2025 Local Learning Board
Halle Butvin (Chair) is director of special projects at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. She leads the Center’s cultural sustainability work around the world, designing collaborative projects to support communities in their efforts to safeguard their heritage, promote cultural expression, and elevate cultural practices to improve local economies. An experienced trainer, for more than 15 years Halle has designed and led creative industries projects, including festival-making, artisan craft development, enterprise development, and organizational development for non-profits in Europe, East Africa, and several countries across Asia.
Reese Tanimura (Vice-Chair) is a fourth generation Japanese American who was born on the island of O’ahu and raised between Hawaii and Illinois. Her passion for music was ignited the moment she began playing the ukulele and has grown steadily through numerous instruments and genres. Reese now serves as the Managing Director of Northwest Folklife, a sublime fusion of her personal endeavors with the organizational vision of ‘Strengthening communities through arts and culture.’ Reese earned a BA in Music Education from the University of Illinois and a certificate in Non-Profit Management from the University of Washington.
Lisa L. Higgins (Treasurer) is Missouri Folk Arts Program’s Director, where she manages daily operations, including budgets, grants, and communications. As Missouri Arts Council’s Program Specialist for Folk Arts, she helps applicants and grantees throughout grantwriting and reporting seasons. Via the Show Me Folk Initiative, Higgins organizes outreach regionally, engages with local advisers and community scholars, and coordinates Living Traditions Fellowships. She earned degrees in English from Arkansas State University (BA, MA) and University of Missouri (PhD).
Jean Tokuda Irwin (Secretary) is the Arts Education Program Manager for the Utah Division of Arts & Museums. From the beginning of her tenure in 1991, including folk and traditional artists as integral to arts education in school and community has been central to the Arts Education Program. She manages arts education partnerships such as the Native American Curriculum Initiative and professional development conferences. She holds a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.
Local Learning Board meeting in Portland, OR during the AFS conference, November 2023.
Flávia Bastos, Ph.D. is a Distinct Research Professor in the Arts and Humanities at the University of Cincinnati where she also serves as Associate Dean in the Graduate School. She is a native Brazilian and her scholarship honors educator Paulo Freire. She received her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Art Education from Indiana University.
Marit Dewhurst is the Director of Art Education and Professor of Art and Museum Education at The City College of New York. She has worked as an arts educator and program coordinator in multiple settings both nationally and abroad including community centers, museums, juvenile detention centers, and international development projects. Her research and teaching interests include social justice education, community-based art, youth empowerment, and the role of the arts in community development.
Maxwell Kofi Donkor is an internationally recognized artist and master cultural educator who is most known for his performances and teaching in African Drumming and Dance. For many decades, he has focused on building communities through the arts – teaching students of every age about the authentic histories and cultural celebrations which are still observed to this day. A native of Ghana, Africa, Kofi learned drumming at the knee of his grandfather, a master drummer, as well as learning traditional dances.
Minuette Floyd, Ph.D. is a Professor of Art Education at the University of South Carolina in Columbia where she also serves as Director of the Young Artist’s Workshop program. Her research focuses on multiculturalism, interdisciplinary arts and folk art traditions. She received her Ph.D. in Art Education at Florida State University.
Rosemary Hathaway is an emeritus professor of English at West Virginia University, where she taught folklore, American literature, and young-adult literature, and coordinated the English-education major. Prior to working at WVU, she taught folklore at the University of Northern Colorado. In both settings, she provided professional development for K-12 teachers in ways to integrate folklore and ethnographic research into the classroom and did collaborative work with both the Colorado and West Virginia state folklorists.
Sahar Muradi is the Director of Education Programs at City Lore, which brings a a uniquely cultural and decolonial lens to arts education by centering culturally-rooted arts, including folk and traditional arts, in meaningful ways that connect to young people’s own heritages, identities, experiences, and communities. She has been working in the field of education for more than 25 years, spanning after school and international settings, literary and theater arts, and institutional and community contexts. As a writer, Sahar is author of several books, including the forthcoming debut poetry collection OCTOBERS (Pitt Poetry Series), co-founder of the Afghan American Artists & Writers Association, and a member of several literary communities including the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Kundiman.
Shanedra Nowell is Associate Professor of Secondary Education in the School of Teaching and Curriculum Leadership at Oklahoma State University. She taught middle and high school social studies and journalism courses before moving into higher education. As part of her work at Oklahoma State, she directs the Secondary Education program and serves as Director of the Oklahoma State University Writing Project. She has a PhD in Education-Curriculum Studies from Oklahoma State University – Stillwater.
Staff
Mira Johnson, D. Ed., is the New York Folklore and Education Network Coordinator–a joint position of Local Learning and New York Folklore. She is also an adjunct assistant professor at Bronx Community College in the English Department and the First Year Seminar Program. She holds a doctorate in Adult Education and Lifelong Learning from Penn State University and an M.A. in folklore from the University of Oregon. As a regional culture specialist for Pennsylvania’s state folklife program she conducted fieldwork with rural and urban folk artists and tradition bearers, and served as the program coordinator at FolkArtPA, Pennsylvania’s statewide folklife program. She later served as the Folk Arts and Education Coordinator at the Pelham Arts Center in Pelham, New York, where she oversaw the folk art performance and workshop series and worked to integrate folk art education into the center’s studio art curriculum. She is currently board member and board secretary in the New York Folklore Society. Her research addresses the role of traditional knowledge and ecological relationships in community-based education, as well as regional belief practices. Email Mira at Mira@locallearningnetwork.org.
Lisa Rathje is Executive Director of Local Learning: The National Network for Folk Arts in Education and co-edits the peer-reviewed, multimedia Journal of Folklore and Education. She directs teacher and artist training institutes and advocates for the inclusion of culture in diverse learning spaces. She consults nationally, including currently a 5-year consultancy for the REACH (Race, Equity, Art, & Cultural Heritage) program of the University of South Florida funded by the U.S. Department of Education to strengthen arts and culture programming in the nation’s educational system. Through the project Teaching with Primary Sources: Teaching with Ethnographic and Oral History Collections she directs a national consortium of folklife partners to develop curriculum and disseminate through teacher professional development and publication through the Library of Congress’ premier educational program. Rathje also has taught courses on cultural partnerships and fieldwork in the Goucher College Masters in Cultural Sustainability degree program, and has multiple publication and film credits. She serves on the Arts Education Partnership National Advisory Board. She has a PhD in English from the University of Missouri. Email Lisa at Lisa@locallearningnetwork.org.
Senior Consultant
Paddy Bowman is the founding director of Local Learning and co-edits the Journal of Folklore and Education. K-12 teachers, community scholars, and arts administrators around the nation have benefited from her ability to connect non-folklorists with our discipline. Her influential university courses and professional development training programs in folklore for educators around the country, implementation of model school-based projects, authorship of seminal publications, and development of online and off-line curricular materials have significantly extended the reach of folklore to hundreds of teachers and thousands of students throughout the United States. She co-edited Through the Schoolhouse Door: Folklore, Community, Curriculum (2011) and co-wrote a chapter in Folklife and Museums. She was awarded the 2013 American Folklore Society Benjamin A. Botkin Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Public Folklore and in 2016 was named a Fellow of the American Folklore Society. She has an MA in Folklore from the University of North Carolina. Email Paddy at pbbowman@gmail.com.
2025 Journal of Folklore and Education Editorial Board
Cassie Rosita Patterson, Managing Editor
Taylor D. Burden, Reviews Editor
Flávia Bastos
Betty Belanus
Norma Cantú
B. Marcus L. Cederstrom
Lisa Falk
Robert Forloney
Sandy LaBry
Rossina Zamora Liu
Sarah McCartt-Jackson
2025 Journal of Folklore and Education Advisory Committee
Benjamin Bean – Social Studies Teacher, Mount Pleasant High School (Wilmington, Delaware)
Sarah Bryan – (North Carolina)
Katy Clune – Director, Virginia Folklife Program, Virginia Humanities (Charlottesville)
Barry Dornfeld – Principal, CFAR and Part-time lecturer, Goucher College (Philadelphia)
Raienkonnis Edwards – Mohawk Filmmaker (New York)
chloē Fourte – MA Ethnomusicology Graduate Assistant, Indiana University Archive for African American Music and Culture (Bloomington)
Pauline Fan – Creative Director, Pusaka (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
Javier Gaston-Greenberg – Curriculum Designer, Educurious (New York)
Bradley Hanson – Director of Folklife, Tennessee Arts Commission (Nashville)
T.C. Owens – Folk Arts Coordinator, ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes (Corning, NY)
Vivian Poey – Professor, Lesley College of Art + Design (Cambridge, MA)
