Teaching

I regularly teach courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level.

In recent years, my undergraduate teaching work was especially focused on the development and improvement of an introductory course in folklife studies (“World Arts and Cultures“). This course introduces students to a sample of the world’s arts and cultures, while examining basic concepts used in folklife studies and exploring general issues in the study of phenomena such as folk medicine, foodways, vernacular architecture, clothing, and festival.

I also teach an undergraduate course focused on Native North American expressive culture (“Native American Folklore, Folklife, and Folk Music“) and in the 2011-2012 academic year I will be teaching two new undergraduate courses. One, taught jointly for the Departments of American Studies and Folklore and Ethnomusicology is “Indigenous Worldviews” (a.k.a “Indigenous Worldviews in the Americas.” The other is a course focused on “The New Social Problems: Expressive and Communal Responses.” In this later course, the field of folklore studies provides a vantage point for understanding new issues of social and communal concern and debate, phenomena such as nanotechnology, intellectual property contests, the trade in living human tissue, genetic engineering, etc.

Each semester I teach a different graduate course, working through a rotation of courses that includes seminars on social and cultural theory (“Putting Cultural Theory to Use”), intellectual property and cultural policy (“Contesting Culture as Property”), museum methods (“Curatorship”), material culture studies (“Theories of Material Culture”), public folklore and applied ethnomusicology (“Public Practice in Folklore and Ethnomusicology“) and American Indian art (“Native American Folklore and Folk Music”).

In fall 2011, I am again teaching an introductory graduate seminar in folklore studies (“Folklore Theory in Practice”).

I presently work with graduate students pursuing studies in a wide range of fields of interest to me. Working with M.A. and Ph.D. students as they develop and implement their own research programs and as they secure professional positions in the field is one of the great pleasures of my own professional life.