Sheila Bock received her Ph.D. in English from The Ohio State University, with a focus in Folklore. She holds a B.A. in Anthropology (University of California, Berkeley) and an M.A. in Comparative Studies (The Ohio State University). She was trained in Folklore Studies, an interdisciplinary field that integrates methods from the humanities and the social sciences to examine vernacular beliefs and practices, the dynamics of tradition, and the aesthetics of daily life. The majority of her work employs narrative and performance approaches to examine vernacular responses to stigma. Specifically, she is interested in how individual and community performances work to reify, negotiate, or resist the discursive mechanisms by which certain voices are valued and others, consequently, are silenced. Additional research interests include the contested domains of illness experience, foodways, performance and differential identity, the intersections between folklore and popular culture, and the multivocality of ethnographic research.

Dr. Bock collaborates with the Center for Folklore Studies on the #GradCapTraditions collection in the Folklore Archives.