Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth Interview
Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth is a visiting assistant professor in comparative studies and an archivist in the Center for Folklore Studies at The Ohio State University. Jasper’s new book is Finding the Singing Spruce: Musical Instrument Makers and Appalachia's Mountain Forests. You can find him on Instagram here.
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
After getting a BA in Anthropology, I was lucky enough to get a Visiting Student position in the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
A trip to the Republic of Georgia in 2012 reminded me so much of my home in the Allegheny mountains of West Virginia and Virginia that I began to wonder what a project that represented a community that I felt like I belonged to might be like. I found a home at the University of Kentucky who has an amazing inter-disciplinary program around Appalachian Studies who gave me the tools to understand the music, environment, and political economy of the region in a way I would not have otherwise. After getting my PhD in Anthropology there in 2019, I was again fortunate to land a Post-doc with the Center for Folklore Studies at Ohio State, where I am still at today!