Cassie Rosita Patterson is founder and Executive Director of Southern Ohio Folklife, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization established in 2020 that supports, documents, and networks folklife in the region. Cassie is sole proprietor of Cassie Rosita Patterson, LLC, which offers folklore and humanities consulting services. She is also adjunct instructor at Shawnee State University, where she teaches Introduction to Appalachian Studies, Foundations of Social Sciences, and Qualitative Methods in Sociology.

Cassie received her PhD in English with a Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Folklore from Ohio State University in 2015. She served as Associate Director of the Center for Folklore Studies and Director of the Folklore Archives at Ohio State University from 2012-2021. Her research interests include Appalachian studies, commemoration and public display, collaborative ethnography, and participatory action research.

Within folklore and Appalachian studies, Dr. Patterson's research interests include constructions of region, notions of place and home, the politics of commemoration and public display, and the acts of travel and staying put. Together with Dr. Katherine Borland, Cassie co-created the Ohio Field School program, an archival collection and service-learning course teaching collaborative ethnographic methods through experiential learning.

Scholarly Monograph in Preparation

Dr. Patterson's current book project is tentatively titled, Staying, Returning, and Choosing Home: Placemaking Practices of Millennials in Southern Appalachian Ohio.

Publications

"Managing an Academic Program." What Folklorists Do: Professional Possibilities in Folklore Studies, Ed. Tim Lloyd. Indiana University Press, 2021.

Borland, Katherine, Cassie Rosita Patterson, and Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth. "The Ohio Field School: A Collaborative Model for University-Community Research." Teaching for Equity, special issue of the Journal of Folklore and Education, edited by Selina Morales, vol. 7, 2020, pp. 120-135.

"The Economics of Curation and Representation: Dialogues in the Commemorative Landscape of Portsmouth, Ohio." The Folklorist in the Marketplace: Conversations at the Crossroads of Vernacular Culture and Economics. Eds. Willow Mullins and Puja Batra-Wells. Utah State University Press, 2019.

"Performance, Frame, and Identity in Harriette Simpson Arnow's 'The Goat Who Was a Cow.'" Seeking Home: Marginalization and Representation in Appalachian Letters and Song. Eds. Leslie H Worthington and Jürgen E. Grandt. The University of Tennessee Press: Knoxville, 2017.

Public Programs

Placemaking in Scioto County, Ohio: Place-based Curriculum and Resources. An initiative to build K-12 and after-school curriculum and resources that engage the Placemaking in Scioto County, Ohio traveling exhibit. Co-led with Susan Eleuterio.

Placemaking in Scioto County, Ohio: Traveling Exhibit. September 2018 - August 2019. Co-curated with Katherine Borland, Susan Eleuterio, Sophia Enriquez, and Cristina Benedetti.

Service to the Field

Steering Committee, Midwest Folklorists Retreat

Facilitator, Innovation and Sustainability Working Group (#3) of the Living Traditions Network (an initiative of the National Council for the Traditional Arts)