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Daniel Wojcik

Daniel Wojcik profile picture
  • Affiliation: faculty
  • Title: Professor
  • Phone: 541-346-3946
  • Office: 463 PLC
  • Office Hours: Winter Term: MW 1:15-3pm
  • Affiliated Departments: Folklore Program, Religious Studies
  • Interests: Cultural Studies, Folklore Studies, Religion & Mythology

Statement

Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles, 1992

My research interests include visionary art and art brut; apocalyptic beliefs and millenarian movements; visionary cultures and utopias; modern mythologies and alternative religions; magico-religious re-enchantment and “dark enchantment”; esotericism and mysticism; death and memorialization; trauma and creativity; subcultures and folklore studies; urban ethnology and cultural theory.

 

Honors and Awards

Fulbright Scholar Award, the Institute for Theoretical Studies at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (Budapest) and the Department for the Study of Religions at the University of Szeged, Hungary; Spring 2023.

Fellow, American Folklore Society.

Global Oregon Faculty Collaboration Award, Office of International Affairs, Global Studies Institute, 2016-2017.

Coleman-Guitteau Professorship in the Humanities, Oregon Humanities Center, 2014-2015.

Publications

Books and Edited Volumes:

1) Artist as Astronaut: The Otherworldly Art of Ionel Talpazan. London and Cambridge: Strange Attractor/MIT Press (forthcoming).

2) Vernacular Religion and Contemporary Spiritualities. Traditiones: The Journal of the Institute of Slovenian Ethnology 50 (3), 2021 (co-editors István Povedák & Jurij Fikfak). Link: https://ojs.zrc-sazu.si/traditiones/issue/view/845

3) Outsider Art: Visionary Worlds and Trauma. Link: https://www.amazon.com/Outsider-Art-Visionary-Worlds-Trauma/dp/1496808061

4) The End of the World As We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America. Link: https://www.amazon.com/End-World-As-Know-Apocalypse/dp/0814793487

5) Punk and Neo-Tribal Body Art. Link: https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/P/Punk-and-Neo-Tribal-Body-Art

Selected Essays:

"Inside the Art of Outsiders" (Chapter 1) from the book, Outsider Art: Visionary Worlds and Trauma. [Click here to read]

"Between Madness and Art: Insanity, Therapy, and the Origins of Outsider Art" (Chapter 2) from the book, Outsider Art: Visionary Worlds and Trauma. [Click here to read]

"Meetings with Remarkable Men: In Hungary, the Life and Times of the Romani artist Janó Bari."  In Brutjournal: Outsider Art, Art Brut, the Unclassifiable, the Avant-Avant-Garde (July 2023). [Click here to read]

"Artist Ionel Talpazan: A Conversation Between Amy Wilson and Daniel Wojcik."  In Majuscule: A Literary Magazine of Creative Nonfiction, Issue 10 (December 2022). [Click here to read]

"UFO Mythologies: Extraterrestrial Cosmology and Intergalactic Eschatology." In Traditiones: The Journal of the Institute of Slovenian Ethnology 50, no. 3 (2021): 15-51. [Click here to read]

"The Virgin and the Bomb: The Bayside Apparitions, Cold War Anxieties, and Marian Anti-Communism."  In Cold War Mary: Ideologies, Politics, and Marian Devotional Culture, ed. Peter Jan Margry, pp. 231-260. Leuven University Press, 2020. [Click here to read]

"Marian Apocalypticism." In The Oxford Handbook of Mary, ed. Chris Maunder, pp. 648-663. Oxford University Press, 2019.

"Miraculous Photography: The Creation of Sacred Space through Visionary Technology." In Expressions of Religion: Ethnography, Performance, and the Senses, ed. Eugenia Roussou, Clara Saraiva, and István Povedák, pp. 123-153. Zürich: LIT Verlag, 2019.

"A Saxophone Divine: Experiencing the Transformative Power of Saint John Coltrane’s Jazz in San Francisco’s Fillmore District" (co-author Peter Jan Margry). In Spiritualizing the City: Agency and Resilience of the Urbanesque Habitat, ed. Victoria Hegner and Peter Jan Margry, pp. 169-194. Routledge, 2016. [Click here to read]

"Art and Trauma." Raw Vision: International Journal of Intuitive and Visionary Art (Fall 2016): 48-55. Excerpt from the book, Outsider Art: Visionary Worlds and Trauma (Chapter 5). [Click here to read]

"John Coltrane Church (Saint John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church)" (co-author Peter Jan Margry). World Religions & Spirituality Project, 2016. [Click here to read] 

"Avertive Apocalypticism." In the Oxford Handbook of Millennialism, ed. Catherine Wessinger, pp. 66-88. Oxford University Press, 2011. [Click here to read]

"Spirits, Apparitions, and Traditions of Supernatural Photography." Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation 25 (March-June 2009): 109-136. [Click here to read]

"Pre's Rock: Pilgrimage, Ritual, and Runners' Traditions at the Roadside Shrine for Steve Prefontaine." In Shrines and Pilgrimage in Contemporary Society: New Itineraries into the Sacred, ed. Peter Jan Margry. University of Amsterdam Press (2008). [Click here to read] {For photos of Pre's Rock, click here}

"Outsider Art, Vernacular Traditions, Trauma, and Creativity." Western Folklore, no. 2 & 3 (Winter 2008): 179-198.

"Apocalyptic and Millenarian Aspects of American UFOism." In UFO Religions, ed. Christopher Partridge, pp. 274-300. Routledge, 2003.

"The American Apocalyptic Legacy" (Chapter 2) from the book The End of the World as We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America. [Click here to read]

"Secular Apocalyptic Themes in the Nuclear Era" (Chapter 5) from the book The End of the World as We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America. [Click here to read]

"Fatalism and Apocalyptic Beliefs" (Chapter 6) from the book The End of the World as We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America. [Click here to read]

"Polaroids from Heaven: Photography, Folk Religion, and the Miraculous Image Tradition at a Marian Apparition Site,” Journal of American Folklore 109 (1996): 129-48. 

Teaching

  • Apocalypse Now and Then: The End of the World in American Culture and Consciousness

  • Folk Art, Visionary Art, and Material Culture

  • Folklore and Popular Culture

  • Folklore and Religion

  • Folklore and the Supernatural

  • Folklore of Subcultures

  • History and Theory of Folklore Research

  • Introduction to Folklore

  • Visionary Experiences and Otherworldly Encounters: Traditions, Theories, and Contexts