Trevor J. Blank is an assistant professor in the department of English and communication at the State University of New York at Potsdam. He earned his Ph.D. in American Studies from the Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, and an M.A. at Indiana University's Folklore Institute. He is the editor of
Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World (USU 2009), co-editor (with Robert Glenn Howard) of
Tradition in the Twenty-First Century: Locating the Role of the Past in the Present (USU 2013) and author of
The Last Laugh: Folk Humor, Celebrity Culture, and Mass-Mediated Disasters in the Digital Age (Wisconsin 2013). In 2010, he was awarded the American Folklore Society's William Wells Newell Prize in Children's Folklore for his research on "fartlore." Currently, Blank serves as editor to the open access journal,
New Directions in Folklore. Follow him on
Twitter@trevorjblank. (Photo credit: Philip Sanfilippo)