Mark Y. Miyake is Associate Professor of Music and Society at Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA, where he directs the program in Audio Technology, Music, and Society. He is formerly Assistant Professor of the Arts and Social Sciences at SUNY Empire State College where he also served as College-Wide Convener (Faculty Chair) of the Arts, and earned his PhD, MA, and BA in Folklore from Indiana University, with several years of his coursework towards his PhD and BA being earned at the University of Chicago. He has also been heavily involved in public Arts and Humanities work over the last several decades, currently serving as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Federation of State Humanities Councils, the Immediate Past Chair of the Board of Trustees of Humanities Washington (the WA state humanities council), a current and founding Board Member of WA Cultures (formerly the Center for Washington Cultural Traditions), a member of the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress, and a member of the Cultural Diversity Committee of AFS, also serving numerous different roles in a range of local and regional non-profit-, higher education-, and government-led organizations and agencies. During his time on the East Coast, he also served as the Chair of the Folk Arts Panel of the New York State Council for the Arts (as well as on several other major panels at NYSCA and at the New York Foundation for the Arts) and as the President of the Middle Atlantic Folklife Association. He has also served on numerous major awards and grants panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, ArtsFund, the Washington State Department of Commerce, and many of the other organizations listed above. He has been conducting ethnographic fieldwork across the United States as a Folklorist, Ethnomusicologist, and Appalachian Studies scholar for almost thirty years, examining discourses on race, gender, community, and identity, primarily focusing on intersectional approaches to traditional Appalachian music and local punk, country, and bluegrass scenes. He has made over twenty presentations at national flagship conferences in these fields and has published most recently in the Journal of American Folklore. He has also worked as a professional musician, librarian, and audio technician.
