Profile picture of Daniel Wojcik

Daniel Wojcik

Professor
English, Folklore Program
Phone: 541-346-3946
Office: 463 PLC
Office Hours: Spring Term: MR 12-1:30pm
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Folklore Studies, Religion & Mythology

Statement

Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles

My research interests include visionary art and art brut; trauma and creativity; modern mythologies and alternative religions; the art and expressive culture of the Roma; visionary cultures and utopias; magico-religious re-enchantment; apocalyptic beliefs and millenarian movements; death and memorialization; subcultures and folklore studies; urban ethnology and cultural theory.

 

Publications

Books and Edited Volumes:

1) Artist as Astronaut: The Otherworldly Art of Ionel Talpazan. London and Cambridge: Strange Attractor/MIT Press (forthcoming, 2025).

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:

"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]

"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]

"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. 

Film:

"The Church of Pre": Pilgrimage and Memorialization at the Roadside Shrine for Steve Prefontaine (co-directed with Randolph Benson and Brian McLawhorn), 2022. Critical Focus Pictures and Understory Productions. Click here to watch: https://www.rbensonfilm.com/the-church-of-pre.html

Honors and Awards

Selected 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.

Elected to the Fellows of the American Folklore Society (2023), for Cumulative Scholarly Contributions to the Discipline of Folklore Studies.

Keynote Presentation for the Conference "New Approaches to ‘Re-Enchanted’ Central and Eastern Europe," Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design of Budapest, April, 2022.

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

General Education Renaissance Award, College of Arts & Sciences, Univ. of Oregon, 2015-17.

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

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

  • History and Theory of Folklore Research

  • Introduction to Folklore

  • Subcultures and Folklore Studies
  • Visionary Experiences and Otherworldly Encounters: Traditions, Theories, and Contexts