Cheryl Thurber is an interdisciplinary scholar, cultural historian, folklorist, and photographer. She holds an A.B. from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an M.A. from University of California, Riverside, both in cultural anthropology. She earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Mississippi with her dissertation entitled, Dixie: A Cultural History of a Song and Place .
Thurber's photographs have been published in the New York Times, World & I, The Journal of American Folklore, Mississippi Folklore Register, Blues Unlimited, Living Blues, Center for Southern Folklore Magazine, Rejoice! The Gospel Music Magazine, and Rolling Stone, as well as in folklore and ethnomusicology textbooks, books on civil rights and African American life, and American Roots Music (2001: Rolling Stone Press). Twenty-five of her photographs were included in Big Road Blues (1981: University of California Press / 1987 reprint: Da Capo Press) by David Evans. Photographs by Cheryl Thurber also have appeared on documentary record albums and CDs on the following labels: Library of Congress, Smithsonian, Phillips Int, Clanka Lanka, Arhoolie, Rounder, High Water, Testament Advent, JEMF, and Dust to Digital. Two hundred photographs are on permanent display at the Mud Island Mississippi River Museum, Memphis Tennessee. Her photographs have previously been exhibited at California, Tennessee and Mississippi libraries, at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi, and are used in several documentaries.
Cheryl Thurber was married to fellow folklorist and music historian David Evans from 1971 to 1984. During the 1970s and 1980s, they traveled through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, and California, documenting African American communities, local musicians, and local musical traditions. They spent many years documenting the musical traditions of Gravel Springs, Miss. Thurber lived in Memphis, Tenn., from 1978 to 1996. She taught at Union University in Memphis and Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. She has lived in Maryland since 2001 and continues to write about 19th- and 20th-century cultural history, including the material culture of the 19th-century Sunday School movement.
From the guide to the Cheryl Thurber Photographic and Related Materials Collection, circa, (bulk, ), 1969-2010, 1969-1989, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Folklife Collection.)
