Having grown up in Idaho, I have always been fascinated with the peoples of the Western region, their many cultures and common history. Those interests led me to studies at Indiana University's Folklore Institute, and they have always guided my research and teaching. Currently, I am exploring the meaning and function of Scandinavian-American holidays for a book with the working title “Pole-raising and Flag-waving." That research project has taken me to archives throughout the Rocky Mountain states and to Sweden, where I served during 2011 as the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies at Uppsala University.

My research and teaching interests also include vernacular writing and the differences among texts produced through the technologies of orality, handwriting, print, electronics, and multimodality. In my book Up in the Rocky Mountains, I used methods from folkloristics to interpret the handwritten letters of Swedish immigrants as vernacular texts. My work with Swedish letters was accomplished in part through having received a teaching/research Fulbright award at University of Gothenburg during spring 1998.

I joined the ISU Department of English and Philosophy in 1992 after having worked for many years at the Idaho State Historical Society. During my time with the historical society I completed Building Idaho: An Architectural History, which deals with both designed and vernacular architecture. The book won the Idaho Library Association Book Award for 1991 and a commendation from the American Association for State and Local History.

Selected Publications

Books:

Up in the Rocky Mountains: Writing the Swedish Immigrant Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.

Building with Logs: Western Log Construction in Context. Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1998.

Building Idaho: An Architectural History. Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1991.

Book Chapters and Articles:

"Scandinavianism in the Rocky Mountain West, Pragmatic and Programmatic." Swedes and Norwegians in the U.S., ed. Dag Blanck and Philip Anderson. Minneapolis: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2011. 295-307.

"Peasant Letters Revisited," Swedish-American Historical Quarterly 56.2-3 (2005):126-40.

"Swedish America in the Rocky Mountain West, 1880-1917: Folkloric Perspectives on the Immigrant Letter," Scandinavian Studies 77 (2005): 53-84.

"Swedish Immigrants and the Myth of the West," Swedish-American Historical Quarterly 60.3 (2004): 179-93.

"Claiming Ethnicity: Implicit and Explicit Expressions of Ethnicity among Swedish Americans." Not English Only, ed. Orm Øverland. European Contributions to American Studies, no. 48. Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2001. 12 28. Also published in American Studies in Scandinavia 32.1 (2000): 6-28.

Courses Taught

• 6000-level seminars in interdisciplinary studies, vernacular texts, and ethnic literature

• English 4490/5590, Topics in Folklore (with focus on various genres and themes)

• English 2212, Introduction to Folklore/Oral Tradition

• English 1101, English Composition; and English 1102, Critical Reading and Writing

Office: LA 262
Office Phone: 282-2748
attejenn@isu.edu