Our devoted parishioner and Johnstown resident Susan Kalcik has been awarded the prestigious annual Americo Paredes Prize by the American Folklore Society at the 2016 national meetings in Miami, Florida.

Each year, the AFS Committee on Cultural Diversity, Chicana/Chicano Section, and Folklore Latino, Latinoamericano, y Caribeño Section join with the AFS Executive Board to give this prize, which recognizes excellence in integrating scholarship and engagement with the people and communities one studies, or in teaching and encouraging scholars and practitioners to work in their own cultures or communities. Susan’s work includes programs, lectures, exhibitions, workshops, and publications for the Smithsonian Institution, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Arts Council, the America’s Industrial Heritage Project, the BottleWorks Art Center, the Community Arts Center of Cambria County, the Pennsylvania Highlands Community College, and the Slovak Heritage Association of the Laurel Highlands. Currently her research focuses on the history and traditional culture of Slovaks and Slovak Americans.

Susan has worked in the Johnstown area since she came here from the Smithsonian Institution in 1990 to conduct a cultural survey of Cambria County for the National Park Service’s America’s Industrial Heritage Project. When the project was finished, she spent a year organizing the AHIP archives at the Library of Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Following that project, she acted as Executive Director of the BottleWorks Ethnic Art Center and later joined the faculty of Pennsylvania Highlands Community College and attained the rank of Full Professor of American Studies before retiring. While in Johnstown she founded the Slovak Heritage Society of the Laurel Highlands. In 2010, Susan was one of the winners of the first Johnstown Heritage Award given by the Johnstown Area Heritage Association.

Prior to coming to Johnstown, Susan worked at the Smithsonian Institution in DC as the director of the ethnicity portion of the Festival of American Folklife for 6 years before transferring to the Development Office. During that time she also traveled to various parts of the country on assignments for the National Endowment of the Arts and the Smithsonian Institution.

Susan has published several seminal articles in the field of folklore, including “Folklore and Cultural Pluralism" in 1978, “Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the United States: The Performance of Group Identity” in 1984, "Ethnic Foodways in America: Symbol and the Performance of Identity" in 2012. She co-founded the periodical “Folklore Feminists Communication” which helped to revolutionize the study of folklore to include the stories, performance and culture of women as well as that of men. She is co-editor/author with Rosan Jordan of the widely cited book Women's Folklore, Women's Culture. She was a pioneer in the study of women’s narrative style and the role of women in the study and field of folklore. She was also elected by her peers for a 3 year term as a member of Board of the American Folklore Society from 1995 to 1997.