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Alumni Updates
Alumni of the folklore program work in a wide variety of exciting fields and dynamic contexts across the world! A degree in folklore can lead your career path toward runing education and outreach programs, directing cultural non-profit organizations, curating at Museums, producing documentaries, writing and editing for academic journals, working with businesses and aritists as marketing consultants, serving as a tribal liasons, or teaching as a Professor at a university. Please send your updates to Program Director Lisa Gilman. While earning her MA in folklore, Emily West Afanador worked as program assistant for the newly developing African Studies Program. She currently uses this experience institutionalizing and maintaining academic units at the UO to integrate the Oregon Folklife Network (OFN), Oregon’s statewide public folklore organization, into its new location at the university. As program manager of OFN, Emily synthesizes the organization into the UO’s administrative infrastructure, networks with small and large cultural organizations across Oregon and with folklore agencies across the U.S., writes grants, and develops a strategic plan for funding, communication, and programming. In her spare time, she continues to make films and perform live music. Since I graduated from the Folklore program at Oregon in 2004, I've been a graduate student at the University of Iowa anthropology department, completing my master's degree in anthropology in May of 2006. My research interests have continued in the areas of religion, and psychological approaches to religion (now integrating cognitive and psychological anthropology), but has expanded to include new research on the ubiquitous yet nearly invisible phenomenon of gay men and date rape and its connections to gay men's construction of sexual identity through popular discourses and narratives. After completing my second master's degree at Iowa, I've taken a leave of absence, and am working as a lecturer in English at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and as an adjunct in English at Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee. Contact: ----------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------- After graduating from the UO Folklore Program (1998), John Baumann continued his studies in folklore and religion in the Religious Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he received his Ph.D. He is now a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Departments of Religious Studies and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. His areas of focus and teaching interests include Religious Ethics, Religion and Ecology, Religion in America, and Native American Spirituality. Dr. Baumann’s most recent research focuses on radical resistance to environmental threats, and environmental degradation affecting Native American lands and communities. He is chair of the Religion and Ecology Session of the Upper Midwest American Academy of Religion Meeting, and teaches widely in the areas of North American religious practice and religious/environmental ethics. ----------------------------------------- Eric Bebernitz graduated with a Master’s of the Arts from the Folklore Program in 2006. While studying in Eugene he concentrated on cultural theory, subcultural studies, ethnography, and youth narrative which ----------------------------------------- Al Bersch graduated from the Folklore masters program in 2010. His terminal project culminated in a collaborative exhibit about commercial fishing in Newport, OR. He now lives in Oakland, CA and works with digital collections at the Oakland Museum of California. In 2011, he co-authored a chapter with photographer Leslie Grant for the book Oral History and Photography, edited by Alexander Freund and Alistair Thomson, and published by Palgrave. ----------------------------------------- Vincent's interest in moving images and history has led him to investigate popular culture, history, and audience reception. Vincent presented “New Media Technology’s Qualitative Effect on Interviews” at the American Folklore Society’s 2009 annual meeting in Boise, Idaho. His thesis project, “Historical Film Reception: An Ethnographic Focus beyond Entertainment,” integrates perspectives from folklore, popular culture, and history in order to investigate audience “lore” and the reception of historical films. Vincent will be getting married this coming October and will be taking a year or two off from his graduate studies. He plans to continue to pursue his interests of folklore, popular culture, and popular history in the near future. ----------------------------------------- Matt graduated in December of 2005 with a Master of Arts degree and a Certificate in Nonprofit Management. After graduating he was hired on as a “Folklife Coordinator” for the Oregon Historical Society’s (OHS) landmark “Oregon Tribes Project.” The project, a collaboration between OHS and the nine federally recognized tribes of Oregon, will culminate in a museum exhibit, school curriculum, and associated publications in time for Oregon’s sesquicentennial in 2009. Matthew’s role is to serve as a coordinator for the project and as a liaison between OHS and the tribal governments. For the project, tribal members were trained in folklore fieldwork methodology and are currently documenting traditional arts and crafts of their tribes. Their work will then be kept at the reservation’s archives, and appropriate material will be shared with OHS to form the foundation of the exhibit. For further information, contact Matthew at matthewb@ohs.org. ----------------------------------------- (Folklore MA, 1998): In December, 2006, I filed my dissertation in ethnomusicology, "In the Wake of John Kanaka: Musical Interactions Between Euro-American Sailors and Pacific Islanders, 1600 - 1900." I have been presenting my work on this topic at symposia like the New Bedford Whaling History Symposium, Mystic Seaport Museum's Sea Music Symposium, EMPlive Symposium on Popular Music and Culture, and at the national conferences of the American Studies Association and the Society for Ethnomusicology. An article based on this work, titled “Selling Hawaiian-ness in the Nineteenth Century: Cosmopolitan Hawaiians on the American Popular Stage,” will be published in 2007 in a special electronic edition of American Quarterly. Other recent publications include an essay on disaster songs (my master's thesis topic) in Voices: the Journal of New York Folklore (Volume 30: 3-4, Fall/Winter 2004), an essay on Maritime Dance and Drama in the forthcoming Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History, a chapter on rock music in the music appreciation textbook The Enjoyment of Music, an essay on the Grateful Dead's folk music roots in the forthcoming book "All Graceful Instruments: Critical Essays on the Grateful Dead" (Oxford Scholars' Press) and a couple of book reviews in the Journal of American Folklore. ----------------------------------------- Prior to the folklore program at the University of Oregon, Tiffany received a BA in English literature and creative writing from Pacific University, and an MFA in creative writing from Chapman University. Her research interests include apocalypse culture, cyber studies, vernacular religion, popular culture, and film in an American context. She is a vocalist and songwriter who claims world musics among her myriad interests. She has completed two folklore documentaries about karaoke and about disaster preparedness groups. She is currently pursuing a PhD in American Studies at Washington State University. ----------------------------------------- Graduating in the summer of 2006, Hillary has been accepted to the Harvard University Graduate School of Education for fall 2007, where she will study adolescence, creativity, and trauma. She plans to become a school psychologist. In 2005, Hillary took a job at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard where she was the Program Coordinator for postdoctoral programs, webmaster, and research assistant in Jewish Studies. Her M.A. thesis was on the Bukharan Jews of New York City. Currently she is honing her artistic side: painting, writing fiction, and playing the guitar. Contact: h_colter@yahoo.com ----------------------------------------- I am still at UC Santa Barbara in the Department of Religious Studies but spend most of my time in the Women's Studies Program where I have worked as a teaching associate, teaching assistant, research assistant and have led numerous pedagogy workshops. I am planning to graduate in the fall of 2007. My dissertation is currently titled "Performing Gender, Enacting Community: Women, Whiteness and Belief in Contemporary Public Demonstrations" and looks at contemporary public protests in the US organized and attended primarily by progressive women. By looking at vigils, marches and demonstrations as cultural events I hope to illuminate how women and transgendered people use their gendered, racialized and sexualized bodies to publicly enact their political beliefs. The events I examine include Code Pink actions, Women in Black vigils, Dyke Marches, Take Back the Night Marches, the 2004 March for Women's Lives and the 2004 Million Mom March. I just returned to Santa Barbara after spending a semester at the Five Colleges Women's Studies Research Center at Mt Holyoke College in western Massachusetts and giving a paper about Women in Black as part of a panel called "Performing Feminisms, Performing Whiteness: Gender and Race in U.S. Theatrical, Social, and Political Performances" at the Performance Studies International Conference in London, UK. Contact: bcurrans@umail.ucsb.edu ------------------------------------ Robert graduated in summer 2010 with a master’s degree from the Folklore Program. In the fall, he will continue his studies in the University of Oregon’s PhD program in English with a structured emphasis in folklore. Robert was the 2007 recipient of the Don Yoder Prize for Best Student Paper in Folk Belief or Religious Folklife, and the 2008 recipient of the Warren E. Roberts Prize for Best Student Paper in Folk Art. His project, “Alternative Memorials: Death and Memory in Modern America,” was selected for the 2009 Folklore Studies in a Multicultural World workshop and book series program supported by the American Folklore Society. Last year, he published a chapter titled “Ghosts in the Machine: Mourning the MySpace Dead” in the book Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World, edited by Trevor Blank and published by Utah State University Press. This year, his chapter titled “Ghost Bikes: Memorialization and Protest in City Streets” will be published in the forthcoming book Grassroots Memorials: The Politics of Memorializing Traumatic Death, edited by Peter Jan Margry and Cristina Sanchez Carretaro and published by Berghahn.. ------------------------------------ After concluding her studies with the UO Folklore Program (1997), Christine continued her research at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received her Ph.D. from Folklore Program, writing her dissertation on narrative, identity and belonging among the Cowlitz Indians. She is now the Sustainability Officer at the Native American Youth and Family Center in Portland, Oregon (see www.nayapdx.org). Prior to her work at NAYA, Christine worked as the coordinator for a Ford Foundation Grant, “Indigenous Ways of Knowing,” at Lewis & Clark Graduate School in Education and Counseling. The project, a collaboration between Lewis & Clark Graduate School and tribal leaders, culminated in an international conference in the summer of 2006. Dr. Dupres continues to write. Her most recent research focuses on Native American social justice, narrative and community. She was recently elected an American Leadership Fellow, and continues to teach informally as a dance instructor. She is the mother of 16 year old twins who continue to fascinate and perplex her. ------------------------------------ David Ensminger continues to teach composition, folklore, and humanities at Lee College in Baytown, Texas. He presented the lecture “Raw and Resilient: Black, Latino, and Queer Voices in Punk Rock” at the Community College Humanities Association Southwest Division Conference, Houston, Texas. A longer version of the lecture was presented at Technische Universität Dresden in Germany. His article “Coloring between the Lines of Punk and Hardcore: From Absence to Black Punk Power” will be published in the journal Postmodern Culture in March. His book Visual Vitriol: The Street Art and Subcultures of the Punk and Hardcore Generations will be published in July by the University of Mississippi Press. He actively contributes to the magazine Maximum Rock ’n’ Roll and the newspaper Houston Press. In November 2010, he debuted a monthly folklore column for Popmatters (www.popmatters.com), known as “Folk Nation.” Currently, his work focuses on intersections between deaf and punk culture and curating digital online flier archives for bands, regional scenes, and artists. ------------------------------------ Subsequent to receiving his master's degree in Folklore Studies, David Faux spent a year in Mokp'o, Korea as a Fulbright Fellow studying Korean Buddhism. The following year, he attended the University of California, Santa Barbara towards earning a Ph.D. in Religious Studies. However, Dave modified his life plan after some major events, not the least of which was that his dissertation committee fell apart (one committee member retired and another departed from the institution). With a second master's degree in hand (this one in Religious Studies), he returned to the east coast, attending Brooklyn Law School, where he obtained his J.D. in 2005. ------------------------------------ Following her graduation at the University of Oregon in 2002, Daphne Gabrieli immediately took a job teaching writing at Lane Community College and hasn't left. For the last three years she has taught at Linn-Benton Community College, too. Perhaps her life continues to be an embodiment of her undergraduate thesis, which examines women in classical literature who were caught between worlds! Similarly, she thought her LCC job would be a kind of halfway house between receiving her master's degree and then going on to receive some other degree somewhere else. Turns out, she especially enjoyed teaching and helping students overcome their fears of writing, so she stuck around. For the last four years and in collaboration with two guidance counselors at LCC, Daphne has co-taught in a "learning community" (students dual-enroll in two related courses) which helps them earn scholarships toward their college education. Since then her students have amassed hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships. When she's not working, Daphne practices guitar and banjo, and her old banjo looks like something one might find in the garbage. Contact: daphne@efn.org ------------------------------------ Kristen established the Revenant Archives (www.revenantarchives.com), an ongoing project concerning the visual, audible, and material aspects of paranormal cultures. She is interested in idiosyncratic museums, theoretical architecture, culturalprocesses of urban decay, and “visual legendry.” This past summer she interned at the Henry FordMuseum in Detroit, cataloging one of the world’s largest collections of twentieth-century toasters. She will enter the PhD program in art practice at UC San Diego under a four-year San Diego Fellowship to continue her studio-based and theoretical research. ----------------------------------------- Ashley Gossman graduated in December of 2009 with a MA from the Folklore Program and is currently working at Planned Parenthood to get some experience in the nonprofit sector. She plans to move eventually to Portland and dive into the documentary filmmaking world. Her mission is to connect people to other’s stories in an effort to humanize our struggles and embrace the global community. She hosted a -----------------------------------------
Erle Hall completed his Master's degree in 2002 after returning to Eugene from a year of study and fieldwork in Korea. In Korea he attended Yonsei University's international graduate school, studying Korean religious culture (his thesis focused on Korean vernacular religion and its varied expressions in the United States). At the same time he did fieldwork at Korean shaman rituals called "kut" and examined the burgeoning Korean punk rock scene. In 2004, the Journal of American Folklore published a review he wrote of a film called "Our Nation" by Timothy Tangerlini of UCLA and Stephen Epstein. The film concentrated on the same Korean punk venue where Erle had conducted fieldwork on Choson Punk (a self-identified label that Korean punks give their brand of punk rock). ------------------------------------ Julia received her Ph.D. in English and Folklore in 2006. She is currently an Instructor of English and Folklore at the Art Institute in Portland, OR. Her areas of specialization include 20th literature and folklore, intersections of personal and popular narratives, the American West, modernity, class conflict, the literature of the road and community art. Her dissertation discusses personal and popular narratives of homelessness and poverty and their relationship to popular American notions of home. She argues that popular narratives of poverty always reflect the historical socioeconomic and psychological situation of the richer classes. Homelessness, a new narrative of poverty imagined during the late 1970s and after, is no exception. Her dissertation, "Homelessness and the Postmodern Home: New Cultural Narratives," traces the invention of our current vernacular narratives of poverty through the metaphors of homelessness and the home. Contact: julia@juliahammond.com ------------------------------------ Received his Ph.D. emphasizing rhetoric and folklore from the English Department of the University of Oregon in 2001. Today, he is an assistant professor in the Communication Arts Department at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. At Wisconsin, he teaches courses on rhetoric, communication technologies, religion, and folklore. He has introduced new courses on folklore and technology as well as taught graduate seminars topically ranging from the rhetorical theory of Kenneth Burke to the methods of online ethnography. Currently, he is serving as associate director of the folklore program and seeking to expand both graduate and undergraduate course offerings in folklore. ------------------------------------ After graduation from the U of O with a MA in Folklore and a certificate in Nonprofit Management I moved to Harrisburg, PA and woke up to find myself as a Program Assistant at the Pennsylvania Folklife Archives. I'm currently nurturing a sewing circle program for immigrant and refugee women which provides material and space for artists to continue their handicraft traditions while building a supportive community and economic opportunity. I also manage the folk arts infrastructure program that consists of seven statewide folk arts partners. In my spare time I read all of the books graduate school kept me from, knit cherished presents for friends and relations, and plan future research excursions on pilgrimage and nature in distant and exciting places. ------------------------------------ Kalin Kirilov received his MA degree from the UO Folklore Program in 2003. His thesis was entitled "A Musical Ethnography of the Vlachs from the Region of Vidin, Bulgaria." He is currently a fourth year Ph.D. student in Music Theory at the University of Oregon. He began singing and playing the accordion at the age of four and received his first gold medal in 1981 at a national folk festival in Koprivshtitsa, Bulgaria. Kalin has performed extensively in Bulgaria and Western Europe, recorded with Bulgarian National Radio and television, and toured the U.S. twice with the legendary Ivo Papasov and Yuri Yunakov. He received a BA in Music from the Academy of Music, Dance, and Fine Arts in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. In 2001, he released a CD that showcased his musical talents, and he performs Eastern European folk music on fifteen instruments. Kalin specializes in Eastern European music and analytical approaches to World Music. His current research focuses on harmony, embellishments, and improvisation in Bulgarian traditional music of the 20th century. ------------------------------------ Kimberly Marshall (nee Bohannon) I'm entering my 3rd year in the PhD program at Indiana University, double-majoring in Anthropology and Ethnomusicology. I love Bloomington, I love my departments (Ethnomusicology is with Folklore at IU), and I love the people here. I have one more semester of coursework, and should take my comprehensive exams in the spring. Contact: kimberlyjmarshall@yahoo.com. ------------------------------------------ Elena Martinez received an M.A. in Folklore at the University of Oregon in 1997. Interested in material culture and urban folklore, following internships at the Smithsonian Institution’s Folklife Festival and City Lore, she took a full-time position at City Lore in 1997. As staff folklorist at City Lore (www.citylore.org), she is the primary fieldworker for Place Matters, and its sub-project, the South Bronx Latin Music Project, conducting interviews with musicians from the South Bronx, conducting photo and archival research, and producing public programs. This project culminated in the making of a video documentary, "From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale," which she co-produced and which aired on PBS in September 2006. She curated the exhibition, “¡ Que bonita bandera! : The Puerto Rican Flag as Folk Art,” which has traveled through the tri-state area, and she is the Festival Coordinator for the People’s Poetry Gathering , a major 3-day festival which explores literary poetry's roots in the oral tradition. As a student of Rosa Elena Egipciaco, a master in the art of mundillo , Puerto Rican bobbin lace, and National Heritage Award winner, she has also worked with and organized programs pertaining to this craft. She is a contributor to Latinas in the United States: An Historical Encyclopedia by historians Virginia Sánchez Korrol and Vicki L. Ruíz, and she is on the Board of Directors for the New York State Folklore Society and the Middle Atlantic Folklife Association. Contact: elenamar@juno.com ------------------------------------------ (2003 graduate) Alysia is the Curator of Public Programs for the Juneau-Douglas City Museum in Juneau, Alaska. She oversees all public and education programming for this local history, art and culture museum. Responsibilities include coordinating youth, adult and family programs and classes; developing and leading educational tours for K - college levels, coordinating training workshops; administering a grant program for local history projects; overseeing advertising for museum events including press, PSAs, mailings and web updates. As a grad student, Alysia focused on arts administration and video production, in addition to folklore studies. She also earned a Certificate in Festival and Event Management. In 2003, she accepted an intern position at the Juneau-Douglas City Museum. Alysia enjoyed the variety of work offered at a small, but rapidly developing local museum and when a permanent position opened up at the Museum, she jumped at the opportunity to return to Alaska and the Museum! ------------------------------------------ During her graduate career, Camilla Mortenson focused on Mexican and Chicana women’s narratives, completing field research in Oaxaca, Mexico, and Eugene, Oregon. She is particularly interested in exploring strong female protagonists and the many ways in which they are interpreted. In her spare time, Caroline enjoys collecting bones and making art with them, Team Folklore Ladies crafternoons, and searching for Bigfoot. ------------------------------------------ After graduating with a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, and a focus field in Folklore, Camilla Mortensen went on to teach for two years at the UW-Madison in both fields of study. Currently she is at work as the folklore subject specialist on the Ethnographic Thesaurus, a joint project of the American Folklore Society and the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress. She recently published at article in the Journal of American Folklore entitled ""(Eco)Mimesis and the Ethics of the Ethnographic Presentation," and has an article forthcoming in The Comparatist on contemporary body modification and the ethics of appropriation. She also currently teaches part time in the Department of German and Scandinavian. In her spare time, Camilla works on issues of the environment and cultural heritage with her non-profit group, the Northwest Wild Horse Project, to protect Oregon's wild horses and the lands they graze. Contact: camilla@efn.org ------------------------------------------ Joseph O’Connell is currently conducting survey fieldwork in Floyd County, Indiana, for Traditional Arts Indiana. His latest album of original folk-rock music will be released in the spring under the band name Elephant Micah. He has contributed sound reviews for the Journal of American Folklore and to the Traditional Arts Indiana newsletter. ------------------------------------------ Deborah Parker is working toward her PhD in English with a structured emphasis in folklore. While living and teaching in central Oregon, she continues to research plants and healing practices in both modern and medieval times. The focus of her current work is on Canto III of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene. ------------------------------------------ S.J. Rabun graduated from the Folklore Program in June of 2011 with emphases in Environmental Studies and Sociology. She is currently the Project Coordinator for the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program, a grant-funded project to digitize several of Oregon's historic newspapers for keyword-searching and browsing online. Historic Oregon newspaper content is open to the public and can be found online at http://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/. ------------------------------------------ Suzanne Reed; MS, Folklore 2010: Suzanne focused on the skills and tools needed for documenting and presenting diverse cultural expressions, to better encourage public awareness and appreciation for these traditions. Archivist, Randall V. Mills Archives of Northwest Folklore 2010; film, Tracing the Line: Figure Skating in Eugene, OR. 2010; Administrative Assistant, UO Folklore Program 2009, Researcher Stevens/River Bend Project, UO Museum of Natural & Cultural History in partnership with the UO Dept. of Archeology 2009; Field Interviewer, African American History in Eugene, UO Dept. Arts Administration project 2009; film, Bharatanatyam: At The Heart Of A Family Tradition (2008); WA State Arts Commission, Folk Arts Program Assistant 2004-2007. ------------------------------------------ In 2009, after teaching English at Parkland College in Champaign, Illinois, for one year, Casey Schmitt ------------------------------------------ Carol Spellman graduated from the UO Folklore Program in 2002 with a focus on documentary video, ethnomusicology, and Irish folklore. Carol traveled to Ireland during 2000 and 2001 where she conducted fieldwork on the topic of Irish women’s contribution to traditional song and music. Her work culminated in a documentary video and paper entitled "For the Love of the Tune: Irish Women and Traditional Music." In 2004, an article based on her research was published in "Beascna" through the University of Cork Press, Cork, Ireland. Current 2006-07 projects in the schools include a multicultural garden and mural project in SE Portland, community documentation of Latino lifeways in Woodburn, Oregon, Islamic embroidery with students attending the SUN (Schools Uniting Neighborhoods) in Portland and folklife in the community with Parkdale, Oregon students. Carol participates in local arts consortiums including Youth Arts Consortium in Portland, Oregon and Regional Arts Providers Network of Oregon. Contact: cbspellman@yahoo.com ------------------------------------------ Mickey Stellavato graduated with an MA in 2006 with a focus on the first-person narratives of women. She was awarded the Alma Johnson Graduate Folklore Award in 2004 for her short film "Like Our Ancestors: The Choice of Homebirth in a Modern World." She also received a grant from The Center for the Study of Women in Society in 2006 for her master’s terminal project "Vodka & Popcorn: The Life and Times of Lisa Blue," a video portrait. This was also presented at CSWS in November of the same year. Mickey holds a contract with the University of Oregon as a portrait photographer and her photographs can be seen in university publications, brochures, and on the website. She also takes photographs for Eugene Magazine, The Toucan Times (Edison Elementary school), and individuals in the community. She has had showings of her work, most recently at Wandering Goat Café and performance space. She has recorded two additional life stories, currently in the post-production stage. She is directing the Women’s History Play, an annual Edison Elementary school event, featuring the lives of twenty women and starring twenty 5th grade girls. ------------------------------------------ Jeannie Banks Thomas received her Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in 1992, in the English Department, with an emphasis on folklore studies. She is now a Professor of English and Folklore and Director of the Folklore Program at Utah State University. Her work focuses on gender, legend, and material culture. Her publications include "Naked Barbies, Warrior Joes, and Other Forms of Visible Gender" (University of Illinois Press); "Featherless Chickens, Laughing Women, and Serious Stories" (University of Virginia Press) winner of the Elli Köngäs-Maranda Prize; and "Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore" (forthcoming from Utah State University Press) with Diane Goldstein and Sylvia Grider. ------------------------------------------ Kelley Totten just completed her first year in the PhD program in folklore at Indiana University, where she has had to the good fortune to rub Stith Thompson's forehead on a regular basis. She has been involved with Traditional Arts Indiana and next year will continue working for them as the graduate assistant. Kelley is continuing on from the project she helped start with OFN working with incarcerated fiber artists; every Wednesday she knits with the Naptown Knitters, men incarcerated in the Indianapolis Re-Entry Educational Facility. She is currently preparing for this summer's third rendition of the Looplore Experiment. ------------------------------------------ Geoffrey G. Vallée is a major in the Oregon National Guard, the pilot of an air-ambulance helicopter, and commander of the UH-60 helicopter rescue unit based in Salem, Oregon. After graduating, he commanded the Oregon rescue unit as it deployed to and returned from Iraq. The unit provided medical evac¬uation and care to U.S. and coalition soldiers and civilians, insurgents, and Iraqi civilians. He won the Bronze Star, the meritorious service medal, among others for leadership and accomplishment. His organization flew more than 2,900 flight hours, conducted 325 life-saving missions, and moved more than 1,200 patients among many other accomplishments, and none included his organization hurting anyone. In August 2010, Vallée was promoted to battalion executive officer of all of Oregon’s Army Aviation assets, and was hired in October as a recreation supervisor with the Civilian Conservation Corps (Timber Lake Job Corps site) in Estacada, Oregon. He manages a staff to provide recreation, cultural, and leadership development opportunities for 260 at-risk youths, ages sixteen to twenty-four. In December 2010, he was picked to attend the highly selective Intermediate Level Education program for senior Army officers. This program provides advanced staff and management education, and awards an MBA. ------------------------------------------ Audrey Vanderford is currently a Ph.D. student in the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Oregon. She received her MA in Folklore from the University of Oregon in 2000 (her thesis was entitled "Political Pranks: The Performance of Radical Humor"). She is interested in the intersection of folklore, feminism, and ecology, and her research includes political pranks, 'zines, and seasonal festivals/celebrations. She has presented papers at numerous conferences and published several articles on these and other topics. Audrey has taught a course in the UO Women's Studies Program entitled "Anarcha-Feminism," and a range of courses in the Comparative Literature Program, including classes on "Clowns and Tricksters," "Sixties Countercultures," "World Science Fiction," and "Gangsters in Popular Culture." She received the Comparative Literature Program's prestigious Beall Dissertation Prospectus Award in 2006. ------------------------------------------ Elaine Vradenburgh lives in Olympia, Washington, where she is the development director and board ------------------------------------------ Christina completed her MA in folklore this spring after completing her master’s degree thesis entitled “Death is the Only Reality: A Folkloric Analysis of Notions of Death and Funerary Ritual in Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Literature.” She will be continuing at the UO as a PhD student in English with an emphasis in folklore this fall. Current research interests include contemporary women’s literature and folklore, ritual theory, and performance studies, especially as these occur in the Caribbean, Africa and the African Diaspora, and Pacific Island regions. Christy has a BA from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, in theater arts and psychology, and a second BA in English from the UO. ------------------------------------------ What prospects await a Folklore Studies graduate who enters a world that sometimes fails to recognize the nuances of folklore itself—you know the question: “What are you going to do with an MA degree in Folklore?” In my experience, the interdisciplinary approach of the University of Oregon Folklore Program actually gives its graduates an edge in the real world. How many graduates can claim that they are comfortable and capable in three academic fields, in my case, Film, English and Anthropology (not to mention Folklore Studies), and possess proven skills in writing, teaching, and video-making? ------------------------------------------ Jamie Lynn Webster (Folklore MA, 2003) entered the Ph.D. program in musicology and ethnomusicology at the University of Oregon, in 2003. During her four years as a graduate teaching fellow in the School of Music and Dance, she has assisted in and taught courses regarding ethnographies of music in world cultures, and introductions to western music and music history. Her course on International Film Music, comparing music in different film genres around the world, will debut in summer 2007. Musically, she has participated in several western classical and ethnic ensembles at the school of music, including performing drumming and psinden (solo vocalist) roles with the Javanese Gamelan ensemble, and leading the vocal contingent of the East European Folk Ensemble. Her paper, "Performing Polishness: Musical Choices in a Professional Polish-American Ensemble," based on ethnographic research from her master's thesis on the Lira Singers of Chicago, was presented at the Western States Folklore Society meeting in Eugene in 2005, and the national meeting for the Society for American Music, also in 2005. More recently, her paper, "The Politics of Passion and Purity: The Choreography of Crypt Scenes in Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet," which explores how cultural climates in 1950s Russia and 1960s Great Britain shaped two filmed versions of the ballet, was presented at the international conference in Banff for the Society of Dance History Scholars in 2006. Her paper, "Hai la joc! Periodicity at Play in Romanian Dance Music" shows how the layering of instrumental music, improvised rhyme, and dance forms create complexity in performance, and is scheduled for publication in the forthcoming journal honoring the late Dick Crum's ethnographic work in Balkan dance. In her spare time, she is composing music for a musical theatre piece based on episodes from the legends of Robin Hood. Jamie is currently preparing for her comprehensive exams, and is in the process of choosing a dissertation topic in which she intends to combine interests in song and dance, performance and cultural analysis, so-called classical and folk idioms, issues of ethnic identity and gender, and methodologies from musicological and ethnomusicological disciplines. Please send good ideas to: ------------------------------------------ Ziying You, a PhD student in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literature at Ohio State, researches the intellectual history of Chinese folklore studies, storytelling performance in contemporary
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Alumni Index |
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Folklore Program (541) 346-3911 Cathy O'Grady, Folklore Studies Secretary (541) 346-1505 ~ ogradyc@uoregon.edu 1287 University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403 |