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Hannah Harvey
Assistant Professor, Director of the KSU Tellers, and Coordinator of Performance Studies Events
Hannah B. Harvey earned her Ph.D. (2006) and M.A. (2003) in Performance Studies within The Department of Communication Studies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her B.A. (2001) in a self-designed cross-disciplinary program between Theatre Arts, Communication Studies, and English at Furman University. Her primary teaching, research, and performance work are in the areas of: oral traditions and storytelling, critical performance ethnography, cultural performance, the performance of literature, and the body in performance. She is artistic director of the KSU Tellers storytelling company (www.ksutellers.com) and is managing editor of Storytelling, Self, Society journal (Routledge).
Hannah grew up in mountainous northeast Tennessee, just minutes away from the Jonesboro National Storytelling Festival. Her grandfather inspired a lifelong passion in storytelling, and her graduate work in performance ethnography brought her back to these family and regional tales.
As a solo storyteller, her recent performances as a regional or featured teller at festivals include: the Carolina Storytelling Festival (2009), the Roswell Magnolia Storytelling Festival (2007-08), and in the Atlanta Storytelling Festival (2007). Her international performances as a member of NC-based Wordshed Productions earned a 5-star review in the British Theatre Guide (London-Edinburgh-New York) in 2005. She has led workshops in storytelling at the Jonesborough National Storytelling Festival (2008), in the adaptation and performance of literature at the International Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland (2004), and in facilitating and performing intergenerational storytelling at the Canadian Association on Gerontology Conference in Toronto, Canada (2003).
Harvey also directs the KSU Tellers, who have earned praise from professional storytellers Milbre Burch and Antonio Sacre for “chart[ing] the path between storytelling and theatre.” With the Tellers, Harvey co-adapted and directed a group-storytelling performance of the Old English epic “Beowulf” (2007), which earned a 4-star review from The British Theatre Guide.
Her current research focuses on the politics of Appalachian cultural identity, centering on the ways that identity, gender, and culture are constructed and contested through performances of everyday life. Her ongoing fieldwork with disabled coal miners in southwest Virginia culminated in a live ethnographic performance of their oral histories, Out of the Dark: The Oral Histories of Appalachian Coal Miners. The storytelling-based group performance revealed how coal miners build community and identity in the mines and later come to terms with disabling injuries that force them to leave the mines and communities they love. Harvey earned an award for her direction of the 2007 KSU production from adjudicators at the American College Theatre Festival; and the 2004 UNC-Chapel Hill production won three year-end awards from leading regional reviewer Independent Magazine (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, NC) for Top 10 Productions, Top Five New Plays, and containing three of the Top 12 Lead Performers, including Harvey.
Hannah’s articles have appeared, among other places, in Storytelling, Self, Society and Storytelling Magazine. She regularly presents her work at The National Communication Association, and has presented at the Oral History Association and the Canadian Psychological Association on Gerontology. She is a recipient of UNC Graduate School’s prestigious Off-Campus Dissertation Research Fellowship for her work with Appalachian coal miners, and she was awarded the Dan Crowley Memorial Research Award in Storytelling Studies from The American Folklore Association. She is a member of the National Communication Association, the American Folklore Society, the Oral History Association, and the National Storytelling Network.
Hannah comes to Kennesaw as a former teaching fellow at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she taught courses in Oral Traditions, Performance Studies, and The Performance of Literature.
