Folklorists and Documentarians

I am Anna Keneda a folklorist interested in possibilities of public folklore. My current thesis work focuses on material culture, occupational folklore as well as animal studies. My broader interest are new models for community storytelling with an emphasis on collaborative ethnography and audio documentaries.

Barbara R. Duncan is a folklorist interested in narrative, dance, material culture, beliefs, and folk medicine. She works as Education Director with the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee, N.C. The Museum sponsors the Warriors of AniKituhwa traditional dance group, and sponsors cultural revitalization projects within the Cherokee community. In addition Duncan teaches Cherokee language classes in the evenings as adjunct professor at UNC-Asheville.

Bruce has managed a recording studio and publishing company, supervised a university archive’s recorded sound collection, produced and played on albums both obscure and Grammy-nominated and logged tens of thousands of miles on tour buses, both shiny-new and ready for the scrap heap! Now the Muse has led Bruce back to the music that first raised his blood pressure a half-century ago–songs and tunes, old and new, with deep roots in the human condition… simple music about not-so-simple people.

Iryna Voloshyna is highly involved in promoting and performing Ukrainian folklore: a singer in a folk ensemble “Ladovytsi” and a tutor in Ukrainian folk singing; formerly the head and co-founder of the NGO “Podillya traditions revival”; member of an international folklore festival organization committee in Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine; participant of a number of regional, national and international festivals and other cultural events at home and abroad (Spain, France, Lithuania, Georgia).

I work as a music recording artist and cultural documentarian. This includes operating an independent record label called Product of Palmyra and curating exhibits and programs for Traditional Arts Indiana, a statewide folklife program.

Phillip MacDonald is a folklorist, photographer, and writer born, raised, and living in North Carolina. Phillip’s research interests include Southern history, African American history, and Cultural Tourism. His scholarship examines the intersectionality of identity, culture, and landscapes with an emphasis on the "lived experience” of people. Whether it be through prose, photography, or a combination of the two, Phillip constructs unique and candid stories for and about folks.

I am fascinated by the ways people use stories to make sense of the connections between landscape, politics, and identity in the U.S. South. By and large, I have focused my research, writing, and documentary film work on the Environmental Justice movement in North Carolina. I have conducted oral history projects with EJ organizations in Greensboro and Orange County, North Carolina, and produced a film on community organizing against industrial livestock agriculture in Duplin County, NC.

Zoe van Buren is interested in public folklore, race and religious experience, material culture, and occupational folklife. She has worked with Arts MidHudson in Poughkeepsie, NY on a study of step teams in local schools; the New Bedford Working Waterfront Festival and Fishing Heritage Center in New Bedford, MA; the North Carolina Arts Council; and the West Virginia Humanities Council on the documentation of a community historian’s collection of antique work tools and occupational histories.