Directory

Industry Experience

Curatorial Projects

• 2004 – Co-curator, “Productos Latinos: Sign Painters of Los Angeles,” Photographic exhibition at the Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles
• 2001 – Co-curator, “Muffler Men.” Venice Art Walk
• 1999-2000 – Co-curator, “Muffler Men, Muñecos, and Other Welded Wonders: Occupational Sculpture from Automotive Debris.” Fowler Museum of Cultural History exhibition, UCLA
• 1999 – Exhibition Consultant, “Cast-Off/Outcast: Living on the Streets,”
• 1998 – Organizing Committee Member for Botánica: Art and Spirit in Los Angeles exhibition. Folklore and Mythology Gallery

Publications

• 2014 – “Productos Latinos: Latino Business Murals, Symbolism, and the Social Enactment of Identity in Greater Los Angeles.” Journal of American Folklore
• 2011 – “Priests and Pishogues: Fairy Healers, Religious Condemnation and Narrative Approbation in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Ireland.” In Narrative in Celtic Tradition: Essays in Honor of Edgar M. Slotkin. Ed. Joseph F. Eska. Colgate University Press. Hamilton, New York
• 2008 – “’You Know About Needle Boy, Right?’: Variation in Rumors and Legends About Attacks with HIV-Infected Needles.” Western Folklore 67/1
• 2005 – “Believers, Skeptics and Charlatans: Evidential Rhetoric, the Fairies, and Fairy Healers in Irish Oral Narrative and Belief.” Folklore 116
• 2000 – Muffler Men (co-authored with Patrick A. Polk). University Press of Mississippi, Folk Art and Artist Series. Monograph
• 1999 – “Introduction: Trash, Treasure, and the Eye of the Beholder.” In The Cast-Off Recast: Recycling and the Creative Transformation of Mass-Produced Objects. UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History Monograph Series
• “Muffler Men, Muñecos, and Other Welded Wonders: Occupational Folk Art from Automotive Debris.” In The Cast-Off Recast: Recycling and the Creative Transformation of Mass-Produced Objects. UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History Monograph Series
• 1999 – Editor – The Cast-Off Recast: Recycling and the Creative Transformation of Mass-Produced Objects. UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History Monograph Series (co-edited with Patrick A. Polk). Exhibition catalogue.
• 1997 – “Associative Context and Joke Visualization.” Western Folklore 56

Awards and Honors

• 1999-2000 – I.I.E. Fulbright Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant, Ireland
• 1995 – Brown Award for the Outstanding Graduating Student in English, University of Cincinnati
• 1993 – Taft Undergraduate Enrichment Award, University of Cincinnati, used to for Welsh Language Immersion program in Wales

Professional Affiliations

• American Folklore Society
• Western Folklore Society