Issued November 2022

The Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology is saddened to report the planned suspension of the Master of Arts Program in Folk Studies, the suspension pending approval of the university’s accrediting body, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). The college cannot provide resources, including replacement faculty lines, sufficient to support continuation of the program in a manner consistent with its 50-year history of excellence.

The department is committed to working with the college to meet the needs of students currently enrolled in the Master of Arts program and associated JUMP program so that they may complete their degrees here or at another institution.

The planned suspension applies only to the graduate program, not the undergraduate folklore minor or the anthropology major/minor.

There are many questions left to be answered, including the implications for the Kentucky Folklife Program. We will keep you informed as we learn more.

We are grateful to everyone who has worked so hard to make the Master of Arts program in Folk Studies successful for a half-century. We all should take pride in what we have accomplished.

Issued June 2020

In accordance with Western Kentucky University’s dedication to social justice, as outlined recently in We Are One WKU, the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology stands in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. We condemn the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others. We condemn police brutality, racially motivated violence, and the slow violence of systemic racism that have oppressed African Americans and other people of color for centuries. And we condemn the ongoing violent acts of law enforcement and vigilantes towards peaceful protesters seeking justice and reform. We value human life, dignity, and justice. As anthropologists and folklorists, it is our ethical responsibility to both recognize how our disciplines have been complicit in systemic racism and white supremacy, and to actively work to dismantle it.

For those interested in supporting in the current moment and the ongoing struggle for social justice, we offer a list of organizations that are leading the movement and taking immediate action to aid protesters who have been arrested:

Black Lives Matter / blacklivesmatter.com

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People / www.naacp.org

American Civil Liberties Union / www.aclu.org

Southern Poverty Law Center / www.splcenter.org

List of Community Bail Funds / bailfunds.github.io

We also encourage supporters to educate themselves about local, state, and national issues related to social justice; to contact your government representatives and demand action for social justice; and to register to vote by contacting your secretary of state or using voter registration organizations listed at www.headcount.org/organizations.

Finally, as educators, we welcome questions about or requests for recommendations of anti-racist teaching and learning resources, and we will continue to work to foreground such resources in our own work and to share them with the communities we are privileged to serve.