Bio

Lowell Brower is the Director of Undergraduate Studies and a Lecturer for the Committee on Degrees in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard. 

Working at the intersection of Africana Studies, Folklore, Anthropology, and Refugee and Migration Studies, his research focuses on African oral traditions, communal storytelling, and cultural reimagination in the aftermath of violence, displacement, and profound social rupture. Fluent in Kiswahili and Kinyarwanda, Lowell has conducted extensive fieldwork in communities throughout Rwanda and Tanzania. Based on nearly two thousand oral-literary performances and interviews, his current book project, Once Upon a Time in the Land of Never Again: Storytelling, Sociality, and Survival in Post-Genocide Rwanda and Its Refugee Camps, explores the powers, potentials, politics, and poetics of storytelling in contemporary Rwanda, focusing on the genres of imigani tales and ibyivugo praise poetry.

In addition to his position in Folklore and Mythology, Lowell has affiliations with the African Language Program at Harvard, The Immigration Initiative, the Department of African and African American Studies, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and Quincy House. As a Resident Tutor in Quincy House, Lowell mentors and supports a wide range of undergraduates in his capacity as a specialist in Postgraduate Fellowships; Race, Diversity, and Inclusion; Study Abroad; and Writing.

Lowell's current and forthcoming courses include:

  • The Folklore of Emergency: Change, Continuity and Communal Creativity Amid Crisis
  • Fieldwork and Ethnography in Folklore
  • The Storyteller in Flight: Migrant Narratives, Refugee Camp Cultures, and the Arts of Displacement
  • African Storytellers and Oral Traditions
  • The Art and Craft of Scholarly Storytelling
  • The Folklore of Race and Ethnicity
  • Internet Folklore, Online Communities, and Digital Ethnography