UMKC MFA student Rhonda Cooksey received a financial award from the Women’s Council Immediate Aid Assistance fund to do ethnographic research on Ozark folklore narratives for a research paper titled “The Narrative of Folk Medicine Communities in the Ozarks.”
Cooksey recently traveled to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, to interview modern grannywoman and Shamanic Buddhist Elle D’Coda, who founded the Ozark Herbal Academy, as well as to Blue Eye, Missouri, to interview Jim Long, who has been featured on HGTV and designed the Yarb Gardens at the Ozark Folk Center.
She will be going to Springfield to interview members of the Springfield Area Herb Society about how narratives are shared between members of grassroots organizations and their parent organization, the American Herb Society. She will also go to Mansfield, Missouri, to attend the Baker Creek Seed Company’s Spring Planting Festival (with 10,000 other people) to interview vendors of herbal products and conduct research on how diverse folk communities use the festival ritual to network with the larger group.
Congratulations, Rhonda!