WKU News

Folk Studies graduate Taylor Dooley Burden has received a prestigious Archie Green Fellowship, awarded by the American Folklife Center (AFC) of the Library of Congress. Burden’s project “The Occupational Lives of Religious Workers in Kentuckiana” will contribute new ethnographic research to the American Folklife Center’s archive by documenting the occupational lives of religious workers and looking at belief from an occupational perspective.

Named in honor of folklorist Archie Green, pioneering scholar of American workers, the Fellowships support new ethnographic and oral history research in occupational folklore. The products of the documentation, including interviews and photographs, are preserved in the archives of the AFC for generations of researchers to come.

Burden noted in her project description, “For most who participate in a religious tradition, their faith is personal and often private. For religious leaders, however, their faith is also their occupation, making their occupational contexts and experiences unique. This project seeks to interview 20 religious leaders in Kentuckiana to document the vibrant and diverse occupational folklife of those serving God and their communities as their life’s vocation.”

Religious workers from Christian, Jewish, and Islamic religious traditions will be interviewed in this innovative and informative collection of oral histories. 

Burden is thrilled to be applying the fieldwork skills she has acquired and honed during her coursework in the Folk Studies program and looks forward to beginning the exciting fieldwork when the project officially begins in July.

According to Folk Studies program director Ann K. Ferrell, “We are very proud of Taylor, who is also our 2022 Outstanding Graduate Student in Folk Studies, and we are thankful to the American Folklife Center for their recognition of her skills and the value of her research project. Our graduates and faculty have a growing track record as successful recipients of the Archie Green Fellowship among other awards.”