Thank you to the Center for Craft for awarding me a 2025 Craft Research Fund for the project, The Multi-Stranded History of Hand Knitting in Appalachia. This research will explore the underdocumented cultural history of hand knitting in Appalachia through archival research, community surveys, and fieldwork with contemporary practitioners in Appalachia and Northern Ireland. The project will result in a publicly accessible archival collection, article, and conference presentation.
Harvard Folklore Symposium: Appalachia Betwixt & Between
Looking forward to learning from colleagues and presenting at Harvard Folklore & Mythology's Symposium this weekend! I'll be speaking on how expressive culture (aka folklore) was used by public educators during the 2018-2019 West Virginia Educators' Strike to bolster worker power, teach the public, and forge a new reality, and how those lessons still resonate today.
Thank you to Sarah Craycraft for the invitation and organizing work!
Learn more here
Grist: "As climate change fractures communities, folklorists help stitch them back together"
Grateful to Katie Myers for talking with me about visionary folklore and for amplifying the work other folklorists like Maida Owens and Kimi Eisele do in collaboration with cultural communities impacted by climate change.
Read the full article in Grist here
Rural Free Delivery Collection Now Available via the Library of Congress
I'm pleased to share that my 2021 Archie Green Fellowship Occupational Folklife project Rural Free Delivery: Mail Carriers in Central Appalachia is now accessible via the Library of Congress.
The project documents the value of rural carriers to their communities and includes interviews with 25 rural mail carriers and clerks in Appalachian regions of Kentucky, West Virginia, North Carolina, Virginia, and Ohio, as well as photos of rural post offices.
There are also some choice videos of retired rural mail carrier, guitar maker, and National Heritage Fellow Wayne Henderson jamming with current rural carrier Brian Grim, and Merle Haggard's guitarist Redd Volkaert (I found that many rural mail carriers are also musicians).
Read more about the project in this interview on the American Folklife Center blog.
Music Maker Foundation Hosts Conversation, What Is Folklore?
What comes to mind when you hear the word folklore? For many, probably Taylor Swift’s 2020 album. In actuality, the field encompasses traditional customs and art forms, practices that are preserved among a people, often passed down and around through word of mouth. Today, people across the world are more connected than ever, and as society changes and evolves, so does folklore. Join four working folklorists—Zoe van Buren (North Carolina Arts Council), Timothy Duffy (Music Maker Foundation), Katy Clune (Virginia Humanities), and Emily Hilliard (Mid Atlantic Arts)—for a discussion about the past, present, and future of folklore. As Zoe van Buren says “It’s very hard to define. If it were easy to define it wouldn’t be so powerful… tradition, folklife - these are not things, these are conversations.” Join the conversation on Tuesday May 3rd at 6pm Eastern and on Music Maker Foundation’s Facebook and YouTube channel following.