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Danille Christensen

Danille Christensen, Assistant Professor

Danille Christensen, Assistant Professor
Danille Christensen, Assistant Professor

Department of Religion and Culture
105 Major Williams
220 Stanger Street
Blacksburg, VA 24061
540-231-5528 | dec09@vt.edu

Dr. Christensen earned her Ph.D. in Folklore Studies; she’s interested in the ways people shape everyday expressive culture (especially complex genres that combine speech, action, and objects) as they seek to influence and persuade others. Recent courses have centered on vernacular poetry and protest song, Appalachian cultures, and the politics of food and food advertising.

For further information, please visit Dr. Christensen ’s personal website.

  • Gendered/domestic labor
  • Material culture (foodways, craft)
  • Performance studies/Ethnography of communication
  • Cultural and environmental sustainability
  • Local knowledge
  • Ph.D., Indiana University, Bloomington
  • Material Culture and Public Humanities MA Program
  • American Folklore Society
  • American Studies Association
  • Appalachian Studies Association
  • Association for the Study of Food and Society
  • Kluge Fellowship, The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, 2015
  • Gerald E. and Corinne L. Parsons Fund for Ethnography Award, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, 2012
  • Charles Redd Fellowship in Western American History, Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, Brigham Young University, 2012

Books and Book Chapters

Freedom from Want: Home Canning in the American Imagination. Under contract, University of North Carolina Press.

“Doing Public Humanities.” In What Folklorists Do: Professional Realities and Possibilities in Folklore Studies, ed. Timothy Lloyd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, forthcoming).

“Berries, Roots, Greens, and Seeds: Indigenous Cultivation of ʻWild’ Plants.” In This Is the Plate: Utah Food Traditions, edited by Carol A. Edison, Eric A. Eliason, and Lynne S. McNeill, 86–94. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2020.

“Gardening as Placemaking in Utah’s Communities.” In This Is the Plate: Utah Food Traditions, edited by Carol A. Edison, Eric A. Eliason, and Lynne S. McNeill, 184–98. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2020.

“‘Good Luck in Preserving’: Canning and the Uncanny in Appalachia.” 2019. In The Food We Eat, The Stories We Tell: Contemporary Appalachian Tables, edited by Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt and Lora E. Smith, 132–55. Athens: Ohio University Press.

“Still Working: Performing Productivity through Gardening and Home Canning.” 2018. In The Expressive Lives of Elders, edited by Jon Kay, 106–137. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Open access version available at https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dispace/handle/2022/22075

“(Not) Going Public: Mediating Reception and Managing Visibility in Contemporary Scrapbook Performance.” 2016. In Material Vernaculars: Objects, Images, and their Social Worlds, edited by Jason Baird Jackson, 40–104. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Open access version available at https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/20925

 

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