2023 Awardees
Ethnomusicologist Dr. Colin Harte at the City University of New York (Irish Studies) received an Owen Award to support fieldwork on the contemporary traditional Irish music community in New Orleans and research the same in Louisiana archives.
Professional photographer and documentarian Karen Pulfer Focht of Memphis, Tennessee, received an Owen Award to continue her work documenting the renowned bluesman Bobby Rush.
2021 Awardees
Panayotis League of Tallahassee, Florida, received support for fieldwork anchored in community memory and research exploring the cultural connections with the Greek collections in the American Folklife Center, particularly as found in the contemporary Greek American population of Tarpon Springs, Florida.
Emily Bianchi of Indiana University, received an Owen Award for fieldwork with the community at Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in New Gloucester, Maine.
2019 Awardees
Mariángel Villalobos of College Park, Maryland, received a Blanton Owen Fellowship to document three Salvadoran festivals in Maryland--(the Festival Guanaco, the Festival Hispano, and the Festival Salvadoreñísimo)--in order to provide a better understanding of the Central American diaspora in Maryland, explore the role of festivals in celebrations of Central American independence, and create ethnomusicological documentation of transnational Salvadoran music.
Byrd McDaniel of Providence, Rhode Island, received an Owen Fellowship to conduct preliminary research for a documentation project on YouTube content creators focusing on disability, visibility, and labor. The award enables her to attend the PAXEast conference to make contacts and network with online content creators for subsequent, more comprehensive interviews.
Kathryn Alexander of the University of Arizona received Owen Fund support to document queer country western culture at the Zia Regional Rodeo in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her research will inform her book project documenting rural queer cultures as an often overlooked and marginalized segment of the American LGBTQ experience.
2017 Awardee
Dana David Gravot, a visiting scholar at the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, received an Owen Award to conduct fieldwork on traditional herbal remedies and their medicinal uses with individuals in parishes surrounding Lafayette.
2015 Awardees
Andrew Flachs, from Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, received support to conduct a multi-layered oral history-based ethnographic study of the historical and contemporary relationship of farming communities in the Lower Illinois River Valley to their natural environment and cultural past and present.
Joseph O'Connell of Raleigh, North Carolina, received support to conduct archival research and oral history interviews with individuals from a unique family-run troupe of performing artists, Bertelle’s Birds, which toured the mid-western United States from the 1940s to the 1980s. The research focused on the Quaker background of the show and the family’s vision for evangelizing through performing animals.
2013 Awardees
Eric César Morale of Bloomington, Indiana, received and Owen Award to support fieldwork on Pacific Island dance community in Las Vegas, Nevada, where the popularity of Polynesian performers in casinos and entertainment venues have made that city the central locale in the Polynesian diaspora.
Susan Taffe Reed of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, received support for fieldwork documenting communities presenting summer powwows traditions in Appalachian Pennsylvania.
2011 Awardee
Bradley Hanson received support for the study and documentation of the cultural impact of the Tennessee Jamboree, a weekly radio barn dance program serving communities in LaFollette and Campbell Counties in Tennessee.
2009 Awardee
Stephen J. Taylor received an Owen Award to support the recording of oral history interviews with former residents of the barrier islands of Accomack and Northampton counties on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, in connection with a study of personal narratives of homecoming on Portsmouth Island, North Carolina.
2007 Awardees
Clifford Murphy received an Owen Award to support the documentation of the traditions and expressions of Country and Western musicians in the state of Maine.
Karen N. Brewster received an Owen Award to support ethnographic fieldwork exploring ecology, belief and culture as expressed in found object folk art creations of Native Americans in the Lower Yukon River Valley.
2005 Awardees
Sandra Grady received an Owen Award to support ethnographic fieldwork among Somali Bantu refugees being resettled in Louisville, Kentucky.
Jaman Matthews received and Owen Award to support documentation of life in the Mississippi Delta as documented in photographs and fieldnotes.
Carrie Leonard received and Owen Award to support the photographic documentation of Inupiaq life in Noorvik, Alaska.
2001 Awardees
Yolanda Hood received an Owen Award to support fieldwork among Nigerians living in Atlanta, Georgia.
