Theresa Vaughan, Ph.D.
Assistant Dean
About
Theresa A. Vaughan, Ph.D. is professor of Humanities in the UCO Department of Humanities and Philosophy. She holds a B.A. in Anthropology and French from the University of Michigan (1990), an M.A. in Folklore from Indiana University (1995), and a Ph.D. in Folklore with a double minor in Anthropology from Indiana University (1999). Her regular courses at UCO include Non-Western Humanities, Introduction to Religious Studies, World Religions, Anthropology of Religion, Bronze Age Humanities, Native American Humanities, and Medieval Folklore, as well as both General Humanities: Ancient to Medieval and General Humanities: Renaissance to Modern. She has been a full-time faculty member at UCO since 1999, and served as chairperson of the Department of Humanities and Philosophy from 2008-2016.
Research, Published Work, and Scholarly Activities
Professor Vaughan's research interests currently include medieval folklore and folklife, feminist theory in both folklore and anthropology, foodways, and the history of medicine and folk medicine. She was co-editor (with Liz Locke and Pauline Greenhill) of the Encyclopedia of Women's Folklore and Folklife, published by Greenwood Press (2008), which won the Elli Köngas-Maranda Prize in Women's Folklore from the Women's Section of the American Folklore Society. She has published articles and reviews in a variety of journals, including the Journal of American Folklore, American Ethnologist, Western Folklore, and AVISTA Forum Journal. Her most recent work is the forthcoming Balancing the Humors: Dietary Recommendations for Women in the Middle Ages under contract with the University of Amsterdam Press. A complete C.V. is available at academia.edu.
Professional and Community Involvement
Professor Vaughan has been active in the American Folklore Society since 1994. She has held a number of leadership positions, including Co-Convenor of the Women's Section, coordinator of the Sue Samuelson Foodways Student Essay Prize for the Foodways Section, and is an inaugural member of the Folklore and Science Section. She is also a long-time member of the American Anthropological Association, Association for the Study of Food and Society, and the Medieval Academy of America.
She is past editor of Folklore Feminist Communications, and currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Folklore Research and Digest: A Journal of Foodways and Culture.
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