Welcome Evangeline Mee To The Tennessee Folklife Program

Dr. Bradley Hanson, Director of Folklife–

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Evangeline Mee as the Tennessee Arts Commission’s new Traditional Arts Specialist. Evangeline joins me in our work across the state to document, preserve, and present Tennessee’s diverse folklife. She will be integral to the Folklife Program’s ongoing grants work and apprenticeship program, as well as the upcoming training institutes and future multimedia projects. Evangeline comes to the Tennessee Arts Commission with impressive accomplishments and the highest recommendations.

Originally from Knoxville, Evangeline recently completed an MA in Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. She previously earned a BA in Dramatic Arts and Folklore from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2012, Highest Distinction, Phi Beta Kappa). In addition to her academic training, Evangeline has been involved in a variety of oral history research and public folklife projects. She spent three summers working at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, DC. In 2012, she was a research intern at the Vermont Folklife Center, where her ethnographic fieldwork focused primarily on researching the musical traditions of local Bhutanese and Somali communities. That same year, Evangeline was awarded the Frances Ferris Hall Grant from the Center for the Study of the American South to conduct oral history interviews with women environmental activists in Appalachia. Before entering the Master’s program at Indiana, she taught world history, geography, and classical studies in Bangkok, Thailand, and Louisville, Kentucky. During her first year as a graduate student, she assisted the Director of the Mathers Museum and served as an editorial assistant for Museum Anthropology Review. Most recently Evangeline worked as a graduate assistant for the American Folklore Society.