About the Folklife Center
The Southern Maryland Folklife Center celebrates and supports community-based living and the cultural traditions of Southern Maryland.
The Southern Maryland Folklife Center is part of the Maryland State Arts Council's (MSAC) Folklife Network, which encompasses 8 regional Folklife Centers throughout Maryland. Through yearly workshops and partnerships with local artists and venues throughout Southern Maryland, the Folklife Center is able to preserve living cultural traditions in our region. Our programmatic efforts, which are funded by the MSAC’s “Maryland Traditions” program, build on several past MSAC Folklife Network grants, through which we have been able to sustain work on Southern Maryland documentation projects, such as digitizing archival content, as well as the creation of Volume VIII of SlackWater: A Journal on Environmental and Cultural Change in Southern Maryland.
The Workshops and The Center have both grown out of a number of past efforts at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, but both owe much to The SlackWater Center, which has, since the mid-1980s, been documenting life in Southern Maryland, especially through the publication SlackWater: A Journal on Environmental and Cultural Change in Southern Maryland.
In coming years, we plan to grow the Center into an organization that works to connect Southern Marylanders with folklife practices–both those endemic to the region and those currently practiced here.
Biographies
Christa Casazza
Southern Maryland Folklife
Center Manager
In her role with the Southern Maryland Folklife Center, Christa oversees many of the administrative processes for the Center, including budgeting, event planning, and grant reporting. Prior to her work with the Folklife Center, Christa worked in residence life at the University of Maryland, San Diego State University and SUNY Old Westbury. In these roles, Christa focused on academics and the first year student experience while working to integrate curricular and co-curricular learning opportunities for students. Christa holds a M.A. in Higher Education Administration from Stony Brook University and a B.S. in Psychology and Sociology/Anthropology with a concentration in Criminal Justice from Towson University.
Jerry Gabriel
Co-Director of the Southern Maryland Folklife Center
Jerry Gabriel's first book of fiction, Drowned Boy, won the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and was published in 2010 (Sarabande Books). It was a Barnes and Noble "Discover Great New Writers" pick and awarded the 2011 Towson Prize for Literature. His second book of fiction, The Let Go, was published in 2015 (Queen’s Ferry Press). His stories have appeared in One Story, Epoch, Fiction, Five Chapters, The Missouri Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Monkey Bicycle, and Big Fiction, among other publications. His work has received grants and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts (2004), the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference (2011), and the National Endowment for the Arts (2016). He is Project Director for SlackWater: A Journal of Environmental and Cultural Change in Southern Maryland, in addition to co-directing the Folklife Center
Nell Elder
Co-Director of the Southern Maryland Folklife Center
Nell Elder joined the Southern Maryland Folklife team in January of 2023, after serving as Executive Director of the St. Mary’s County Arts Council for ten years. Nell adds her vast community connections within the tri-county area. During her years at the Arts Council, Nell understood and promoted the contribution of the traditional arts in our region. Nell graduated from St. Mary’s College of Maryland in 1977 with a BA in Art. She began her career as a News Graphic Artist for the 10 o’clock news at Channel 5 in Washington DC. She spent 10 years as a designer and production artist at the Washington Post Magazine. While raising her family, she started Nell Elder Design, a design and communications company. Specializing in hand tinted photography, she produced graphics for the Washington Post Weekend Section, The Post Magazine, Psychology Today, Historic Preservation Magazine, among others. Nell designed the first program of the St. Mary’s River Concert Series in 1999, and has continued for the past 25 years.
