Summer 2024 is here and so is the Folklore Program’s Field School for Cultural Documentation. The field school is a unique part of George Mason University’s Folklore Program, and it would not be possible without the efforts of faculty member Dr. Debra Lattanzi Shutika.
Dr. Lattanzi Shutika had a storied career before she came to George Mason. Before studying folklore, Dr. Lattanzi Shutika was a registered nurse. In 1993, she decided to go back to school and joined George Mason University’s English master’s program. She was introduced to the field of folklore studies by Dr. Margaret Yocom, the founder of Mason’s Folklore Program. After completing her master’s degree in English literature, she went to the University of Pennsylvania to pursue a PhD in Folklore.
Dr. Lattanzi Shutika returned to Mason upon graduation in 2001 when she was hired to teach Folklore in the same department where she first learned about it. She has now been teaching at Mason for over 23 years. Her expertise as a folklorist is evident in the diverse subjects she teaches, including courses on the history and theory of folklore studies, folklore and place, Appalachian Folklore, Irish folklore, and digital storytelling, to name a few. A recent class she taught was ENGH 316, Fairies and Changelings in Fall 2023. It was such a popular class that the Folklore Program’s student organization, Folklore Roundtable, hosted an event for faculty members to lecture on their topics of expertise.In addition to influencing current students, Dr. Lattanzi Shutika’s former students have gone on to have successful careers in folklore and allied fields. Meg Nicholas, for example, is now a folklife specialist at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
Dr. Lattanzi-Shutika and her student Ozzy Whitley at Ozzy's Thesis event on Appalachian music in the Washington DC area.
Dr. Lattanzi Shutika’s leadership has been invaluable to Mason’s Folklore Program and Department of English. She was the Chair of the English Department from 2007-2022. After Dr. Yocom retired in 2013, she also took over as the Director of the Folklore Program. Under her leadership, the Folklore Program has grown to its current size with four tenure-line faculty members.
Just like the courses she teaches, Dr. Lattanzi Shutika’s research expertise is vast. Earlier in her career, Dr. Lattanzi Shutika conducted fieldwork on Mexican migrants in the town of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania and Textitlân, their hometown in Mexico. Her resulting book, Beyond the Borderlands: Migration and Belonging in the United States and Mexico (2011, University of California Press), won the prestigious 2012 Chicago Folklore Prize.
If all of her accomplishments in folkloristics weren't enough, Dr. Lattanzi Shutika is also a published author of fiction. Her short stories appear in a variety of collections. For example, “Mirrors” appeared in Abundant Grace: The Seventh Collection of Fiction by D.C Area Women (edited by Richard Peabody).
More recently, Dr. Lattanzi Shutika has focused her research on Appalachia and Ireland. In 2022-2023, she spent a year in Ireland funded by a research and teaching Fulbright fellowship. While there, she documented women’s traditional agricultural practices in the Gaeltacht (Irish speaking) communities of Achill and Erris in County May.
Dr. Lattanzi Shutika is additionally heavily involved in community-based work in the greater Washington DC area. She is currently doing a research project with the National Park Service called the Manassas Battlefield Project, which centers on how to make this battlefield in Virginia more engaging to a broader visitor audience.
Dr. Lattanzi Shutika is also the main faculty member behind the Folklore Program’s Field School for Cultural Documentation, an impactful opportunity for students to gain hands-on experience in ethnographic research methods while working for a community-based project. Before Mason took it over, David Taylor, the external relations and program developer at the American Folklife Center (AFC) at the Library of Congress had been leading field schools with other AFC staff, moving it from place to place. After many years, Taylor decided he wanted to find a permanent home for it. In 2008, he approached Dr. Lattanzi Shutika about hosting the Field School at George Mason University. George Mason subsequently became the hosting institution for the Field School in 2010, and it has been going strong ever since.
According to Dr. Lattanzi Shutika, this Field School has played an important role in the Folklore Program. It has trained a generation of Mason folklore, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology undergraduate, master's, and PhD students. Dr. Lattanzi Shutika says that “doing fieldwork is both fun and challenging, and historically few professional programs have offered such training. I think it’s one of the programs that distinguishes our folklore program.”
Over the years, students of the Field School have had the opportunity to document in a variety of locations, including the Arlington National Cemetery, West Virginia Coal Mines in Southern West Virginia, and community gardens in Washington DC national parks. During the COVID-19 pandemic, students learned virtual documentation skills when they collaborated with Calvert County in Maryland to document oral histories of agriculture in the county, under the supervision of Dr. Lisa Gilman. In Winter 2021 and 2022, students traveled to Ireland for an international version of the Field School. (To read more about this experience, check out our article on the subject).
The focus of the Summer 2024 Field School is documenting community gardens and gardeners in the Washington DC. area Students have the opportunity to get real-world experience conducting fieldwork under the direction of an expert, raise the visibility of the value of community gardens, and contribute important data to the National Park Service archives.
Dr. Lattanzi Shutika lecturing during the 2024 Field School for Cultural Documentation
If you are interested in understanding more about the Field School operates and how you can apply click the link here. The next Field School is scheduled for Winter 2024 in Ireland.
The Folklore Program at George Mason is fortunate to have an accomplished faculty member like Dr. Debra Lattanzi Shutika. Our program would definitely not be the same without her.
Article by Stephanie Aitken
June 16, 2024