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Category: Folklorists

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Finding aid to Eleanor Dickinson fieldwork collection now online

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

The following is a guest post from AFC processing archivist Marcia Segal. The remarkable audio and video recordings in the Eleanor Dickinson collection (AFC 1970/001), recorded circa 1969-1980, capture a moment in time in the years before the Internet and other technological developments changed the way people communicate. The immediacy of religious services, (uninterrupted by …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Kentucky Bourbon, Millennial Tastes, and the Language of Folklore

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The following is a guest blog post by Sarah Lerner, who is currently an intern at AFC. For the past forty years the American Folklife Center has devoted countless hours to the documentation and preservation of our nation’s traditional arts, cultural expressions, and oral histories. Our work is supported and presented though a vocabulary defined …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

AFC on The Thistle & Shamrock!

Posted by: Stephen Winick

For the last two weekends of November, 2016, AFC was honored to be featured on The Thistle & Shamrock, the long-running and popular Celtic music show produced and hosted by Fiona Ritchie and distributed by NPR. If you want to hear the shows, follow the links to part 1 here and part 2 here. The …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Election Week Special: “The Dodger” and the Election of 1884

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Note: this is the third in a series of posts about a classic item from the AFC archive, “The Dodger.” [See the first post here.] [See the second post here.][See the third post here.] Second note: we’ve also created a podcast version of these stories. Download our “Dodger” podcast here! Election Day is less than …

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Happy Blogiversary from Folklife Today!

Posted by: Stephen Winick

As our longtime readers may recall, the first post on Folklife Today was for Halloween 2013. It called attention to Jack Santino’s Halloween article, and updated it with new information and scary collection items. Since then, we have collected Halloween photos and blogged about spooky stories and (most recently) bats. We have now blogged about …

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Michelle Stefano Joins AFC Staff

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The American Folklife Center is pleased to welcome the latest addition to our staff, Michelle Stefano. Michelle joins the staff as a folklife specialist in the Research & Programs section of AFC. Michelle brings a wealth of valuable experience to AFC. From 2011 to 2016, Michelle worked as a state folklorist for Maryland Traditions, the …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

The Candidate’s a Dodger: An Electoral Folksong from Oral Tradition to Aaron Copland

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Note: this is the first in a series of posts about a classic item from the AFC archive, “The Dodger.” [See the first post here.] [See the second post here.][See the third post here.] Second note: we’ve also created a podcast version of these stories. Download our “Dodger” podcast here! As Election Day draws near, …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Five Questions with Jennifer Cutting

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The following is a guest post by Jennifer Cutting.  The “Five Questions” interview was performed by Danna Bell, from the Library of Congress’s Educational Outreach office.  A shorter version of her answers is available at their blog, Teaching with the Library of Congress. Describe what you do at the Library of Congress and the materials …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

The American Folklife Center: 40 Years of Change

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The following post is part of a series of blog posts about the 40th Anniversary Year of the American Folklife Center. Visit this link to see them all! This year the Library’s American Folklife Center (AFC) turns 40. Detailed histories of AFC are available elsewhere [1], so we thought we’d do something different in this …