ACIS Logo 2017 Past President’s Prize Winner

The selection committee for the 2017 Past Presidents’ Prize is pleased to announce this year’s winner: Jesse Fivecoate, for his essay, “Troubled Lands: The Production of Violent Geographies in Irish Ghost Narratives.”

Fivecoate’s essay incorporates two important approaches to studying cultural memory in Ireland — human geographies of place, and the structure of the ghost narrative — to offer insights into how, in Fivecoate’s words, “traditional forms of cultural knowledge inform human connections and behaviors to place.” His methodology fruitfully shows how contemporary ghost narratives around the Troubles in Northern Ireland map out a human geography of violence that serves to historicize and memorialize the impact of violence on community, using a wide range of narratives examples, from personal interviews to twitter posts.

Fivecoate is a PhD candidate in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University-Bloomington.