Department of Society, Culture, Crime, and Justice Studies
- Associate Professor, Folk Studies, Program Coordinator
- ann.ferrell@wku.edu
- FAC 272
- 270-745-5896
Graduate courses:
FLK 480G Women’s Folklife
FLK 566 Oral History
FLK 569 Folklore Genres
FLK 571 Folk Narrative
FLK 577 Folklore Theory
FLK 578 Folklore Fieldwork
FLK 585 Topics in Folklore: Foodways
Undergraduate courses:
FLK 276 Introduction to Folklore
FLK 371 Urban Folklore
FLK 373 Folklore and the Media
FLK/ANTH 388 Foodways
FLK 430 Oral History
FLK 480 Women’s Folklife
Ph.D., English/Folklore, The Ohio State University
M.A., Folk Studies, Western Kentucky University
B.A., Women’s Studies, State University of New York at New Paltz
My research interests include narrative, rhetorics of tradition and heritage, gendered knowledge, and land-based occupations, as well as history of the field of folklore studies. My recent and ongoing fieldwork has been with Kentucky burley tobacco farmers and members of the organization Kentucky Women in Agriculture. In addition to my academic work, I have experience in public folklore and with non-profit and governmental women’s organizations.
I served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of American Folklore from 2016-2020.
2019. “Now you can drink that alcohol…but smoking’s a sin”: Stigma, and the Production of Kentucky Heritage. Journal of Folklore Research 56(1).
2014. "Cutting a Thousand Sticks of Tobacco Makes a Boy a Man: Traditionalized Performances of Masculinity in Occupational Contexts." In Unsettling Assumptions: Tradition, Gender, Drag, eds. Pauline Greenhill and Diane Tye. Logan: Utah State University Press.
2012. "Doing Masculinity: Gendered Challenges to Replacing Burley Tobacco in Central Kentucky." Agriculture and Human Values 29(2).
2012. “‘It’s really hard to tell the true story of tobacco’: Stigma, Tellability, and Reflexive Scholarship.” Journal of Folklore Research 49(2):127-152.
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