Filmmakers

Elaine J. Lawless is a folklorist and ethnographer whose research has focused on women’s narratives and expressive speech among underserved communities in the American Midwest, including Pentecostals, clergywomen, survivors of domestic violence, and displaced African Americans. She developed the collaborative feminist research method known as “reciprocal ethnography” and spent much of her academic career at the University of Missouri, where she received numerous awards for teaching and research and was named a Curators’ Professor and Distinguished Professor. Lawless served as editor of the Journal of American Folklore and as president of the American Folklore Society, and was the Nan Keohane Distinguished Visiting Professor at Duke University and the University of North Carolina. Following her retirement from Missouri, she moved to North Carolina, where she continues to write, teach, lecture, and advise graduate students. In 2024, she completed her first work of fiction, Only Girls Bleed: A Novel.