In March, Department Chair Dr. Sharon P. Holland was the keynote speaker at Duke University’s 2021 Feminist Theory Workshop, hosted by its Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies department.
Each year, Assistant Professor Dr. Ben Frey and several of his colleagues have accompanied students of the Cherokee language to Western Carolina University to attend a symposium. This year the pandemic prevented such a journey, so he produced a documentary (by Trevor Trout), “ᎣᏂ ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ ᏓᏂᎳᏫᎬᎢ: The Last Symposium.”
Michael J. Bramwell, PhD candidate and Visiting Guest Curator at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts at Old Salem, joined Dr. Jon F. Sensbach (Prof. of History @ U of Florida) in a discussion on “THINGS: A Global Conversation About The Tools of the Trade, Resistance, and the Decorative Arts of Enslavement.”
Smithsonian Magazine recently featured an article by West Virginia state folklorist, Emily Hilliard (Folklore MA, 2011), “’Making a Living by the Sweat of Her Brow’: Hazel Dickens and a Life of Work.”
American Studies professor Dr. Dan Cobb and the members of his Undergraduate Research Consultant Team—Mackenzie Collura-Repp, Samara Perez Labra, Gabrielle Walton, and Grace Yannotta—announced the publication of the website for their ongoing project “The Experiential World of D’Arcy McNickle.”
Lehman Brady Fellow Marie T. Cochran was interviewed in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on her “Notes of an Affrilachian Daughter in the Time of COVID” exhibit.
The New York Times featured journalist, cookbook author and American Studies professor, Von Diaz, on collecting dishes that tell stories about life on the island, and the flavors that bring her back to it.
In the Last Lecture for the Class of 2021, associate professor and folklorist Glenn Hinson shared lessons learned in a life of collecting the stories of others.
After a 21-year career in the U.S. Army, John Bechtold is now a PhD student in UNC’s Department of American Studies, using photography as a means to discuss American public memory and cultural perceptions of war.
American Studies Professor Von Diaz’s food politics article in the New York Times, a great piece about food as resistance and chefs who “make magic with whatever ingredients they have.”
