Contemporary Legend
One of my research areas is contemporary legend, and I was the co-editor of Contemporary Legend, the journal of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research (ISCLR) for ten years. [For those keeping track, yes, I had to type “contemporary legend” three times in that one sentence.] I have since served as ISCLR President, and now have the luxury of fewer responsibilties.
Legend scholarship can focus on the text, of course, and a lot of what happens builds on finding narratives in active circulation (now, or historically, so by ‘contemporary’ we mean in relation to the time being considered), because stories are fun and legends, because they are weird or scary or funny or horrific or gross, are doubly so. But once you have identified the story you have to ask why: why it is in circulation and why it is ‘believed’ (insofar as they are believed). Because legends are credible enough they suggest something about the convictions and prejudices about the group telling them.
I have written about legend a few times in a more or less straightforward way, but legend as process—locating the story within the group’s sense of shared worldview—is what informs my stand-up scholarship.
articles on legend
2019. “Contemporary Legend” and (with Jeffrey Tolbert) “Ostension.” SAGE Research Methods Foundations, ed. Paul Anthony Atkinson, Sara Delamont, and Richard Williams.
2016. “‘Servants of the World, Unite!’: Narratives of Negotiating Domestic Staff Among Canadian Immigration Foreign Service Officers.” Contemporary Legend Series 3, 6: 73–90.
2008: “Stand-up Comedy as a Genre of Intimacy.” Ethnologies 30.2: 153–180.
2004. “Einstein’s Pants and Dr. X’s Comps: Straddling the Line between Gossip and Legend.” Culture & Tradition 26: 11–25.
2003. “The Insight Legend.” Contemporary Legend, New Series 6: 44–88.
Conspiracy Theory
Especially in the wake of COVID-19, legend scholars had a fair amount to say about conspiracy theory. So I got wrapped up in that for a while.
Articles or chapters about conspiracy
2026. “Conspiracy Theory: What’s in a Name?” (guest editor’s introduction). With Andrea Kitta and Jesse A. Fivecoate. Journal of Folklore Research 63.2: 1–10. doi:10.2979/jfr.00035 (in press).
2025. “Worse Than the Disease: The Mask Cartoons of Ben Garrison.” In Jesse A. Fivecoate and Andrea Kitta, eds., Whispers in the Echo Chamber: Folklore and the Role of Conspiracy Theory in Contemporary Society, 121–144. University of Wisconsin Press.
2022. “Flies in the Ointment: Vaccine-hesitancy and Bad Medical Advice During the Russian COVID-19 Pandemic.” With Alexandra Arkhipova. In Alla Keselman, Catherine Arnott Smith and Amanda J. Wilson, eds. Combating Online Health Misinformation: A Professional Guide to Helping the Public, 45–58. Medical Library Association Books Series, Rowman & Littlefield.
2020. “Precedented: COVID-19 and Vernacular Response” (Editors’ Introduction). With Andrea Kitta. Contemporary Legend Series 3 10:1–17.
2020. COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories: QAnon, 5G, the New World Order and Other Viral Ideas. With John Bodner, Wendy Welch, Anna Muldoon, Donald Leech, and Ashley Marshall. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press.
2020. “When rumours fly like helicopters: An international conspiracy ‘language’ for the new reality?” With Alexandra Arkhipova. Social Anthropology/ Anthropologie Sociale 28: DOI 10.1111/1469-8676.12826.