George Mason UniversityEnglish Department
Folklore: Folklore, public humanities, performance studies, African Studies, women's and gender studies, politics and culture, ethnographic fieldwork, filmmaking, digital storytelling.
Lisa Gilman is Professor in Folklore Studies and Public Humanities in George Mason University’s English Department and the Editor of the Journal of American Folklore. Her research interests include performance, music, dance, intangible cultural heritage, trauma, gender, and sexuality in southern Africa and the United States.
Her monographs include Folklore and Ethnomusicology Fieldwork Methods Handbook (with John Fenn, Indiana University Press, 2019), My Music, My War: The Listening Habits of U.S. Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (Wesleyan University Press, 2016), The Dance of Politics: Performance, Gender, and Democratization in Malawi (Temple University Press, 2009), and the co-edited volumes UNESCO on the Ground: Local Perspectives on Intangible Cultural Heritage ((with Michael Dylan Foster, Indiana University Press, 2015) and Africa Every Day: Fun, Leisure, and Expressive Culture on the African Continent (with Oluwakemi M. Balogun, Melissa Graboyes, and Habib Iddrisu, Ohio University Press, 2019) . She also produced the documentary Grounds for Resistance about the anti-war activism of U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. She teaches courses in folklore, public humanities, ethnographic fieldwork, digital storytelling, gender and sexuality, and African Studies. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of American Folklore