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Letter from the chair

At the 2025 meeting of the American Folklore Society in Atlanta, President Amy Skillman delivered a beautiful address: “‘You Gotta Go with Your Gut:’ Navigating Risk and Fear in the Storm,” which featured the brave voices of female ship captains. Inspired by the talk, I started to regard myself as the captain of my own ship, steering the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology through choppy waters, a daunting proposition considering that I can’t swim. Before turning to faculty and student success, let me begin by explaining how we evaded a scary storm headed our way.

In the summer of 2025, there was fear since our BA degree did not meet the minimum threshold according to the Indiana Commission on Higher Education and a new Indiana State Bill (we do not graduate a minimum of 15 BAs in Folklore and Ethnomusicology per year). Our PhD graduation rate is robust enough to generate doctorates that are well above the state’s minimum threshold (see the following names of our newly minted PhDs at the end of this statement). I am happy to report that we came to a good solution that involved a nominal “merger” of the BA in Folklore and Ethnomusicology with the BA in Anthropology. The Folklore and Ethnomusicology major is still offered through our department, managed by our department, and the courses are taught by our faculty. It will be called a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology with a Major in Folklore and Ethnomusicology. There are no mandated changes to our curriculum or requirements. We are back to smooth sailing through relatively calm waters.

This spring we officially learned that David McDonald was promoted to Professor and Brandon Barker was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. Both of them cruised through promotion with their high levels of scholarly productivity and excellence in teaching. We were lucky to have Professors Dorian Jurić and Max Jack with us for a few years of comradery and the teaching of undergraduate and graduate courses; it is with a heavy heart that we say farewell to them.

Starting in the Fall of 2026, Dr. Rachel Horner will join the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology as a Visiting Lecturer. She earned her PhD in Music and Sound Studies at Cornell University. Her research centers on the intersections of sound, language, and identity, especially in festivals of Spain and Latin America. Rachel’s scholarship takes an inter-material approach to language, noise, music, and silence to reveal how sound sustains shared meanings, relationships, and senses of place and memory. With multiple awards for excellence in teaching, a degree in Music Education, certification in K-12 Music Education, and much teaching experience at Cornell and Rutgers, Rachel will take on the large World Music class working with three graduate student teaching assistants. Welcome Rachel!

Our graduate students have always garnered a disproportionate number of campus and College prizes; such is the quality of our MA and PhD students. This last academic year was no exception. Our PhD students collectively received a rare five dissertation research/completion fellowships: Kimberley Watson and Jenna Sears both received a College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Year Fellowship; Olivia Phillips and Joseph Johnson both received the University Graduate School Doctoral Dissertation Completion Fellowship; and Christian James was awarded the Dhar India Studies Program’s inaugural Dissertation Completion Fellowship.

During the last academic year, we proudly conferred nine BA degrees and two certificates to Jackson Cranfill, Aohan Dong, Charlie Harriman, Cassie King, Thomas Koehnline, Marc Louly, Erin Murphy, Goodman Murphy-Smith, Iris Turkel, Amelia Fahl (certificate) and Hunter Folkening (certificate). We conferred seven MA degrees — to Madi Becker, Rafael Durão Emerson, Rowan Glass, Emilyann Long, Maesa Ogas, A’Yanna Solomon, and Julie Stout.

This last academic year was another exceptional moment for our doctorates. From May 2025 to May 2026, fifteen PhD degrees were conferred on these new doctors: Jamaal Baptiste, Emily Bianchi, Lydia Campbell-Maher, Ben Danner, Ezgi Benli Garcia Guerrero, Micah Ling, Micky Myers, Suyash Kumar Neupane, Emmie Pappa-Eddy, Jeremy Reed, Jessie Riddle, Caroline Tatem, Caroline Vermeulen, Hilary Warner-Evans, Jennie Williams. An additional five doctoral defenses were held with imminent degrees given to these doctors: Tadhg Ó Meachair, Iryna Voloshyna, Adriane Pontecorvo, Becca Kunin, and Kennedi Johnson. Congratulations to all of our graduates at all three levels: BA, MA, and PhD. The future of folklore and ethnomusicology will continue in good hands.

This year is the 100th year of graduate training in Folklore Studies here in Indiana.
In 1926, six graduate students completed their MA theses under the supervision of IU Distinguished Professor of English and Folklore, Stith Thompson.

Their topics included: Indiana ballads, African folktales, French Canadian tales and Native American myths. Thompson’s The Types of the Folktale was first published in 1928, and his momentous Motif-Index of Folk Literature, first published in six volumes in the 1930s and revised by Thompson in the 1950s, continues to be used by scholars around the world. Stith Thompson — along with Distinguished Professor Richard Dorson — helped to establish the Department of Folklore in 1965. In 2000, we became the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. FOLK (all caps) is our IU-wide department code, and it represents our entire department (and not just the discipline of Folklore). The FOLK 100 events (and t-shirt!) celebrate our excellent emeritus and current faculty, staff, alumni and current graduate and undergraduate students. The inaugural Folk 100 event was fittingly the Distinguished Alumni Scholar Award given to our alumna Dorothy Noyes, and it highlighted the connections between the departments of English and Folklore while commemorating a century of the study of folklore at Indiana University.

Together, in intellectual union and social solidarity, the department’s faculty, staff, and students glided through the shimmering waters of a tranquil sea, in our landlocked state of Indiana. It is with pride that I serve as the skipper of this first-rate vessel.

Yours,
Pravina Shukla
Provost Professor and Chair

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