Linda J. Lee has been a professional communicator for two decades. She is a folklorist by training and holds advanced degrees in Folklore from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Pennsylvania, where she is completing her Ph.D. in Folklore. The intersection of fairy tales, popular culture, and romance is the core of Linda’s current research. She studies fairy tales and their transformation in popular culture, and her dissertation examines the representation of monstrosity in contemporary popular culture versions of supernatural bridegroom stories (such as “Beauty and the Beast,” “Cupid and Psyche,” and “The Frog Prince”).
Linda particularly enjoys making fairy tales and folklore relevant to both academic and general audiences. For example, she recently co-curated “Grimms’ Anatomy: Magic and Medicine 1812-2012,” which is currently on display at the Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. This exhibit, commemorating the 200th anniversary of the publication of the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen, presents real-world examples of the sometimes gruesome or grotesque fairy tale bodies. She has presented her research at academic conferences in the United States and in Europe, and she has given public lectures such topics as fairy tales and death, urban legends about contamination, and the science and magic of fairy tale birth. Linda’s writing has been published in academic journals such as Marvels and Tales and Western Folklore and online at The Popular Romance Project. And she has contributed entries to The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folk and Fairy Tales, Enzyklopädie des Märchens, and the Encyclopedia of Women’s Folklore and Folklife.
Linda was first introduced to the study of Folklore as an undergraduate at Amherst College, where she majored in English and European Studies and graduated summa cum laude. She became committed to the study of folk and fairy tales while working on her honors thesis, which examined Sicilian and Italian stories of fidelity and innocence. She has also researched witchcraft tradition and witch trials. Her M.A. thesis at Berkeley focused on the use of witch iconography in Salem, Massachusetts. And her M.A. thesis at Penn examined post-9/11 airport security rituals.
She currently teaches humanities, folklore, literature, and writing at several universities in the Philadelphia region, including Temple University, Philadelphia University, and the University of Pennsylvania. She loves upsetting students’ expectations about what literature and folklore are and their relevance to lives today, and challenging students’ assumptions that films, graphic novels, and television are solely for entertainment. She has expertise teaching these subjects to a wide range of students, including traditional undergraduates, adult students, developmental learners, and professionals. She has also been a professional writing tutor for several years, and she finds that working individually with students to improve their spoken and written communication skills is particularly effective.
Prior to beginning graduate studies, she was a professional writer and editor in the high-tech industry. She was Senior Editor of technology trade magazines, including Desktop Publishers Journal and Digital Production Executive, and an Acquisitions and Developmental Editor for Sybex Books. One of her favorite aspects of publishing was helping authors to find their voices. She spent the dot-com boom in various writing and editing capacities in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she was a freelance technology writer, an online editor for software developer, and a technical writer for a wealth management firm. She has provided independent editorial and consulting services on a wide range of projects, including academic writing, mathematics textbooks, technical books, public relations materials, and ethnographic reports.
Linda is a voracious reader and fears the day when she must relocate her library. Her favorite authors include Jane Austen, Italo Calvino, and Neil Gaiman. She is a grammar fiend and holds a strong opinion on the proper use of the Oxford comma. She also enjoys gardening, cooking, canning, and knitting.
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