Oxford, Cheryl

An instructor and coordinator of performing arts at Western Piedmont Community College in Morganton, N.C., Cheryl Oxford received her B.A. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her M.A. and Ph.D. at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

Cheryl Lynne Oxford was born in Morganton, N.C., on 8 February 1955. She attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she received a B.A. in speech and English education in 1977. As her honor essay in the Department of Speech Communications, she produced a one-woman readers' theater script incorporating poetry, letters, and biography to trace the life and career of Edna St. Vincent Millay. She received her M.A. in interpretation at Northwestern University in 1978. In 1987, she completed her Ph.D. dissertation, They Call Him Lucky Jack: 3 Performance-Centered Case Studies of Storytelling in Watauga County, N.C., in performance studies at Northwestern University. A regional folklorist with an emphasis on performance ethnography, Oxford has lived and worked most of her life in the foothills of Burke County, near Watauga County, the home territory of Ray Hicks, Stanley Hicks, W. W. Rowland, and Marshall Ward, the primary storytellers she interviewed and documented for her dissertation. Oxford is an instructor and coordinator of performing arts at Western Piedmont Community College in her hometown of Morganton, N.C.