Debra Lattanzi Shutika

Associate Professor

Co-Director, Folklore

Director of Undergraduate Programs, English

Sense of Place, transnational migration, Latin American folklore

Debra Lattanzi Shutika is a folklorist specializing in transnational migration, Space, Place and Locality studies, and Latino folklore. She received a Ph.D and M.A. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001 and 1999 respectively, and an M.A. in American Literature from GMU in 1993. She teaches courses on ethnicity and migration, American and Latino folklore, sense of place, bodylore and Appalachian folklore. She is author of Beyond the Borderlands: Mexican Migration and the Sense of PLace (2011, University of California Press). Her current research is an ethnographic study of immigrant-citizen relations in Manassas, Virginia. Professor Lattanzi Shutika directs the interdisciplinary working group Migration Projects at Mason.