Mary Hufford (B.A. in English, Boston College, Ph.D in Folklore, University of Pennsylvania) teaches American Folk Literature, an ABCS course entitled “Exploring Memory and Tradition in Philadelphia Communities,” Fieldwork Theory and Practice, Bodylore, Folklore and Feminist Theory, and Environmental Imaginaries.  She studies collaborative vernacular expression, including narrative and other speech genres and folk arts, as thresholds to (often contending) social imaginaries that generate and regenerate place, landscape, and region.  Her publications include  Chaseworld: Foxhunting and Storytelling in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992),  and Conserving Culture: A New Discourse on Heritage (University of Illinois Press, 1994).  As a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, she is writing a book entitled Holding Up the Mountains: The Narrative Ecology of a West Virginia Community Forest.  Her articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in Orion Magazine, Gastronomica, Cornbread Nation, Journal of American Folklore, Linguistic Anthropology, American Scientist, the Journal of Appalachian Studies and Tending the Commons, an online exhibition which she curated for the Library of Congress:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/tending/

For cv, syllabi, and publications go to:

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/folklore/faculty/mhufford.html