Rate My Professor Debra Lattanzi Shutika

Debra Lattanzi Shutika serves as Associate Professor in the Department of English at George Mason University and Director of the Folklore Program. Her research specializations include contemporary Irish folklore, sense of place, Appalachian studies, transnational migration, and critical race theory. She teaches folklore history and theory, folklore and place, Appalachian and Irish folklore, and digital storytelling. Before entering academia, Shutika was a registered nurse. In 1993, she joined George Mason University's master's program in English literature, discovering folklore under Dr. Margaret Yocom. She earned her MA there and then a PhD in Folklore from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001, subsequently joining GMU faculty that year. From 2007 to 2022, she chaired the English Department, and since 2013, she has directed the Folklore Program, growing it to four tenure-line faculty members.

Shutika's major publication is the book Beyond the Borderlands: Migration and Belonging in the United States and Mexico (University of California Press, 2011), which won the 2012 Chicago Folklore Prize from the American Folklore Society and University of Chicago. Recent articles include “The Folklorist as Department Chair” in What Folklorists Do (Indiana University Press, 2021), “The Mason Idea: Folklore for the 21st Century” in Folklore in the United States and Canada (Indiana University Press, 2021), “Disrupting Folklore” in Advancing Folkloristics (Indiana University Press, 2021), and “The Folklore Detective: Forensic Narrative Analysis” in Ethnologies (2019). In 2022-2023, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Ireland, conducting ethnographic research on women’s traditional agricultural practices in the Gaeltacht regions of Achill and Erris. She directs the Mason-Library of Congress Field School for Cultural Documentation, providing hands-on training to students from folklore, cultural studies, sociology, and anthropology in projects such as community gardens in DC national parks, Manassas Battlefield, and international sites. Shutika has been elected a Fellow of the American Folklore Society and received the CHSS Distinguished Alumni-Faculty Award. Formerly, she served as Associate Editor for the Journal of American Folklore, contributing to the field's editorial leadership.