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257 Contributors Trevor J. Blank is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of English and Communication at the State University of New York at Potsdam. He earned his PhD in American studies from the Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, and an MA at Indiana University’s Folklore Institute. He is the editor of Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2009), coeditor (with Robert Glenn Howard) of Tradition in the Twenty-First Century: Locating the Role of the Past in the Present (Logan: Utah State University Press, forthcoming), and author of The Last Laugh: Folk Humor, Celebrity Culture, and Mass-Mediated Disasters in the Digital Age (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, forthcoming). In 2010 he was awarded the American Folklore Society’s William Wells Newell Prize in Children’s Folklore for his research on “fartlore.” Currently, Blank serves as editor to the open access journal New Directions in Folklore (http://newfolk.net). Follow him on Twitter @trevorjblank. Simon J. Bronner is the Distinguished University Professor of American Studies and Folklore at the Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, where he chairs the doctoral program in American studies. He has also taught at Harvard University, Osaka University (Japan), the University of California, Davis, and has held the Walt Whitman Distinguished Chair in American Cultural Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is author or editor of over thirty books, including most recently Campus Traditions: Folklore from the Old-Time College to the Modern Mega-University (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, forthcoming ), Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2011), and the Encyclopedia of American Folklife (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2006). He also serves as editor of the Encyclopedia of American Studies online, the Material Worlds book series for the University Press of Kentucky, and the Jewish Cultural Studies book series for Littman. He is president of the Western States Folklore Society and the Fellows of the American Folklore Society. Anthony Bak Buccitelli is an assistant professor of American studies and communication studies at the Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg. He holds a PhD in American and New England studies from Boston University and an MA in folklore from the University of California, Berkeley. He also serves as coeditor for Cultural Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Forum on Folklore and Popular Culture, published at UC Berkeley. His current research and teaching focuses on digital performativity , vernacular media cultures, and the convergence of digital and actual spaces. Contributors 258 Bill Ellis is a professor emeritus of English and American studies at the Pennsylvania State University, Hazleton. His academic publications include Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000), Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), Lucifer Ascending:The Occult in Folk and Popular Culture (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003), and (with Gary Alan Fine) The Global Grapevine: Why Rumors of Terrorism, Immigration, and Trade Matter (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). His web-published monograph Making a Big Apple Crumble: The Role of Humor in Constructing a Global Response to Disaster (2002) was an influential study of topical jokes inspired by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. A fellow of the American Folklore Society, he has served on that organization’s executive board. Collectors recognize him more readily as “Sensei,” the creator and curator of Sensei’s Anime Gallery, a permanent online display of Japanese animation art. Robert Glenn Howard is a professor, a researcher, and an author at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His teaching and publications span several fields including communication, folklore studies, journalism, and religious studies. Focusing on everyday expression in network communication technologies, his 2011 book, Digital Jesus: The Making of a New Christian Fundamentalist Community on the Internet (New York: NYU Press), documents a grassroots religious movement using the Internet to prepare for the end-time. His other work expands his exploration of the possibilities and limits of empowerment through everyday expression on the Internet by focusing on the intersection of individual human agency and participatory performance. In 2012 Howard cofounded the Digital Studies program at Wisconsin and currently serves as its director. He is also director of the Folklore program at Wisconsin and editor of the journal Western Folklore. If you would like to contact Rob, you can e-mail him at rgh@rghoward.com,or check out his most current research and teaching at http://rghoward.com. Lynne S. McNeill holds...

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