Information about Contributors
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Robert Glenn Howard is Chair of Comparative Literature and Folklore Studies, Director of Digital Studies, and Professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research seeks to uncover the possibilities and limits of empowerment through everyday expression in network communication technologies by focusing on the intersection of individual agency and participatory performance. He is the author of Digital Jesus: The Making of a New Christian Fundamentalist Community on the Internet (2011); editor of Network Apocalypse: Visions of the End in an Age of Internet Media (2011); and co-editor of Tradition in the 21st Century: Locating the Role of the Past in the Present (2013; with Trevor J. Blank).
John H. McDowell, Professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University, specializes in the study of traditional and emerging vernacular performances as they engage in processes of play, commemoration, and folklorization. His most recent monograph is Poetry and Violence: The Ballad Tradition of Mexico’s Costa Chica (2000).
Coppélie Cocq, research fellow at HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden, is a folklorist specializing in Sámi storytelling. She holds a PhD in Sámi Studies from Umeå University and an MA in Sociology and Ethnology from Lille University, France. Since 2010, her research has focused primarily on folklore in digital environments. Her recent publications include “Anthropological Places, Digital Spaces and Imaginary Scapes: Packaging a Digital Sámiland” (Folklore, 2013); and “The Hybrid Emergence of Sámi Expressive Culture,” in Hybrid Media Culture: Sensing Place in a World of Flows (2013, ed. Simon Lindgren).
Trevor J. Blank is Assistant Professor of Communication at the State University of New York at Potsdam, where he teaches courses in folklore, mass media, and digital culture, and researches subversive humor in the vernacular response to traumatic and shocking news events. He is the author of The Last Laugh: Folk Humor, Celebrity Culture, and Mass-Mediated Disasters in the Digital Age (2013); co-author of Maryland Legends: Folklore from the Old Line State (2014; with David J. Puglia); editor of the volumes Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World (2009); and Folk Culture in the Digital Age: The Emergent Dynamics of Human Interaction (2012); and co-editor of Tradition in the Twenty-First Century: Locating the Role of the Past in the Present (2013; with Robert Glenn Howard). Currently, he serves as editor of the journal Children’s Folklore Review.
Bill Ellis is Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. He received his PhD in English (emphasis in Folklore) from Ohio State University and taught at Penn State’s Hazleton Campus for 25 years. He is a Fellow [End Page 369] of the American Folklore Society, and past president of the International Society of Contemporary Legend Research. His publications include Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media (2000); Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live (2001); Making a Big Apple Crumble: The Role of Humor in Constructing a Global Response to Disaster (2002); Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture (2003); and The Global Grapevine: Why Rumors of Terror, Immigration, and Trade Matter (2010; co-author with Gary Alan Fine). He has published folklore articles in Journal of American Folklore, Journal of Folklore Research, Folklore (UK), Western Folklore, Contemporary Legend, and other journals. Current interests include the continuing influence of folk narrative on the genre of animated films and TV series, especially on Japanese anime.
Russell Frank is a folklorist by training and a journalist by trade. He worked as a reporter and editor for newspapers in California and Pennsylvania for 13 years before joining the journalism faculty at Penn State in 1998. He teaches journalism ethics, news writing, feature writing, and the literature of journalism. In addition to his scholarly writing on journalism ethics, literary journalism, and Internet folklore, he has maintained his connection to the journalism world by writing weekly columns for Statecollege.com and thehill.com. He is the author of Newslore: Contemporary Folklore on the Internet (2011).
Andrew Peck is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he also lectures in folklore and digital...
