Potter College News

Students in the Folk Studies MA Program continue to engage in internship and research opportunities this summer, preparing them for careers in public folklore and/or continued academic study, despite the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Taylor Burden is an intern with Local Learning, the National Network for Folk Arts in Education. Taylor writes, "Since my internship began, I have been updating Local Learning’s regional and national resources, as well as documenting creative response to current events, COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter in particular. In addition to continuing to document creative responses to current events as they occur, I will be assisting with the publication of The Journal of Folklore and Education Volume 7 and acting as an assistant for Local Learning’s professional development workshops." Taylor was recently featured on Local Learning's site here.

Ellie Dassler is currently the Summer 2020 Folklife Intern at the North Carolina Arts Council, working with their Folklife Director Zoe van Buren. Ellie explains that the internship was "converted to a remote internship due to COVID-19," and writes that her main focus for the Council has been "interviewing artists to expand their Millennial Traditional Artists directory, aimed at identifying emerging traditional artists in the state and connecting them to resources." More about the work of the NC Arts Council can be found here.

Camille Acosta and Azadeh Najafian have been hard at work preparing to conduct socially-distanced ethnographic research for their respective MA theses, to be completed this coming academic year. Camille will be studying the legend of La Llorona ("the wailing woman"), in particular its unique and changing role in her own Mexican American community. Azadeh will be exploring the experiences of adult comic book readers, a group that in some ways defies expectations about comic fandom. Through interviews, she will connect their reading habits with their identities and actions beyond the comic realm.  

For more information about thesis and internship opportunities with the Folk Studies MA, see our program page.