Folklore News

Noah Todachiny, a student in Professor Jeannie Thomas’ Introduction to Folklore class, recently created “Ghost Hunters of Old Main,” a short film celebrated by his classmates for its creative and engaging content.

Back in December, Afsane Rezaei took her students from the Foodways class (ENGL 3710: Topics in Folklore) to the culinary lab on campus for a class contest to make Swedish pancakes.

USU Folklore Professor Jeannie Thomas was recently featured on KUTV for her work on the “Swiftie” phenomenon as a part of a larger project for the Digital Folklore Project and also was recently interviewed on Utah Public Radio for Valentine's Day

USU folklore alum Millie Tullis has been awarded the Don Yoder Prize for her dissertation titled "Comfort, Counsel, Money, and Livestock: Mormon Women's Divination Communities."

Dr. Patricia Turner Lecture on Jan 25th from 1:30-2:30pm in LIB 101

Drew Holley, a second-year graduate student in folklore studies at USU, served a summer internship during 2023 with the American Folklife Center at the United States Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

USU Folklore graduate student Millie Tullis recently published her essay “Polygamy and Revelation in Magical Mormonism: Four Peepstone Bride Narratives” in the collection DNA Mormon: Perspectives on the Legacy of Historian D. Michael Quinn

Associate Professor Lisa Gabbert’s 6710 Folklore and Landscape class visited the site of the Bear River Massacre on Wednesday, October 19.

Professor Jeannie Banks Thomas has edited and published Creole Soul: Zydeco Lives.

USU English Department Assistant Professor Afsane Rezaei recently published an article in the Journal of Middle East Women's Studies.

Students Bonnie Swenson and Millie Tullis have won grants for their research projects from the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies.

USU’s new digital exhibit, showcases findings from Dr. Afsane Rezaei's and Dr. Ehsan Estiri's ethnographic research with the Iranian-American communities of Southern California.

In Fall 2021, Professor Jeannie Thomas and her English 2720 students compiled a book titled American Folklore: Class Cookbook & Foodways.

Jon D. Lee has just published an article in The Atlantic, “The Utter Familiarity of Even the Strangest Vaccine Conspiracy Theories.”

The USU Folklore Program had a strong presence at last weekend’s Folklore Society of Utah (FSU) virtual meeting.

Congratulations to Assistant Professors Afsane Rezaei and Avery Edenfield, who were named inaugural Research Fellows at the Center for Intersectional Gender Studies and Research for 2020-2021.

CHaSS folklorists and fans look forward each December to the year’s most feted event: The announcement of the Digital Trend of the Year.

The topic: Dude ranches. The place: The picturesque slopes of the Tetons. The takeaway: A bat’s bite is so tiny it can’t be felt by a sleeping person.