Cammeron Girvin received a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures with a Designated Emphasis in Folklore (2016). His research centers around the intersection of South Slavic linguistics and folklore studies; he is particularly interested in how speakers of Bulgarian and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian use linguistic forms to construct and display local and national identities. Cammeron’s dissertation ties together his background in synchronic and diachronic Slavic linguistics with contemporary folklore theory to explore how elements of “folkloric” language-both small-scale linguistic features and larger poetic structures-were employed in the propaganda of socialist Bulgaria and Yugoslavia to create a new canon of national “folk” texts.
Upon filing his dissertation, Cammeron began working as a voice user interaction designer for a Bay Area tech company. After a year, he moved to Washington DC to join the staff of the Library of Congress. There, he is responsible for the acquisitions and cataloging of resources from the South Slavic countries. From 2016 to 2019, he also served as Editor of the journal of the Bulgarian Studies Association, and he continues to follow research in Balkan and South Slavic studies with great interest.
