I have several primary research subjects—Food and foodways; traditional music and dance; identity politics; constructions of community; notions of region and place; ethnicity—and I have worked in a number of geographic areas—Southern Appalachia, the American Midwest, Northern Ireland, northern Spain (Galicia), Far East and Southeast Asia (mostly Korea and Vietnam). My primary background is in folklore (drawing heavily from sociolinguistics and performance studies) which means that my research is grounded in ethnography and my focus is on the ways in which individuals creatively construct meaningfulness within larger cultural, social, and political constraints.  

Courses:

Current-undergraduate:

intro to international studies; cultural pluralism in the US; Food in American Culture; Food and Globalization; introduction to folklore (on-line)
Graduate: Food in American Culture; Appalachian Culture

Past courses —undergraduate:

Food and culture; Introduction to Folklore; Women's Folklore; Folklife and Material Culture; Folktale and Legend; Intro to Popular Culture; Introduction to Popular Music; Material Culture and Ritual; Food and Culture; Irish-American Folklore; Musics of the World; American Folk Music; Appalachian Folklore and Folklife; Musics of the World; Music Appreciation; Intro to Ethnomusicology; Fundamentals of Music Theory; Appalachian music.
Graduate: Food and Culture; Food and Gender; Teachers’ Institute on Food and Culture

Short Academic Biography :

My Ph.D dissertation was titled The Negotiation of Tradition: Collectors, Community, and the Appalachian Dulcimer in Beech Mountain, North Carolina, , and my Masters’ thesis was Stanley Hicks, Dulcimer Player: Individual Creativity and Community Tradition. Along with working Appalachian studies, I also studied a number of Asian music traditions (I attended Saigon Conservatory, Vietnam and George Mason University, VA). I taught in the music department at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and in the Folklore Program at University of Pennsylvania before coming to BGSU where I taught in the College of Music for several years. I then  moved to the Department of Popular Culture where I taught folklore and food studies, among other things.

List of Selected Publications:

Books: Culinary Tourism: Eating and Otherness. ed, Univ. Press of Kentucky Press. (2004)

Monographs: A Celebration of Latino Music in Toledo. With David Harnish and Barbara O’Hagin.
BGSU: Partnerships for Community Action (2002).
To Dance Irish, editor. Department of Popular Culture, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Oh. (1998). (49 page curriculum guide.)

Chapters in Books/Monographs:“Hot Milk Cake and Discovering Memories,” in Women, Recipes, and Stories, ed. By Linda Berzok. Forthcoming.
 “Ohio Foodways Traditions,” in Ohio Foodways Reader, ed. Tim Lloyd. 2007.
“Southern Appalachia,” in The Ethnomusicologists’ Cookbook: Complete Meals From Around the World, ed. Sean Williams. Routledge (2006):
 “Hot Corn, Cold Corn: Repetition, Monotony, and the Aesthetics of Appalachian
 Foodways,” in Conference Proceedings of the Women of Appalachia.
Zanesville: Ohio University-Zanesville (2003)
“Apple Butter in Northwest Ohio: Food festivals and the Construction of Local
 Meaning,” in Holidays, Rituals and Festivals: Proceedings from the
Conference. University of Alcala, Spain. (2003).
 “Holiday Meals: Rituals of Family Tradition,” In The Meal, ed. by Herbert
 Meisselman. Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen Publishers (2000).
 “Greenbean Casserole and Midwestern Identity,” Midwestern Folklore. Forthcoming.
“Foodways: Using Food to Teach Folklore Theories and Methods,” Digest
 Vol.19/1999 (2005): 32-36.
“Food Demonstrations in the Classroom: Practicing Ethnography and the
 Complexities of Identity with Tamales in Northwest Ohio,” Digest
 Vol.19/1999 (2005): 46-52.
Eating Across the Curriculum: Food as Resource and Tool for Teaching.Editor.
 (Journal Issue, Digest Vol.19/1999 (2005).  “Making Public the Personal: The Purposes and Venues of Applied
 Ethnomusicology,” Folklore Forum (2003) 34 (1/2): 97-101.
 “Nourishing the Academic Imagination: The Use of Food in Teaching Concepts of
 Folkloristics,” Food and Foodways  9/3-4  (2001): 235-262.
"Soda Bread in Northern Ireland," Digest: A Review for the Interdisciplinary Study
 of Food, Vol.13 (1993).

Honors and Awards:

Numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ohio Humanities Council, The Ohio Arts Council, BGSU Partnerships for Community Action, and local organizations. I also received a Smithsonian pre-doctoral fellowship as well as a Library of Congress Parson’s research award. Also received awards for my videos and teaching.