Recent Folklore Master’s Theses
2009
William Caudill, “Gone to seek a fortune in North Carolina: The failed Scottish Highland migration of 1884.”
Ashley Melzer, “Time’s the revelator: Revival and resurgence in alt.country and modern old-time American music.”
Joshua Parshall, “Contemporary klezmer: Music, identity and meaning.”
Timothy Prizer, “Pining for turpentine: Critical nostalgia, memory, and commemorative expression in the wake of industrial decline.”
Helena Safron, “Memorializing the backhouse: Sanitizing and satirizing outhouses in the American south.”
Stephen Jesse Taylor, “A home transformed: Narratives of home, loss, longing and the miniature from Portsmouth Island, North Carolina.”
Blaine Waide, “The green fields of the mind: Robert Johnson, folk revivalism, and disremembering the American past.”
Jennifer Womack, “Singing for our lives: Exploring the interaction of community, feminism, and musical performance in the common woman’s chorus.”
2010
Whitney Brown, “From Cotton Mill to Co-Op: The Rise of a Local Food Culture in Carrboro, North Carolina.”
Hannah Harvester, “Why these songs of happy cheer? Contemporary Christmas caroling as alternative practice.”
Susan Hester, “My Voice on Cloth: Story Quilters of the South Carolina Low Country.”
Rachel Richardson, “The great endeavor: National rebirth and the folklore commissions of Ireland and the United States.”
Carter Sickels, “What does masculinity mean to you: Trans males creating identities of possibility.”
Emily Wallace, “‘It was there for work’: Pimento Cheese in the Carolina Piedmont.”
2011
Sara Bell, “My heart sings to me: Song as the memory of language in the Arbëresh community of Chieuti.”
Vincent Joos, “The Natchez fire: A profile of African American remembrance in a small Mississippi town.”
Steven Kruger, “Protecting Place: Rural African American Cultural Memory, Folklife and Conservation Discourse in Central North Carolina.”
Shawna Prather, “Historic Texas jailhouses : Romanesque Revival, identity, and reform.”
2012
Sara Camp Arnold, “What is a Story Worth?: The Value of Narrative at the Carrboro Farmers’ Market.”
Joseph Decosimo, “Unexpected Vibrations in Unexpected Places: Making New, Old Music in the McCarroll Family.”
Marwa Koheji, “Diving for Pearls, Diving for History: Remembering the Pearl Diving Industry in Bahrain.”
Thomas C. Owens, “Signs of Critical Endurance on the Marcellus Shale Landscape.”
2013
Cristin Accardi, “The Abroad as Muse: Tradition, Perception, and Motivation in Expatriate Artist Narratives.”
Elijah Gaddis, “Locating the agrarian imaginary in Tillery, North Carolina.”
Kirandeep Singh Sirah, “A Stone in the Brook: Aesthetics of Home in the Narratives, Memory, and Arts of Homeless Persons from a Southern Shelter Community.”
Amanda Lynn Stubley, “Going back to Sumter, again: tracing a stringband’s experience in the folk revival.”
Elizabeth Ashley Thompson, “Bodies as Stories in Women’s Flat Track Roller Derby.”
2014
Laura Collier Fieselman, “The Contemporary Homestead: A Regional Moment In An American Movement.”
Rachel Mabe, “The Old Widow: What Do You Take if the House is on Fire.”
Kelsey Sherrod Michael, “The paths of Hope Valley: the political and social meaning of making home in a North Carolina suburb.”
Laura Pearce, “Across the Great Wall: The Politics and Economics of Transmission in Disney’s Mulan.”
2015
Kathryn Clune, “Home in a New Place: Making Laos in Morganton, NC.”
Sandra Davidson, “A Bigger Part of Our Life is Connected to Food: Older Adult Food Memories and Food Realities.”
Graham Hoppe, “Dollywood: Presenting Regional Culture Through Themed Environments.”
Allison Kinney, “Bridging Collaborative Ethnography and Asset-Based Education: A Case Study With Karen Youth.”
Philip MacDonald, “‘Birthplace of the Blues?’: Dockery Farms, Mythic South, and the Erasure of the African American Lived Experience in Mississippi Blues Tourism.”
Caroline Miller, “The Stories That Bind Us: Social Services Caseworkers’ Experiences and Narratives.”
Danielle Riley, “We Were Here: Graduate Street Painting In Landscapes of Memory and Place In Winchester, Virginia.“