Contemporary Irish Folklore, Sense of Place, Appalachian Studies, Transnational Migration
Debra Lattanzi Shutika is a folklorist specializing in critical race, sense of place and Appalachian studies and contemporary Irish Folklore. She is author of Beyond the Borderlands: Migration and Belonging in the United States and Mexico (2011, University of California Press) which won the 2012 Chicago Folklore Prize. She is the director of the Mason-Library of Congress Field School for Cultural Documentation. Her current research is an ethnographic study of community gardens in District of Columbia National Parks funded by the National Park Service
In 2022-23 she completed a research and teaching Fulbright award in Ireland where she completed a folklore collection in the Gaeltacht (Irish speaking) communities of Achill and Erris exploring women’s traditional agricultural practices.
She teaches classes in folklore, ethnographic field documentation, Appalachian studies, Irish folklore and culture, digital storytelling, and sense of place.
Folklore and women's traditional agricultural practices in County Mayo's Gaeltacht communities.
Beyond the Borderlands: Migration and Belonging in the United States and Mexico. University of California Press, 2011. Chicago Folklore Prize winner, 2012.
“The Folklorist as Department Chair” in What Folklorists Do. Timothy Lloyd, ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021
“The Mason Idea: Folklore for the 21st Century” In Folklore in the United States and Canada: An Institutional History. Rosemary Zumwalt & Patricia Sawin, eds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021
“Disrupting Folklore” in Advancing Folkloristics. Jesse Fivecoat, Kristina Downs and Meredith McGriff, eds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021.
“The Folklore Detective: Forensic Narrative Analysis” Ethnologies special issue, Crime and Folklore Volume 41, Issue 1, 2019, p. 121–152 .
Fiction:
“Mala Suerte” (fiction, 4000 words). Diamonds, Denim and Death: Bouchercon Anthology 2019, ed. Rick Ollerman, Down and Out Books, 2019
“Frozen Iguana” (fiction, 4000 words) Florida Happens: Tales of Mystery, Mayhem, and Suspense from the Sunshine State. Bouchercon 2018 Anthology. Ed. Greg Herren. Three Rooms Press, 2018.
“Mirrors” (fiction, 1500 words) Abundant Grace: Fiction by Washington Area Women. 7th Edition. Richard Peabody, ed. Paycock Press, 2016.
Fulbright Scholar, Ireland 2022-2023
Community Gardens in DC National Parks, 2022-2025
Summer in the Parks: National Park Service, 2018-19
ENGH 412: Digital Storytelling
ENGH 591/417: Field School for Cultural Documentation
ENGH 301: Fields of English
ENGH 591/417: Bodylore
ENGH 591/417: Appalachian Folklore
ENGH 315: Folklore and Folklife
ENGH 316: Topics in Myth and Literature: Changelings and Fairies
ENGH 484: Writing Ethnography
ENGH 681: Sense of Place
ENGH 681: Pathways to Folklore Scholarship
ENGH 412: Latin American Folklore
Noel Lopez, Young Patriots: Vanguard of the Dispossessed (2020)
Matthew Malzkuhn, Preservation, Revitalization, and Validity of Home Movies: Deaf Folklife Films as a Case Study (2019)
Young A. Jung, Emplacing Parenting: Migration and Belonging among Korean Gireogi Families (2014)
Jason Morris, Local Renewable Energy Actions in the Washington D.C. Region: Political Economy, Place, Policy and Culture (2014)