Dec 20
I am pleased to report that Dr. Liora Sarfati recently and successfully defended her dissertation on the material culture of contemporary Korean Shamanism, thereby earning her Ph.D. in from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. I was honored to be a part of her committee and I look forward to seeing her fine and innovative work published and discussed in the years ahead.
May 8
Congratulations go to Jethro Gaede*, who has today successfully defended his dissertation and earned the Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. Jethro’s dissertation is titled “An Ethnohistory of the American Indian Exposition at Anadarko Oklahoma: 1932-2003.” I was honored to serve on Jethro’s committee, both as an OU faculty member and as a visiting member since my move to Indiana. Well done.
*Jethro is an instructor of anthropology at Monroe Community College.
Congratulations to Gabrielle Berlinger who completed her M.A. in Folklore in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University today with a very successful oral exam covering her studies in general and her thesis project “Ritual Interpretation: The Sukkah as Jewish Vernacular Architecture” in particular. Her well recieved thesis is an ethnography of Sukkot observance in Bloomington, Indiana, with an emphasis of the physical structures built and used by families and community organizations here. A significant contribution to research on Jewish material culture and to the study of Jewish life in the smaller communities of North America, the study is also a pilot project for future examinations of the topic in other communities elsewhere in the world. Her committee was uniformly pleased with her efforts and I am very proud to have served as her chair. Well done.
Shreds and Patches 