(Photo Caption: Rachel recording at the American Pigeon Museum in Oklahoma City.)

Rachel Hopkin is a British-born and US-based radio producer and folklorist who graduated with a PhD in English and Folklore from OSU in December 2019. Her dissertation was titled: “Argentine Tango in Cincinnati: An Ethnographic Study of Ethos, Affect, Gender, and Ageing in a Midwestern Dance Community.”

Rachel began her career as a radio producer in various music departments at the BBC in the UK. She then moved to Argentina and has continued to work on an independent basis for broadcasters around the world. In 2010 she settled in the US and earned an MA in Folk Studies at Western Kentucky University two years later. In 2013, she was awarded a rare “National Interest Waiver” Green Card in recognition of her work as a folklorist/radio producer with a special focus on US traditional culture. In January of 2019, she became a naturalized US citizen.

Rachel currently works as a senior producer at KGOU in Norman, OK, where she produces the weekly podcast, How Curious. Rachel’s previous professional accomplishments include producing and hosting the Center for Folklore Studies’ Covid Conversations: Life in a Time of Corona podcast. Many of her other radio pieces, including documentaries about music and folklore which she produced for the BBC, the Australian Broadcasting Company, and other broadcasters around the world, can be accessed on the Audio Gallery page of her website: www.rachelhopkin.com. Find her KGOU professional profile at https://www.kgou.org/people/rachel-hopkin. Her email is rachel.hopkin@ou.edu.

Featured Recent Work

KGOU’s How Curious podcast is dedicated to sharing stories about Oklahoma folklore. Find it here at https://www.kgou.org/podcast/how-curious.

Scholarly Publications

Articles and Book Chapters

Producing Audio Ethnography. 2021. In: What Folklorists Do: Professional Possibilities in Folklore Studies, ed. Timothy Lloyd, Indiana University Press.

Villainy, Mental Health, Folklore and the Mediatic Literature: Andreas Lubitz and the Germanwings Crash. 2019. The Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 13(2): 141–157.

Poetics and Pâtisserie: Multilayered Performances of Croissants. 2017. Performance Research 22(7): 134-140.

The Way of the Croissant: Traditional Perspectives on a Traditional Pastry. 2017. Digest: A Journal of Foodways and Culture 5 (2).

The Critical Conservationist: George Gibson and Patterns of Vernacular Resistance. 2017. Western Folklore, 76 (1): 5-40.

A Reel in a Bottle: The Bottle Art of Chris Wood. 2011. Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin, Volume LXVII (1&2): 35-59.

Manuscripts in Preparation

Forthcoming. "Argentine Tango and Age Identity." In: Life’s Coda: Traditional Music and Dance in Later Life, ed. Jon Kay. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Reviews

Lost Sound: The Forgotten Art of Radio Storytelling. 2018. Book by Jeff Porter. Journal of American Folklore 131 (520): 225-228.

Ola Belle Reed and Southern Mountain Music on the Mason-Dixon Line. 2017. 2 CDs and book by Henry Glassie, Clifford R. Murphy, and Douglas Dowling Peach. Journal of American Folklore 130 (516): 248-250.