Schrift
MELISSA SCHRIFT
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY
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| Interview with inmate cowboy at Angola Prison Rodeo |
CONTACT
E-Mail: schrift@etsu.edu
Phone: 423.439.4997
Office: 223D Rogers-Stout Hall
COURSES TAUGHT
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Medical Anthropology
Mass Communication and Popular Culture
Ethnographic Field Techniques
Practicing Anthropology
CURRENT RESEARCH
I have recently completed a manuscript on Melungeons and the racialized construction of identity, a project been supported by an American Fellowship 2008-2009 through the American Association of University Women. A second research direction in the last years involves a project on Louisiana’s Angola Prison Rodeo and Arts Festival; my work at Angola extends to broader interests in the commodification and normalization of incarceration in U.S. popular culture. My medical anthropology interests concern cultural constructions of mental illness in Appalachia, resulting in a new oral history project with the Southwest Virginia Mental Health Institute in Marion, Virginia.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Schrift, Melissa. 2008. The Wildest Show in the South: Angola Prison Rodeo and Arts and Crafts Festival. Southern Cultures 14(1):22-41.
Schrift, Melissa. 2006. Angola Prison Art: Captivity, Creativity and Commodification. Journal of American Folklore119(473):257-274.
Schrift, Melissa. 2004. Inmate Cowboys, Public Spectacle and Institutional Tourism at the Angola Prison Rodeo. Ethnology 43(4):331-44.
Schrift, Melissa. 2003. Appalachian Melungeons and the Politics of Heritage. IN Southern Heritage on Display: Public Ritual and Ethnic Diversity. Celeste Ray, ed. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.
Schrift, Melissa. 2001. Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge: The Creation and Mass Consumption of a Personality Cult. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Schrift, Melissa and Keith Pilkey. 1996. Revolution Remembered: Chairman Mao Icons and Chinese Nationalist Ideology. Journal of Popular Culture 30(2):169-198.
Beaver, Patricia and Melissa Schrift. 1994. Women Mentoring Women: Fieldwork in the People’s Republic of China. Anthropology and Humanism 18(2):48-55.