Katie Bennett Awarded Polly Stewart Travel Award, First Prize

Katie Bennett (Western Kentucky University) received first prize for the 2023 Polly Stewart Student Travel Stipend.

Bennett’s work on ghost storytelling narratives among Kentucky women and how they are used as coded messages focuses on the storyteller, which she points out is not always the case. Her work lifts up how these narratives are a form of emotional bonding in the face of grief and trauma.

The Women’s Section‘s Polly Stewart Student Travel Stipend is given to emerging scholars with the hopes of facilitating participation in the annual meeting by those students who show promise of furthering the study of women’s folklore, gender issues in folklore, and/or feminist approaches to the study of folklore.