Information about Contributors

Abstract

Anastasiya Astapova is Associate Professor of Folkloristics at the University of Tartu, Estonia, and a member of the Estonian Young Academy of Sciences. She is the author of Humor and Rumor in the Post-Soviet Authoritarian State (2021), co-editor of Conspiracy Theories in Eastern Europe: Tropes and Trends (with Onoriu Colăcel, Corneliu Pintilescu, and Tamás Scheibner, 2021), and a co-author of Conspiracy Theories and the Nordic Countries (with Eirikur Bergmann, Asbjorn Dyrendal, Annika Rabo, and Kasper Grotle Rasmussen, 2020), among other works. Astapova is currently the principal investigator in the Estonian Science Foundation project “COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories: Contents, Channels, and Target Groups” (2022–2025).Piotr Grochowski is Associate Professor at the Institute of Culture Studies, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. His main research areas are folk customs and oral narratives, nineteenth-century broadside ballads and popular religious songs, and vernacular religions and contemporary Paganism. He is the author of several books, including Dziady: Rzecz o wędrownych żebrakach i ich pieśniach (2009; Dziady: The Point about Wandering Beggars and Their Songs), Straszna zbrodnia rodzonej matki: Polskie pieśni nowiniarskie na przełomie XIX i XX w (2010; A Mother's Terrible Crime: Polish Broadside Ballads at the Turn of the 20th Century), and O tym nie wolno mówić . . . Zagłada Żydów w opowieściach wspomnieniowych ze zbiorów Dionizjusza Czubali (2019; We Are Not Allowed to Speak about It . . . The Extermination of the Jews in Memoirs from the Collections of Dionizjusz Czubala).Mia Moody-Ramirez is Professor and Chair of Baylor University's Department of Journalism, Public Relations and New Media. She joined Baylor in 2001, and has maintained an active research portfolio in addition to her teaching and leadership roles. Her research emphasizes media framing of people of color, women, and other underrepresented groups. She has conducted research about the portrayal of minority women in the media, reality television, racial stereotyping of women in rap music, the pros and cons of using social media in political campaigns, and the continuing stereotyping of a small East Texas town more than a decade after a hate crime in which a Black man was dragged to his death behind a pickup truck. She has presented papers at numerous regional, national, and international conferences, and has been published in Public Relations Review, Journalism Educator, Journal of Magazine & New Media Research, among others.Tom Mould is Professor of Anthropology and Folklore at Butler University and author of numerous books and articles on folklore, oral narrative, legend, religious and sacred narrative, poverty and social justice, Native American studies, and Latter-day Saint oral traditions. He is the co-editor of two books—The Individual and Tradition (with Ray Cashman and Pravina Shukla, 2011) and Latter-day Lore: Mormon Folklore Studies (with Eric A. Eliason, 2013)—and author of four books: Choctaw Prophecy: A Legacy of the Future (2003), Choctaw Tales (2004), Still, the Small Voice: Narrative, Personal Revelation, and the Mormon Folk Tradition (2011), and Overthrowing the Queen: Telling Stories of Welfare in America (2020), which won the Brian McConnell Book Award and the Chicago Folklore Prize. He is currently working on another book with the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.Whitney Phillips is Assistant Professor of Digital Platforms and Media Ethics in the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication. Her work is situated between the humanities and social sciences and draws from science and technology studies, critical theory, and media history to explore the context and consequence of mediated communication, with a focus on the ideologies, assumptions, and stories that shape what we observe on our screens. She is the author of several books on digital culture and politics. Most recently, she and Ryan M. Milner published You Are Here: A Field Guide for Navigating Polarized Speech, Conspiracy Theories, and Our Polluted Media Landscape (2021), which they subsequently adapted for middle-grade readers. That book, forthcoming with Candlewick Press in early 2023, is titled “Thinking Ecologically about Social Media.”Frank Proschan is a public folklorist and anthropologist who has worked for decades with colleagues in Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia in collaborative research on languages, folklore, and ethnology, as well as strengthening their capacities for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage and museology. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, he began his work in folklore at the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife in 1970, continuing to serve at the Smithsonian in various capacities in 1975–1978, 1985–1989, and 2000–2006. In 2006, he took up a position at UNESCO, assisting in the global implementation of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, until his retirement in 2015. In 2019–2020, he taught anthropology in Hanoi as a Fulbright scholar and continues to consult with Vietnamese cultural heritage organizations.