Professor Siporin received his Ph.D. in Folklore from Indiana University in 1982 and has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at Utah State University since 1990. He served as the Folk Arts Coordinator for the Idaho Commission on the Arts and for the Oregon Arts Commission, as a consultant to the Iowa Arts Council, and as the president of the Utah Folklore Society. Professor Siporin specializes in Jewish folklore and enjoys traveling to do fieldwork in places such as Italy, Portugal, Israel, and even Idaho. The recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, Professor Siporin's honors include a Fulbright Lectureship, a research fellowship from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and Humanist of the Year from the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Utah State University.

Undergraduate Courses Offered:

• Folk Narrative

• Folklore Fieldwork

email:  siporin@cc.usu.edu

fax:  (435)797-3797
phone: (435)797-2722

• "A Jew Among Mormons." Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 24 (Winter 1991): 113-22.
• "A Map to the World's First Ghetto." The Italian Jewish Experience. Stony Brook, New York: Forum Italicum, 2000. 1-13.
• American Folk Masters: The National Heritage Fellows. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992. Award: Honorable Mention, Giuseppe Pitr  International Folklore Prize, 1993.
• "County Football Scholarships." Foaftale News: Newsletter of The International Society for Contemporary Legend Research 45 (November 1999): 2-4.
• "Folklife and Survival: The Italian-Americans of Carbon County, Utah." Old Ties, New Attachments: Italian-American Folklife in the West. Washington, D. C.: Library of Congress, 1992. 81-93.
• "From Kashrut to Cucina Ebraica: The Recasting of Italian Jewish Foodways." Journal of American Folklore 107 (1994): 268-81.
• "Halloween Pranks: 'Just a Little Inconvenience.'" Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994. 45-61.
• "Immigrant and Ethnic Family Folklore." Western States Jewish History 22 (1990): 230-42.
• "Introduction" and "Tall Tales and Sales." Worldviews and the American West: The Life of the Place Itself. Eds. Steve Siporin, Polly Stewart, C.W. Sullivan III, and Suzi Jones. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2000.1-6, 87-104.
• "Memories of Jewish Life." New Horizons in Sephardic Studies. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. 225-37.
• "On Scapegoating Public Folklore." Journal of American Folklore 113 (2000): 86-89.
• "Our Way of Life Was Very Clear." Northwest Folklore 8 (1990): 3-18.
• "Public Folklore: A Bibliographic Introduction." Public Folklore. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992. 339-70.
• "The Fruit Jobber's Tales." International Folklore Review 7 (1990): 30-34.
• "The Little Jerusalem of Italy." Piazza 3 (Summer 2000): 20-24.
• "The Rabbi's Family." Ebrei Piemontesi: The Jews of Piedmont. New York/Seattle: Yeshiva University Museum/University of Washington Press. Forthcoming.
• "The Sephardim: Field Report from Portugal." Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review 15 (1993).
• "The Survival of 'the Most Ancient of Minorities.'" The Most Ancient of Minorities: History and Culture of the Jews of Italy. Westport, CN: Greenwood. Forthcoming.
• "We Came To Where We Were Supposed To Be": Folk Art of Idaho, editor and essayist. Boise: Idaho Commission on the Arts [University of Idaho Press], 1984.

---

Return to American Studies Faculty Page
Return to American Studies Home Page