Danille Christensen
Department of Religion and Culture
105 Major Williams
220 Stanger Street
Blacksburg, VA 24061
540-231-5528 | dec09@vt.edu
Dr. Christensen (she/her) is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion & Culture at Virginia Tech, where she is faculty in the Appalachian Studies and Food Studies programs, as well as the Material Culture & Public Humanities graduate program. Using genre, rhetoric, and performance as analytical lenses, she examines the politics of knowledge production about/among marginalized groups in the U.S., especially with regard to material carework. Her writing on ritualized sport, scrapbooks, gardening, indigenous foodscapes, and food preservation can be found in sources that include Journal of American Folklore, Journal of Folklore Research, Southern Cultures, and several edited volumes. Her forthcoming book explores the ways home canning has been positioned as a response to threat in the United States, situating the practice amidst shifting ideological and material contexts over the last two centuries. She teaches courses in American studies, Appalachian studies, folklore and folklife, food studies, material culture, and the ethnography of communication.
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
Journal Articles
- “No Doubt He’ll Want to Can It: Perspectives from Home, Field, and Factory.” 2019. Response to Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry by Anna Zeide. H-Environment Roundtable Reviews 9 (7): 8–19.
- “Materializing the Everyday: ‘Safe’ Scrapbooks, Aesthetic Mess, and the Rhetorics of Workmanship.” 2017. Journal of Folklore Research 54 (3): 233–84.
- “Provident Living”: Ethnography, Material Culture, and the Performance of Mormonism in Everyday Life." 2016. Mormon Studies Review 3: 37–52.
- “Current Studies of Food and Foodways.” 2014. Museum Anthropology Review 8(1).
- “Simply Necessity? Agency and Aesthetics in Southern Home Canning.” 2015. Special Food Issue. Southern Cultures 21(1): 15-42.
- “‘Pure Hoosier’: Fieldwork, Food Guides, and Cultural Distinction.”2012. Journal of Folklore Research 49(1):97–106.
- “‘Look at Us Now!’: Scrapbooking, Regimes of Value, and the Risks of (Auto)Ethnography.” 2011. Journal of American Folklore 124(493):175–210.
- “‘Locating’ the Nation: Football Game Day and American Dreams in Central Ohio.” 2006. Journal of American Folklore 119(474):444–88.
Featured Books
Select Media Mentions
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Article Item
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Article ItemWhy everyone’s suddenly hoarding mason jars , article
Marker, 11/23/2020
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Article ItemStirring the pot: The art of canning , article
With Good Reason, podcast aired 12/20/2019 and re-aired 11/20/2020
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General ItemWhat’s on Your Holiday Table? A Conversation About Health, Spirituality, Food, and Farming
Library of Congress Blog, November 16, 2017
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