Retired Folk Studies and Anthropology Faculty

Ph.D., Folklore/American Studies, Indiana University
M.A., Folklore, Indiana University
B.A., Anthropology, Colorado State University

I grew up in Colorado. In my 38 years as a folklorist, I have worked extensively in both academic and public folklore, including eight years as Wyoming State Folklorist. I have worked as a folklorist in Indiana, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Iowa, Nebraska and Kentucky. I have been at Western Kentucky University since 1999. I have served on numerous panels and boards related to public folklore, and on the executive board of the American Folklore Society.

Specialties/interests include public/applied folklore, folklore and education, material culture, folk art and architecture, American architectural history, the history of Folk Studies, the politics of culture, the American West, folklore and literature, the folkloresque, fan cultures, new media, and fantasy/science fiction. My research and publications include work on public folklore, the American West, western saddlemaking, Wyoming barns, the Arts and Crafts Movement, contemporary/internet legends, the writer/designer/socialist William Morris, and science fiction/fantasy writers including H. P. Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, and Neil Gaiman.

“The Bowling Green Massacre: Fake News, Narrative and Counter-Narrative,” Journal of American Folklore, forthcoming.

“Slender Man, H. P. Lovecraft, and the Dynamics of Horror Cultures,” in Creepypasta as Digital Legendry: The Case of Slender Man, ed. Trevor J. Blank and Lynne S. McNeill. Logan: Utah State University Press, forthcoming.

2015. “Folklore, Intertextuality and the Folkloresque in the Works of Neil Gaiman,” in The Folkloresque: Reframing Folklore in a Popular Culture World, ed. Michael Foster and Jeffrey Tolbert. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2015.

2010. "Authenticity, Ethnography, and Colonialism in Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle." Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 21(3):366-383.

2006. "Piece-Sur-Piece Horse Barns on the Laramie Plains of Southeastern Wyoming: Cultural Interplay and Adaptation." Material Culture 38(1):54-87.

2005. "A Last Defense Against the Dark: Folklore, Horror and the Uses of Tradition in the Works of H. P. Lovecraft." Journal of Folklore Research 42(1):99-135.

2004. "Tradition and Illusion: Antiquarianism, Tourism and Horror in H. P. Lovecraft." Extrapolation 45(2):176-195.

1998. King of the Western Saddle: the Sheridan Saddle and the Art of Don King. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

1988. "Folklore As Utopia: English Medievalists and the Ideology of Revivalism." Western Folklore 47(4):245-268.