Graduate Studies
“I study the representation of war in American public memory to arrive at a more inclusive human accounting about the consequences of state violence.”
– John Bechtold
“Folklore is all about listening to people as they express their culture in a myriad of ways.Sometimes an object is made to stand in for words; sometimes pieces of the narrative can only be revealed in photographs, ephemera, or the margins of ledgers; sometimes a story is in the threads of a coverlet moved from house to house and generation to generation.”
– Danielle Burke
“There is an unexplored richness of spatiality in the narratives of Indigeneity that have been preserved through the visual art and community storytelling about the midwestern migration of Yesàh people from North Carolina/Virginia to Ohio/Indiana – and which I hope, through my work, to elevate.”
– Alexa Sutton Lawrence
“Sitting with the discomfort and with the contradictions of lesbian feminism in particular allows us to understand the work their theorizing brings to bear for the politics of gender and sexuality while simultaneously making space for requisite iterative thinking about the utopian visions to come. Allowing ourselves to reside in this tension rather than applying the temporary analgesics of forgetfulness and erasure allows for a further journey toward new levels of consciousness, clearing the viewing frame for new radical visions, new utopia to be staged.”
– Katelyn Mckensie Campbell
“We should aim to devictimize the narratives of Filipina women, as their experiences should not be dictated by the commodification of their labor and society’s ideals with women’s work, but rather, we should shift the focus on their agency and individualism.”
– Ashlee Monton
“The transnational approach is dangerous for stories involving migration. Yes, migration happens everywhere, but it looks different depending on where you are geographically and the reasoning behind it. Conflating the complexities of migration into a singular meaning disregards the methods and approaches migrants go through.”
– Tony Royle
“Older adults are already vulnerable to major disasters, and as climate change worsens, so will their vulnerability. This is an issue with alarming practical and moral implications.” (From MA Capstone Project, “Certified: Attracting Retirees to Vulnerable Gulf Coast Communities,” 2020.
– Sarah Torgeson
About Our Program
Our program emphasizes intersectionality as a mode of scholarship, mode of teaching, and mode of being. We value creative, ethically-centered, and community-focused work. We prepare and encourage students to explore the complex, variable, and contested nature of what it means to be American. We recognize that this requires examining many kinds of evidence derived from multiple sources and genres (archival materials, oral history, literature, popular culture, music, art, food, bodily movement and adornment, landscape, architecture, and belief), accessed via multiple methodologies (historical, literary, ethnographic, and digital) and analyzed via theoretical perspectives that attend to race, gender, and sexuality; aesthetics and politics; region and transnational connection.
The program prepares both those who aim to teach at the college and university levels in American Studies and related fields (including American Indian Studies, literature, history, art history, cultural studies, and folklore) and those who aim to pursue careers in museums, historical sites, archives, libraries, publishing, or to apply American Studies perspectives in other professional settings.
All American Studies Ph.D. students take three required courses that provide grounding in the history, theory, and methodologies of American Studies. Students choose additional coursework inside and outside the department in accordance with their specific interests, and each student develops individual areas of specialization, drawing on the strengths of the department and peer departments at UNC-CH, including art, cultural studies, literary studies, intellectual history, religious studies, American Indian and Indigenous Studies, folklore, African American Studies, and more. Students take comprehensive examinations in two areas of specialization.
Students may complete a master’s degree on their way to their doctoral degree. Students who enter with an M.A. in American Studies or a closely related field may apply to transfer up to 9 hours of approved graduate credit toward the doctoral degree. In addition to coursework, requirements for the Ph.D. include proficiency in one language other than English or a new skill, written and oral qualifying examinations, a dissertation prospectus, and the dissertation.
The M.A. program enables students both to gain a broad appreciation of the discipline of Folklore (including the complex history of the study of traditional or vernacular culture in a self-consciously modern and global world) and to develop expertise in a particular area of interest. Graduates of our program take jobs in the public sector, bring their folklorist’s eye to work in other professional fields as diverse as museum curatorship and medicine, and go on to further graduate work in Anthropology, Communication Studies, Film Studies, and Information and Library Science as well as in Folklore.
Core courses taught by the Folklore faculty offer students a perspective on the breadth of genres and issues addressed by our discipline. The three additional courses allow students to explore interdisciplinary connections and historical contexts for their thesis topics. These additional courses may be taught by Folklore faculty or may come from a variety of associated graduate programs, including Anthropology, Communications Studies, English and Comparative Literature, History, and Music. Students may also arrange to take courses at Duke University, including courses in the Department of Cultural Anthropology, ethnomusicology courses in the Department of Music, and courses offered by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Please see our MA Timeline and Requirements and Critical Literature Review documents for details.
We appreciate your interest in our Ph.D. Program in American Studies and M.A. Program in Folklore. We look forward to receiving your application. You submit your application electronically via the UNC Graduate School website. You are welcome to contact the Director of Graduate Studies or to email individual faculty members with whom you are interested in working. The DGS will be happy to answer your questions, help you learn more about specific aspects of our program in order to judge if our program is a good fit for you, and help you arrange a visit to Chapel Hill. We are always delighted to have prospective students sit in on classes and talk with individual faculty members and current students. The Ph.D. program in American Studies and the M.A. program in Folklore does not require GRE scores. Take a look at our application guide to learn more here.
Learn more about our Ph.D. timeline and requirements here.
UNC Graduate Handbook click here.
We offer several fellowships that provide single-year awards to students pursuing particular areas of study.