Debra Lattanzi Shutika

Associate Professor

Contemporary Irish Folklore, Sense of Place, Appalachian Studies, Transnational Migration

Debra Lattanzi Shutika is a folklorist specializing in critical race, sense of place and Appalachian studies and contemporary Irish Folklore. She received a Ph.D and M.A. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. She is author of Beyond the Borderlands: Migration and Belonging in the United States and Mexico (2011, University of California Press) which won the 2012 Chicago Folklore Prize. She is the director of the Mason-Library of Congress Field School for Cultural Documentation. Her current research is an ethnographic study of community gardens in District of Columbia National Parks.

In 2022-23 she will complete a research and teaching Fulbright award in Ireland. Partnering with Emma Fallon of Mayo North East, she will complete a folklore collection in the gaeltacht communities of Achill and Erris where she will explore women’s traditional agricultural practices. She will teach the Mayo and Galway campuses of Atlantic Technical University and will offer master classes in folklore, field documentation, digital storytelling, and sense of place.

Current Research

Folklore and women's traditional agricultural practices in County Mayo's Gaeltacht communities.

Selected Publications

Beyond the Borderlands: Migration and Belonging in the United States and Mexico. University of California Press, 2011. Chicago Folklore Prize winner, 2012.

“The Folklorist as Department Chair” in What Folklorists Do. Timothy Lloyd, ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021

“The Mason Idea: Folklore for the 21^st Century” In Folklore in the United States and Canada: An Institutional History. Rosemary Zumwalt & Patricia Sawin, eds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021

“Disrupting Folklore” in Advancing Folkloristics. Jesse Fivecoat, Kristina Downs and Meredith McGriff, eds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021.

“The Folklore Detective: Forensic Narrative Analysis” Ethnologies special issue, Crime and Folklore Volume 41, Issue 1, 2019, p. 121–152 .

Fiction:

“Mala Suerte” (fiction, 4000 words). Diamonds, Denim and Death: Bouchercon Anthology 2019, ed. Rick Ollerman, Down and Out Books, 2019

“Frozen Iguana” (fiction, 4000 words) Florida Happens: Tales of Mystery, Mayhem, and Suspense from the Sunshine State. Bouchercon 2018 Anthology. Ed. Greg Herren. Three Rooms Press, 2018.

“Mirrors” (fiction, 1500 words) Abundant Grace: Fiction by Washington Area Women. 7^th Edition. Richard Peabody, ed. Paycock Press, 2016.