This collection documents the annual lecture series at Utah State University, featuring distinguished scholars in the humanities, including folklore, literature, world languages, and broader cultural studies. The lecture series, which began in 2024, was funded by Rosanne Hogan in memory of her son Derek Agard, a devoted fan of folklore and contemporary urban legends. Fittingly, the inaugural lecture was given by Tom Mould, a folklore scholar from Butler University, who specializes in contemporary legends and their intersections with culture and community.
Tom Mould (he/him) is Professor of Anthropology and Folklore. He received his BA in English from Washington University in St. Louis, and his MA and PHD in Folklore from Indiana University. Mould is a Fellow of the American Folklore Society (AFS) and has served on the AFS Executive Board, Chaired the AFS Media and Public Outreach Committee, and serves on the Advisory Boards for the Journal of Folklore Research, and the Mormon Studies Book Series at Farleigh Dickinson University Press.
Before coming to Butler in 2019, he was the J.Earl Danieley Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Folklore at Elon University where he taught for 18 years and served in various roles including Director of the Honors Program, Chair of the Sociology and Anthropology Department, and Director of PERCS: The Program for Ethnographic Research and Community Studies.
Tom Mould gives a talk on "Contemporary Legends in a Polarized World."
The award was given as part of the lecture event.
Maria Tatar gives the talk "Trouble Brewing in "Once Upon a Time": How Fairy Tales Change (with) Us."
Professor Tatar received her Ph.D. from Princeton University. Her teaching and research interests include Weimar Germany, German Romanticism, folklore, children's literature, and cultural studies. She serves on degree committees in Folklore and Mythology as well as in History and Literature.
The author of books on the Brothers Grimm and on fairy tales (The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, Off with Their Heads, Secrets beyond the Door), she has also published Spellbound: Studies on Mesmerism and Literature and Lustmord, which explores sexual violence in the literature, film, and art of the Weimar period in Germany. She is the editor of Classic Fairy Tales, as well as of The Annotated Brothers Grimm and The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen. Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood was published in 2009 with W.W. Norton. She is a Senior Fellow at Harvard's Society of Fellows.