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Margaret R. Yocom | |
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| Born | Pottstown, Pennsylvania |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Pennsylvania State University, University of Massachusetts Amherst |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | English |
| Sub-discipline | Folklore |
| Institutions | Smithsonian Institution, George Mason University |
Margaret R. Yocom is a folklorist,and poet. Now emerita,she taught at George Mason University from 1977 to 2013 and founded the Folklore Studies Program there. She works in Maine.
Born in Pottstown,Pennsylvania,United States,the eldest child of Betty Keck and Norman Davidheiser Yocom,she first pursued her interest in folklore at Pennsylvania State University where she majored in English (BA,1970.) She went on to University of Massachusetts Amherst where she completed an MA. in English and then a PhD in English (1980) with a concentration in Folklore. While at U Mass,she wrote her dissertation on family folklore,choosing to work with her own Pennsylvania German,Swiss,and Danish family. Together with other folklorists working in family folklore such as Steve Zeitlin,Karen Baldwin,and Marilyn White,Yocom helped develop this new ethnographic field of study. As she was finishing her academic studies,she worked for the Smithsonian Institution’s Festival of American Folklife,and was the field research coordinator for the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of the 1976 Bicentennial festival. She continued to be a presenter at subsequent festivals until 1988,when she began working summers in Maine.
She accepted a job offer in 1977 at a new,burgeoning campus in Virginia,George Mason University. She has created a Folklore Studies program that includes a Folklore,Mythology and Literature concentration for undergraduates in the Department of English,a Folklore and Mythology Minor in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences,a Graduate Certificate in Folklore Studies (Dept. of English),and a Folklore Concentration in the Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies.
During her fieldwork for the Folklife Festival in 1975,Yocom spotted a photograph in an arts festival reject pile that led her to what would become her major field research site. The man in the photograph was Rodney Richard Sr.,a Maine wood carver and community scholar. Yocom has written and continues to write about the Richard family of loggers and woodcarvers,homemakers and knitters in the western mountains of Maine. Her interest lies in many facets of Maine culture but especially in wood carving,textile arts,and traditional narratives. Of her experience in Maine she says:“I like the idea of accompanying people:working for a long time in a field area and getting to know them. The context is wide and deep and Rangeley is an area that I just fell in love with.“
Since 1986 she has been folklorist and curator for the Rangeley Lakes Region Logging Museum founded by Rodney Richard. She has been on the board of directors since 1996. She also volunteers for the Rangeley Lakes Region Historical Society and has been a presenter for various New England folk festivals.
In 1983 she accepted a job with Kawerak the non-profit arm of the Bering Straits Native Corporation in Nome,Alaska,where she was the folklorist of the Eskimo Heritage Program. From 1983-1985 she worked with King Island Inuit community members as well as linguist Dr. Lawrence Kaplan of the University of Alaska,produce the first bi-lingual book in English and Inupiaq called Ugiuvangmiut Qualiapyuit:King Island Tales.
Long interested in feminist folklore,Dr. Yocom published an essay in the first book on women's folklore,Women's Folklore Women's Culture,edited by Susan Kalcik and Rosan Jordan. Published in 1985,the book is a collection of papers presented at the American Folklore Society in some of the first panels specifically about women and folklore. Another of her essays appears in the book Feminist Messages,edited by folklorist Joan Radner.
In 2002 Yocom and Amy Skillman founded the Folklore and Creative Writing section of the American Folklore Society. This section came out of Yocom's folklore and creative writing classes at GMU and her poetry. The Folklore and Creative Writing section now sponsors several panels,forums,and readings at the Annual Meeting of the American Folklore Society. One of its members,Frank de Caro,published an anthology of folklorists’creative writing:The Folklore Muse. (Utah State University Press,2008) Of the merging of creative writing and folklore she says,“It makes sense:as ethnographers,we write and we are co-creators of these texts that we put on paper.”[ citation needed ]
Throughout her career she has maintained the Folklore Studies Program by introducing many new courses,hiring a second folklorist,and working to keep the program a vital part of the Department of English at George Mason University. Her students appreciate her tireless dedication to her discipline and her vocal stance on the importance of Folklore Studies to university education.[ citation needed ] Of her work at GMU,she states,“To show a student who belongs in this discipline of Folklore-here it is,and you can do this. That’s all I want…I’m not looking for a particular number of students but to make that one person who belongs in Folklore aware that folklore is there. If I set out to do anything,it was that.“[ citation needed ]
Folklore is shared by a particular group of people;it encompasses the traditions common to that culture,subculture or group. This includes tales,myths,legends,proverbs,poems,jokes and other oral traditions. They include material culture,such as traditional building styles common to the group. Folklore also includes customary lore,taking actions for folk beliefs,and the forms and rituals of celebrations such as Christmas,weddings,folk dances,and initiation rites. Each one of these,either singly or in combination,is considered a folklore artifact or traditional cultural expression. Just as essential as the form,folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to the next. Folklore is not something one can typically gain in a formal school curriculum or study in the fine arts. Instead,these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another,either through verbal instruction or demonstration. The academic study of folklore is called folklore studies or folkloristics,and it can be explored at undergraduate,graduate and Ph.D. levels.
Folklore studies is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term,along with its synonyms,gained currency in the 1950s to distinguish the academic study of traditional culture from the folklore artifacts themselves. It became established as a field across both Europe and North America,coordinating with Volkskunde (German),folkeminner (Norwegian),and folkminnen (Swedish),among others.
Patricia Elizabeth Sawin is an American folklorist who focuses her research and teaching on informal narrative,festival,folklore theory,and the culture of adoptive families. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she coordinates the MA program in Folklore. She is a member of the executive board of the American Folklore Society.
Public folklore is the term for the work done by folklorists in public settings in the United States and Canada outside of universities and colleges,such as arts councils,museums,folklife festivals,radio stations,etc.,as opposed to academic folklore,which is done within universities and colleges. The term is short for "public sector folklore" and was first used by members of the American Folklore Society in the early 1970s.
Margaret Anne "Peggy" Bulger is a folklorist and served as the director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress from 1999 to 2011,when she moved to Florida to continue work on personal projects.
Simon J. Bronner is an American folklorist,ethnologist,historian,sociologist,educator,college dean,and author.
Betty Jane Belanus is an American writer and folklorist. Belanus completed her graduate work in folklore at Indiana University and has been with the Smithsonian Institution since 1987,ultimately working with the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage as an education specialist. Part of her work with the Smithsonian has been the curating of programs for the Smithsonian's annual Folklife Festival,including the 2009 Wales program. She has worked on "Smithsonian Inside Out",on the occupational life of the Smithsonian.
Margaret Bennett is a Scottish writer,folklorist,ethnologist,broadcaster,and singer. Her main interests lies in the field of traditional Scottish folk culture and cultural identity of the Scots in Scotland and abroad. The late Hamish Henderson,internationally distinguished poet and folklorist,said about her:Margaret embodies the spirit of Scotland.
George Korson was a folklorist,journalist,and historian. He has been cited as a pioneer collector of industrial folklore,and according to Michael Taft of the Library of Congress,"may very well be considered the father of occupational folklore studies in the United States." In addition to writing and editing a number of influential books,he also issued his field recordings of coal miners on two LP records for the Library of Congress.
Dorothy Noyes is an American folklorist and ethnologist whose comparative,ethnographic and historical research focuses on European societies and upon European immigrant communities in the United States. Beyond its area studies context,her work has aimed to enrich the conceptual toolkit of folklore studies (folkloristics) and ethnology. General problems upon which she has focused attention include the status of "provincial" communities in national and global contexts,heritage policies and politics,problems of innovation and creativity,and the nature of festival specifically and of cultural displays and representations generally.
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is a scholar of Performance and Jewish Studies and a museum professional. Professor Emerita of Performance Studies at New York University,she is best known for her interdisciplinary contributions to Jewish studies and to the theory and history of museums,tourism,and heritage. She is currently Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition and Advisor to the Director at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.
Margaret Ann Mills is an American folklorist,and educator. She is a professor emerita of the Department of Near East Languages and Cultures at Ohio State University.
Family folklore is the branch of folkloristics concerned with the study and use of folklore and traditional culture transmitted within an individual family group. This includes craft goods produced by family members or memorabilia that have been saved as reminders of family events. It includes family photos,photo albums,along with bundles of other pages held for posterity such as certificates,letters,journals,notes,and shopping lists. Family sayings and stories which recount true events are retold as a means of maintaining a common family identity. Family customs are performed,modified,sometimes forgotten,created or resurrected with great frequency. Each time the result is to define and solidify the perception of the family as unique.
Museum folklore is a domain of scholarship and professional practice within the field of folklore studies (folkloristics).
Mary Winslow Smyth was an American folklorist and folksong collector of the early 20th century.
Kay Turner is an artist and scholar working across disciplines including performance,writing,music,exhibition curation,and public and academic folklore. She is noted for her feminist writings and performances on subjects such as women’s home altars,fairy tale witches,and historical goddess figures. She co-founded “Girls in the Nose,”a lesbian feminist rock punk band that anticipated riot grrl.
Judith McCulloh was an American folklorist,ethnomusicologist,and university press editor.
Don Yoder was an American folklorist specializing in the study of Pennsylvania Dutch,Quaker,and Amish and other Anabaptist folklife in Pennsylvania who wrote at least 15 books on these subjects.
Deborah Kapchan is an American folklorist,writer,translator and ethnographer,specializing in North Africa and its diaspora in Europe. In 2000,Kapchan became a Guggenheim fellow. She has been a Fulbright-Hays recipient twice,and is a Fellow of the American Folklore Society. She is professor of Performance Studies at New York University,and the former director of the Center for Intercultural Studies in Folklore and Ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Jane C. Beck is an American folklorist and oral historian. She is Executive Director Emeritus and founder of the Vermont Folklife Center and has published research on the folklore of Vermont and on African American belief systems.
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