MACS Director Amy Skillman elected president of the American Folklore Society

Amy Skillman, Goucher’s academic director of the M.A. in Cultural Sustainability, has been elected president of the American Folklore Society. Skillman has been involved with the society since 1978 and has previously served on the executive board, the nominating committee, several prize and travel committees and was co-convener of the Public Programs Section and co-founder of the Creative Writing Section. She will serve as the organization's president from 2024 to 2025. 

In the American Folklore Society’s announcement of the hiring, Skillman said described the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

“Our sustainability depends on remaining relevant—to the next generation, to our communities and institutions, and to the creative ways our members find to do their work,” Skillman said. “We need our academic institutions as much as we need the innovative work of community scholars and young folklorists breaking the mold and blazing new trails. I am excited to explore these challenges with the Board and the members to strengthen who we are and what we have to offer.”

Skillman has served as academic director of Goucher’s MACS program since 2012. Her work includes a Grammy-nominated recording of Old Time fiddlers in Missouri, a yearlong arts residency with alternative education high school students rooted in the ethnography of their lives, and a traveling exhibition called Making It Better, about role of folk arts as a catalyst for activism in communities throughout Pennsylvania.