Arizona State University
Department of English
Box 870302
Tempe, AZ 85287-0302
480.965.3168
Main Office Location:
G. Homer Durham Language and Literature Building - LL 542
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Broadly speaking, my research interests are in Native American oral traditions and North American verbal and performative folklore. In past publications and conference presentations, I’ve concentrated on the myths, legends, and folktales of the Creek Indian peoples of Oklahoma and the southeastern United States, looking at oral lore collected by both Native American and non-Native American scholars. Characters and motifs that I find especially interesting in these narratives are the rabbit trickster, the orphan culture hero, the tie snake/horned serpent, and the mythic unification of clans and tribes through the sharing of medicines and sacred fires. My current work takes me to the northwestern Florida Panhandle, where I explore the convergence of European American and Native American traditions in the folklore of the region’s Cherokee/Creek-White mixed bloods. I am particularly drawn to family legends that speak of the Trail of Tears and the survival of the Native Americans and mixed bloods who remained, concealing themselves in the Panhandle’s dense swamps and pine barrens to avoid capture and transportation. These embellished oral histories at once challenge belief and bolster family and ethnic identity, and their entry into the postmodern medium of the Internet through online genealogical sites and listservs poses interesting possibilities and dilemmas to the study of dissemination and change in contemporary folk narrative.
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