Monday, April 26th, 2021
Folk Studies MA Student Georgia Ellie Dassler Receives PCAL Outstanding Graduate Student Award
In a virtual ceremony held on Friday, April 16, the WKU Graduate School honored the Outstanding Graduate Student Awardees from each college, including Folk Studies MA student Georgia Ellie Dassler who was chosen as the Potter College of Arts and Letters Outstanding Graduate Student. Dassler has also been named the Outstanding Folk Studies Graduate Student.
Dassler exemplifies excellence in scholarly and applied research and professional activities. In her time as an MA student, Dassler presented a paper on her ongoing research, “Ballet Dancers Personal Narratives of Pain and Injury,” at the 2020 (virtual) American Folklore Society Annual Meeting; she wrote two successful grant applications to the Kentucky Oral History Commission; and she secured two prestigious internships, as the (virtual) Folklife Intern for the North Carolina Arts Council in summer 2020
WKU Features Graduate Student Ellie Dassler for Capstone Project wku.edu - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wku.edu Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Kelly Scott
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021
Like the rest of us, Ellie Dassler – a folk studies master’s student from Williamsburg, Va. – is trying to make sense of COVID-19. Dassler, however, is employing her master’s research to understand the pandemic through a different lens.
Her research centers around the experiences of professional folklorists and culture workers navigating a world in crisis. Along with the COVID-19 pandemic, Dassler is exploring the present racial and economic inequalities’ impact on folklorists. She said that there are many long overdue conversations and now is the time to have them.
“I ve always been interested in what we bring to our work: our experiences, beliefs, and biases, for better or worse,” Dassler said. “In a time when folklorists are both experiencing and responding to widespread trauma, looking back on ourselves and understanding where we come from seems especially vital, for our own wellbeing and the wellbeing of the artists and
Kentucky Folklife Program
Thursday, February 18th, 2021
On March 5 and 6, the Kentucky Folklife Program, part of the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology at WKU, will host the first virtual Kentucky Folklife Network Gathering.
The two-day event is dedicated to creating more robust avenues of communication among folklorists, academics, community scholars and cultural documentarians across the state. The gathering will feature roundtable discussions and speakers from Kentucky and beyond engaged in community-based folklife projects on topics such as engaging seniors in folk art activities and documenting the art of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“We are excited to be hosting this first Folklife Network Gathering event next month,” said Kentucky Folklife Program Director Brent Bjorkman. “As a statewide folklife organization dedicated to documentation projects ourselves, we have long been aware of the challenge of working in all 120 Kentucky counties. The role of the ga
Kentucky Folklife Program
Tuesday, February 9th, 2021
The Kentucky Folklife Program, in the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology at WKU, has been awarded $20,000 by the National Endowment for the Arts to further its Kentucky Folklife Network magazine project and continue its efforts to work with community scholars and others involved in community-based documentation to share their cultural research statewide.
“It is an honor for the KFP to be recognized again by the NEA for our work helping to share the voices of Kentuckians from across the Commonwealth,” said Kentucky Folklife Program Director Brent Bjorkman. “Last year with funding from the NEA and the efforts of our KFP team, a Kentucky Folklife Network and digital platform were created, and so far we have produced two editions of the magazine. This grant will allow us to continue to seek and publish important research by community scholars and regional documentarians which shines a light on the diverse cultural