We have news about our team: Merrill Kaplan, the director for the Center for Folklore Studies, has been promoted to Professor of Folklore and Scandinavian Studies. Our CFS Affiliate, Dr. Mintzi Auanda Martínez-Rivera, has been promoted to Associate Professor of English (Folklore) and Latinx Studies within the Center for Ethnic Studies program.

Dr. Merrill Kaplan specializes in Old Norse-Icelandic myth and literature, supernatural legend and folk belief, and the places these categories intersect. Her research involves irruptions of the past and the supernatural in Icelandic sagas; Out-Thoring Thor in the Great Saga of Olaf Tryggvason; Ibsen's Dramatic Realism and the publication of folklore collections; the Icelandic reception of Ibsen's The Vikings at Helgeland and more. Find Merrill's official "People" page here. 

Dr. Mintzi Auanda Martínez-Rivera has a dual PhD in Folklore and Anthropology from Indiana University-Bloomington (2014). She has published on the indigenous rock movement in México, on P’urhépecha vernacular cultural practices, on conducting research in conflict zones and decolonizing research methodologies. In June 2021, her co-edited book with Dr. Solimar Otero Theorizing Folklore from the Margins: Critical and Ethnical Approaches was published by Indiana University Press, and in 2022 her co-edited special issue (with Dr. Solimar Otero and Dr. Rachel Gonzalez-Martin), “Redirecting Currents: Theoretical Wayfinding with Latinx Folkloristics and Women of Color Transnational Feminisms,” was published in the Journal of American Folklore. Her most recent publication is Creating Culture, Performing Community: An Angahuan Wedding Story (Indiana University Press). Find her full profile on her "People" page with the Department of English. 

Congratulations to both!