Information about Contributors
- Information about Contributors
Lisa Gabbert is Associate Professor of Folklore and American Studies in the Department of English at Utah State University, where she directed the Folklore Program from 2013–2019. She held a visiting professorship in the Department of Communication at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan, in 2015 and is a former executive board member of the American Folklore Society (2011–2013). She is the author of Winter Carnival in a Western Town: Identity, Change, and the Good of the Community (2011) and, with Keiko Wells, An Introduction to Vernacular Culture in America: Society, Region, and Tradition (2017). Her research interests include folklore and landscape, festivity and play, and folklore in medical contexts.
Michael Owen Jones has published on foodways, folk medicine, folk art and aesthetics, organizational folklore, and methods in fieldwork and folklore studies. Among his books are People Studying People (1980; with Robert A. Georges), Craftsman of the Cumberlands (1989), Studying Organizational Symbolism (1996), Folkloristics: An Introduction (1995; with Robert A. Georges), Comfort Food: Meanings and Memories (2017; co-edited with Lucy M. Long), and Corn: A Global History (2017). Recent articles concern food choice (2007), dining on death row (2014), and eating behind bars (2017) in Journal of American Folklore; Percy Shelley, the first celebrity vegan (2016) in Journal of Folklore Research; and pork ban rumors and nationalism (2017) in Western Folklore.
Dorian Jurić recently received his PhD from the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. His research explores oral traditions, supernatural beings, and the political life of folklore in both historical and contemporary contexts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro. He has previously been published in the Journal of Indo-European Studies (2010).
Michael Atwood Mason serves as the director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, where he leads the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, and educational and cultural programs. A champion of cultural sustainability, Mason has spent his career supporting individuals and communities in identifying, documenting, preserving, and sharing the culture that matters most to them. Since 1987, he has been studying the religions and cultures of the African diaspora, and he is the author of Living Santería: Rituals and Experiences in an Afro-Cuban Religion (2002) and the cultural blog Baba Who . . . Babalú!
Rory Turner is Assistant Professor of Practice in the Center for People, Politics, and Markets, and teaches in the Sociology and Anthropology Departments at Goucher College. He designed, launched, and continues to teach in Goucher’s Master of Arts in Cultural Sustainability program. Formerly program director for Folk and Traditional Arts and program initiative specialist at the Maryland State Arts Council, he co-founded and directed the Maryland Traditions program from 2000–2007. He also founded and subsequently revived the Baltimore Rhythm Festival.
