narrative, performance, the ethnography of communication, Persianate oral traditions, Islam, Central Asia and the Middle East
Benjamin Gatling is a folklorist and Associate Professor in the English Department, Director of the Folklore Program, and Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program (MAIS). He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from The Ohio State University and a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to coming to Mason, he was a Lecturing Fellow in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University. His research interests include oral narrative, performance, the ethnography of communication, Persianate oral traditions, and Islam in Central Asia. His first book, Expressions of Sufi Culture in Tajikistan, was published with the University of Wisconsin Press in 2018. His current research considers the experiences of Afghan refugees and migrants in the U.S. His research has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, IREX, and Fulbright-Hays, among others. He serves as the editor of Folklorica: the Journal of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association and the associate editor of the Journal of American Folklore.
2022. “The Authority of Saintly Narrative: Stories about Abuhanifa in Tajikistan.” In Muslim Religious Authority in Central Eurasia, eds. Ron Sela, Paolo Sartori, and Devin DeWeese, Leiden: Brill, 99-119.
2022. “Central Asia as Story,” in Central Asia: Contexts for Understanding, ed. David W. Montgomery, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 52-64.
2022. “Afghan Refugees’ Iconic Narratives,” Narrative Culture 9(1), 176-196.
2021. with Sarah M. Gordon, “Creating from the Margins: Precarity and the Study of Folklore.” Special issue, Journal of Folklore Research 58(3).
2021. “’How can you trust a country?’: Precarity, Personal Narrative, and Occupational Folklore among Afghan Refugees in the U.S.,” Journal of Folklore Research 58(3), 53-75.
2020. “There Isn’t Belief, Just Believing: Rethinking Belief as a Keyword of Folklore Studies,” Journal of American Folklore 133(529), 307-328.
2018. Expressions of Sufi Culture in Tajikistan, University of Wisconsin Press.
ENGH 315 Introduction to Folklore and Folklife
ENGH 412/590 Personal Experience Narrative
ENGH 412/591 Folklore in the Middle East and Central Asia
ENGH 414/591 Folklore and the Supernatural
ENGH 484 Writing Ethnography
ENGH 591 The Ethnography of Communication
FOLK 501/ENGH 591 Advanced Introduction to Folklore and Folklife
FOLK 601/ENGH 681 Folklore History and Theory
HNRS 360 Contemporary Central Asia
MAIS 696 Proseminar
Ph.D. The Ohio State University
M.A. The Ohio State University
B.A. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill