Elon University associate professor Tom Mould is one of nine folklorists from colleges and institutes across the nation to be part of a team that received a $75,000 grant to bring together scholars to discuss a “big question” of central importance to the humanities or social sciences.
Mould and his eight colleagues are working with the American Folklore Society, which received the grant from the New York-based Teagle Foundation. Teagle focuses on issues related to higher education.
In its competitive grant application, the team posed the question, “What is the relationship between lay and expert knowledge in a complex society?”
Their academic homes — liberal arts colleges, urban commuter schools, small state schools, and large land-grant institutions — represent the diversity of institutions where folklorists teach today, of those institutions’ student bodies, and of the knowledge those students are bringing to the classroom.
The project will also serve as a beginning for a long-term effort by AFS to strengthen undergraduate education in folklore.
The working group made up of the following people will develop courses and course modules based on its discussions, and will test, evaluate, and disseminate them during the grant period:
• Michael Chiarappa, Department of History, Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo)
• Danille Elise Christensen, Department of Culture and Communication, Indiana University (Bloomington)
• Jason Baird Jackson, Director, Folklore Institute, Indiana University (Bloomington)
• Sabina Magliocco, Chair, Department of Anthropology, California State University (Northridge)
• Jay Mechling, Department of American Studies, University of California (Davis)
• Tom Mould, Department of Anthropology, Elon University (Elon, North Carolina)
• Dorry Noyes, Department of English, The Ohio State University (Columbus), co-coordinator for the project
• Leonard Norman Primiano, Department of Religious Studies, Cabrini College (Radnor, Pennsylvania)
• Howard Sacks, Interim Provost, Kenyon College (Gambier, Ohio)