Please join us for a day-long symposium:

Women Documenting the World
Women as Folklorists, Ethnomusicologists & Fieldworkers
Thursday, September 26, 2019 
9:30 am -5:00 pm
Mary Pickford Theater, James Madison Building, Library of Congress

The American Folklife Center launches its multi-year initiative to highlight, explore, and celebrate the contributions of women as ethnographic fieldworkers and scholars with Women Documenting the World, a day-long program of talks, interviews, and discussions on Thursday, September 26. 

The free event, which is open to the public, calls attention to the role of women in establishing many of the foundational collections that enrich the American Folklife Center archive as well as other ethnographic archives throughout the world. It features presentations by contemporary researchers who are currently engaged in both national and international fieldwork, and includes brief presentations by American Folklife Center staff about important fieldwork collections in the American Folklife Center archive that were created by women, and that are too often overlooked.

Request ADA accommodations five days in advance at 202-707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov

Find further information at the link!

You're receiving this email because you subscribed to the American Folklife Center's "News and Events" updates.  But did you know there other ways of keeping in touch? In addition to this list, we have the Folklife Today blog, the Folklife Today podcast, and a facebook page, with more podcast series on the way. Now that our heavy event season is slowing down, we thought we'd use the list to alert you to some of these other ways to learn about folklife and the mission of the AFC. 

Let's begin with the Folklife Today Podcast, since a new episode was released today for Halloween! Folklife Today tells stories about the cultural traditions and folklore of diverse communities, combining brand-new interviews and narration with songs, stories, music, and oral history from the collections of the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center. The new episode features scary stories for Halloween, including Jackie Torrence's "The Golden Arm," Mary Celestia Parler's "The Witch who Kept a Hotel," and Connie Regan-Blake's "Mr. Fox." The very first episode, from a year ago, featured spooky songs. In between, there was a whole year filled with audio goodies!  Find it all at the link.

Click here for the Podcast homepage.

The American Folklife Center Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon on Women Fieldworkers

Primary Place: American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

Saturday, February 8, 2020
11:00 AM – 3:00 PM EST

Join the American Folklife Center (AFC) on Saturday, February 8 for an edit-a-thon to expand the online presence of women who documented the world. This event is part of the AFC’s multi-year initiative to highlight, explore, and celebrate the contributions of women as ethnographic fieldworkers, and to call attention to the role of women in establishing many of the foundational collections that now enrich the AFC archive and ethnographic archives throughout the world.

During the edit-a-thon, we plan to add and/or expand entries for 25-30 women, both historical and contemporary, who have documented traditional culture. We will focus on collections in the AFC archive. The list of featured fieldworkers whose entries are to be edited will be posted in the near future. Activities will be centered at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, but off-site participation is encouraged. The event starts with a “How to Edit” session presented by Wikipedia Foundation staff. They will be joined by AFC staff, who will assist on-site and off-site researchers and provide archival materials

Request ADA accommodations five days in advance at 202-707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov

Register for the event at the link!

African American Dollmaking and Puppetry: Renegotiating Identity, Restoring Community
Various speakers and artists, moderated by Camilla Bryce-Laporte

February 18, 2020, 11:30am-2:00pm
119 First Floor
Thomas Jefferson Building

African American artisans utilize ancient skills and innovative technologies to create dolls and puppets that are both whimsical and starkly serious. Their creations — incorporating clay, textiles, wood, glass, and found objects — embrace the somber reality of African American experiences and optimism for a boundless future. Working alone and in communities these artisans create dolls and puppets that articulate Black beauty, strength, style, spirituality, and truth. Their works, embodying older traditions and innovative vocabularies for storytelling, are designed to amuse, educate, and heal. Dolls of each of 8 makers will be displayed on tables from 11:30-12:00 pm and 1:30 pm-2:00 pm.

Folklorist Camila Bryce-Laporte will present six makers as they discuss their work and the stories behind that work. This will be followed with a question and answer session from 12 noon to 1:30 pm.

This program may deal with sensitive subjects and is aimed at adults rather than children.

Some of the dolls will be for sale through the auspices of the Library of Congress sales shop.

Click here for more information.

Please join us for an afternoon symposium:

James Hogg: Scotland's Shepherd Poet
February 21, 2020 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Whittall Pavilion, Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress

This symposium will explore the work of James Hogg, “The Ettrick Shepherd” (1770-1835), an influential Scottish song-maker, folklore collector, novelist, and poet. Inspired by Robert Burns, colleague of Walter Scott, and friend of Lord Byron, Hogg played a major role in creating and promoting Scottish culture, within Scotland and internationally.

This free event, which is open to the public, will compare his work with that of more recent American performers and collectors, who also served as intermediaries between the worlds of folk, popular, and literary culture for the first time. Speakers will explore issues around field collecting, song transmission and creation over the past three centuries. An afternoon of presentations and discussions will be capped by a performance featuring renowned singer Sheena Wellington, who has recorded and performed some of Hogg’s best known songs.

Request ADA accommodations five days in advance at 202-707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov

Find further information at the link!

This is a reminder that the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress invites applications for the Henry Reed Fund Award, which supports activities directly involving folk artists such as recording projects, apprenticeships, or performances. Find information about the Henry Reed Fund Award and other fellowships at the link--scroll down for the Henry Reed Fund. The past recipients link will also help provide a useful history of the award.

The deadline is 12:00 midnight, March 2, 2020.

Click here for more information.

The American Folklife Center (AFC) at the Library of Congress is delighted to announce that four (4) new Occupational Folklife Project collections are now available on the Library of Congress website. They are “Working the Waterfront: New Bedford, Massachusetts;” “Funeral Service Workers in the Carolinas;” “Illuminating History: Union Electricians in New York City;” and “Homeless Shelter Workers in the Upper Midwest.” The collections consist mainly of audio recordings of oral history interviews, with supporting photos and documents. The four new collections join previously released collections documenting the experiences of home health care workers, beauty shop employees, circus workers, gold miners, ironworkers, racetrack employees, and workers in the Port of Houston.

Through the Occupational Folklife Project (OFP), the AFC has now amassed more than 1,000 interviews with hundreds of contemporary American workers representing scores of trades and occupations. These hour-long oral history interviews feature workers discussing their current jobs, formative work experiences, training, aspirations, occupational communities, hopes for the future, and on-the-job challenges and rewards. They tell stories of how workers learned their trades, their skills and work routines, legendary jobs (good and bad), respected mentors, and flamboyant co-workers. They document the knowledge, dedication and insights of American workers, and add workers’ voices to the permanent record of America’s history preserved at the Library of Congress, America’s national library. Adding the collections to the Library of Congress website enables researchers, educators, and members of the public to access them from their homes, schools, and local libraries. OFP interviews can also be accessed at the AFC’s Reading Room at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

AFC Director Betsy Peterson notes: “AFC’s innovative Occupational Folklife Project enables researchers and members of the public to have direct access to hundreds of hours of fieldwork with some of America’s most eloquent, engaging, and passionate spokespeople for the trades and occupations that shape our shared national culture. These oral histories not only enrich our current understanding of our fellow Americans, but will inform scholars and researchers for generations to come about the lives of workers at the beginning of the 21st century. Listeners will be able to access the oral histories, images and fieldwork that previously could be accessed only by visiting the Library of Congress in Washington. ”

The OFP was launched in 2010. It is funded in part by AFC’s Archie Green Fellowships, which support teams of researchers throughout the United States, who perform interviews documenting a particular occupation.

New OFP collections available online are:

Working the Waterfront: New Bedford, Massachusetts
The New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center (NBFHC) received an Archie Green Fellowship to document workers on the New Bedford, Massachusetts, waterfront for the Occupational Folklife Project (OFP). Folklorist and NBFHC Executive Director Laura Orleans, working with anthropologists Madeleine Hall-Arber and Corinn Williams and oral historian Fred Calabretta, recorded oral histories with 58 workers involved in diverse fishing-related trades on the New Bedford waterfront. Documented tradespeople range from fish packers to net makers, navigational electronic technicians to marine divers, and maritime upholsterers to ice house workers. The individual interviews are supplemented by striking workplace portraits taken by gifted New Bedford photographer Phillip Mello, who was also interviewed about his job as general manager at Bergie’s Seafood. Mello has been taking photographs of his fellow waterfront workers since 1975, and his work is currently on exhibit at the American Folklife Center.

Funeral Services Workers in the Carolinas
Folklorist Sarah Bryan of Durham, North Carolina, received an Archie Green Fellowship from the American Folklife Center to document the work of funeral services workers in North and South Carolina. She explored how, through their work, funeral service workers engage with the funerary folklore and religious beliefs of diverse Carolina communities, including African American, Gullah, Jewish, Scottish and Scots-Irish, as well as more recently arrived immigrant groups. Interviewees included directors of multi-generational funeral homes and other funeral workers from diverse backgrounds and experiences. A total of 16 interviews are included in this collection; many are accompanied by photographs and historical images.

Homeless Shelter Workers in the Upper Midwest
Social services worker, writer, and documentarian Margaret Miles of Minneapolis, Minnesota, received an Archie Green Fellowship from the American Folklife Center to document workers in the emergency homeless services in three interrelated Midwestern urban centers: Bismarck, North Dakota; Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota; and Chicago, Illinois. She recorded interviews with overnight shelter advocates, meal and clothing center coordinators, street outreach workers, daytime drop-in supervisors, and housing case managers and others who work to resolve housing issues and assist individuals with financial crises, employment, addiction, illness, or mental health concerns. As she notes: their work makes them "master-navigators of complex systems such as healthcare, social security, corrections, veterans’ benefits, and tenant-landlord law." This collection consists of 18 interviews with shelter workers serving diverse communities of clients, including ex-offenders, abused women, LGBT and Native American youth, and individuals with HIV/AIDS. Many of the interviews are accompanied by images by Miles's co-documentarian, photographer Catherine ten Broeke. Troyd Geist, Folklorist for the North Dakota Arts Council, served as a consultant to the project.

Illuminating History: Union Electricians in New York City
New York researcher and electrician Jaime Lopez, in affiliation with SUNY Empire State College's Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies (HVASLS) and The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW, Local #3) in Queens, New York, received an Archie Green Fellowship from the American Folklife Center to document the occupational culture of urban IBEW electricians, who “through manufacture, installation, and maintenance serve the greater New York City area.” Lopez worked with a research team that included labor faculty Barrie Cline and labor historian Anne D’Orazio from HVASLS, Queens-based artist/documentarian Setare S. Arashloo, and Local #3 electrician Paul Vance. Folklorist Naomi Sturm served as consultant to the project. The team recorded 22 oral histories with IBEW Local #3 electricians reflecting a wide range of ages, backgrounds, experiences, and occupational specialties. Many interviews are accompanied by worksite photographs and photographs of union-related activities.

Click here for more information.

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The net profit of the insurer jumped 16 per cent to Rs 531 crore in Q4FY20 from Rs 458 crore because of lower tax provision

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