Emily Hilliard

Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in appalachia, By Emily Hilliard | forthcoming November 22, 2022 | University of North Carolina Press

In this book, Emily Hilliard draws from her work as state folklorist to explore contemporary folklife in West Virginia. In doing so, she challenges the common perception of both folklore and Appalachian culture as static, antiquated forms, offering instead the concept of "visionary folklore" as a future-focused, materialist, and collaborative approach to cultural work.

With chapters on the expressive culture of the West Virginia teachers' strike, the cultural significance of the West Virginia hot dog, the tradition of independent pro wrestling in Appalachia, the practice of nonprofessional women songwriters, the collective counternarrative of a multiracial coal camp community, the invisible landscape of writer Breece D'J Pancake's hometown, the foodways of an Appalachian Swiss community, the postapocalyptic vision presented in the video game Fallout 76, and more, the book centers the collective nature of folklife and examines the role of the public folklorist in collaborative engagements with communities and culture. Hilliard argues that folklore is a unifying concept that puts diverse cultural forms in conversation, as well as a framework that helps us reckon with the past, understand the present, and collectively shape the future.

A benchmark in the evolving history of public folklore. Hilliard's ability to weave together many voices—both academically and community-based—has given us a work that expands the horizons of critical heritage work to encompass hot dog condiments, wrestling matches, and teachers' strikes, calling attention to community life itself as the object of cultural stewardship. —Mary Hufford, Ohio State University and the Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Network

“‘The Reason We Make These Deep Fat-Fried Treats:’ In Conversation with the Rosettes of Helvetia, West Virginia,”in The Food We Eat, the Stories We Tell,
Edited by Elizabeth S.D. Engelhardt With Lora E. Smith | 2019 | Ohio University Press

“Traditions mutate and evolve as they encounter and enter into dialogue with influences inside and out, global and local: the grandmother who adds whiskey to the printed recipe; the friends who decide to try powdered sugar instead of granulated this year; the home cook who swaps her lard of vegetable oil and an heirloom tool for a smaller, more practical version; the midwesterner folklorist who learns to make rosettes from the home cook, finds her own iron on Etsy, and introduces them to her friends; the granddaughter who learns about a Turkish tradition from said midwesterner folklorist and adapts it for her West Virginia Swiss community. And what better symbol for this than a rosette iron—a physical embodiment of that past and future negotiation? Metal forged centuries ago will make fresh rosettes tomorrow.”

Related Media: Elizabeth Engelhardt and Emily Hilliard on WEKU’s Eastern Standard

55 Strong: Inside the West Virginia Teachers’ Strike, Edited by Elizabeth Catte, Emily Hilliard, and Jessica Salfia | 2018 | Belt Publishing

What compelled West Virginia's teachers to strike? How did they organize? What were teachers and allies doing during the strike? And how is the West Virginia labor movement celebrating its victory? 55 Strong: Inside the West Virginia Teachers' Strike answers these questions and offers unique, on-the-ground insight into this historic strike. The book includes essays by teachers from around the state, organizing documents, images from the picket lines, and material on the history of the labor movement in West Virginia.

Foreword to Folk Songs from the West Virginia Hills, by Patrick Gainer | 2017 | West Virginia University Press

"Folk Songs from the West Virginia Hills and other folkloric documentation can serve as a mirror to show us the culture we have, but also what we’ve lost and gained along the way, for better or for worse. Throughout the collection, Gainer provides evidence of how folk songs are distilled democratic cultural nuggets of a community, conveying the values of its people. He declares, 'They are called folk songs because they belong to the people and not any one individual.' Folklorist Lynne McNeill says this another way: 'Group consensus shapes folklore, so folklore is a great measure of group consensus.' I, for one, am proud to live and work in a place where the group consensus is for singing."

Cotton Candy, Nutella, and Oreo Entries in The Oxford Companion To Sugar and Sweets, edited by Darra Goldstein | 2015 | Oxford University Press

“Though hazelnuts and chocolate are now thought of as a classic combination, Italians have historically paired the two not necessarily for taste, but for reasons of economy. In 1806, during the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon issued the Continental Blockade, an embargo on British trade, which caused the price of chocolate to become extremely expensive. In response, chocolatiers in Turin, Italy, began adding chopped hazelnuts, plentiful in the region, to chocolate to stretch the supply.”