Folk art, Southern material culture, narrative. Current projects: building the North Carolina Pottery Center; contemporary folk art in North Carolina.

Debbie Simmons-Cahan says she's still here! She is Departmental Manager for the Folklore and American Studies curricula. Call her at 962-4062 with any questions or comments.

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Curriculum offerings are broadened by our adjunct faculty, who offer courses cross-listed with the Curriculum in Folklore, direct and/or read theses, and play an important supportive role. They include (but are by no means limited to):

Carole Crumley (Anthropology) Historical ecology, state societies, complex systems theory, global environmental change; ethnography, ethnohistory, and archaeology of Europe.

Robert Daniels (Anthropology) Social Anthropology, Psychological Anthropology, Systems Theory, Cross-Cultural Studies; Africa

Terence Evens (Anthropology) — Social Theory, Phenomenology, Religion and Ethics, Philosophical Anthropology.

John Florin (Geography) — U.S. historical and cultural geography, population, and medical geography

Jacquelyn Hall (History) — Oral history, women's history, Southern social history.

Norris Johnson (Anthropology) Architecture, Art and Aesthetics, Religious Landscapes, Japan

Edward Kennedy (English) Medieval chronicles, Medieval English and French Arthurian literature, Sir Thomas Malory

Valerie Lambert (Anthropology) — American Indians, Sovereignty, Tribal Nation-building, Tribal Governance, Oklahoma

Christopher Nelson (Anthropology) History and Memory; Everyday Life; Ethnography; Critical Theory; Storytelling, Ritual and Performance; Japan and Okinawa

Patrick O'Neill (English) — Medieval English, Welsh and Irish; Celtic culture; Modern Irish language and literature

James Peacock (Anthropology) — Symbolic anthropology, Southeast Asia, religious cultures, comparative studies of the American South.

Della Pollock (Communication Studies) — Politics of performance, Brechtian aesthetics, the performance of oral history, the body in performance, and issues in critical and cultural theory.

Karla Slocum (Anthropology) — Globalization and Place, Social Movements, Constructions of Race and History, Critical Development Studies, Gender, Public Anthropology, Caribbean, U.S. Southwest

Ruel Tyson (Religious Studies) — Philosophy and anthropology of religion.