Top of page
Posted by: Megan Harris
The following is the fifth and last post in a series relating to the Medal of Honor. At the age of seven, Alfred V. Rascon was so enthralled by the idea of becoming a paratrooper that he made his own parachute, jumped off the roof of his house, landed on his head, and broke his …
Posted in: Hispanic American History, Oral History, Veterans History Project, Vietnam War
Posted by: Nicole Saylor
This post is an adaptation of my keynote address to the American Folklore Society’s pre-conference on folklore archiving, “Adventures in Folklore Archiving,” Oct. 16, 2017 in Minneapolis, MN. I was out at a DC party recently and was asked the classic DC party question: “What do you do for a living?” My answer was that I …
Posted in: Archival Practice
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Each year, as Thanksgiving Day rolls around, the blogosphere is bombarded with articles telling us that everything we know about Thanksgiving is wrong. In particular, these articles focus on the three-day event in autumn 1621, during which English colonists at Plymouth, Massachusetts, hosted 90 members of the Wampanoag tribe for a feast. Skeptical articles revisiting …
Posted in: Foodways, Holidays, Thanksgiving
Posted by: Kerry Ward
The following is the fourth in a series relating to the Medal of Honor. Thanksgiving, with millions of Americans on the road, is one of the busiest travel seasons of the year. If you’re doing the traveling this year, I implore you to try a new travel game: find the Medal of Honor landmarks/monuments across America, and the recipients …
Posted in: Holidays, Narratives, Oral History, Storytelling, Tourism, Veterans History Project, Vietnam War, World War II
Posted by: Nicole Saylor
This is a guest post from Julia Kim, Digital Assets Specialist at the American Folklife Center. This Thanksgiving, StoryCorps invites everyone to take part in The Great Listen, a national movement that empowers young people–and people of all ages–to create an oral history of the contemporary United States by recording an interview with an elder …
Posted in: Acquisitions, StoryCorps
Posted by: Stephanie Hall
In the summer of 1894 James Mooney, a scholar of American Indian culture and language, made recordings of songs of the Ghost Dance in several languages. The James Money Recordings of American Indian Ghost Dance Songs have recently been updated and are part of the presentation, Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry. …
Posted in: AFC Events, Native American History, Religion
Posted by: Nicole Saylor
This is a guest post by American Folklife Center archivist Maya Lerman. Staff in the American Folklife Center archive finished a project that will improve our efficiency in preserving and making accessible AFC’s rich audiovisual collections. Like audiovisual archives everywhere, AFC is working to prepare for a time when obsolescence and degradation of physical media will greatly hinder preservation efforts. We …
Posted in: Alan Lomax, Archival Practice
Posted by: Michelle Stefano
In the last “Folklife at the International Level” post, Wend Wendland, Director of WIPO’s Traditional Knowledge Division, recounted that the Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC) was formed by WIPO member states in 2000. The aim was to discuss issues relating to the protection of TCEs (called at …
Posted in: AFC History, Fieldwork, Intangible Cultural Heritage, Native American History, WIPO
Posted by: Megan Harris
The following is a guest blog post by Kerry Ward, liaison specialist for the Veterans History Project (VHP), and is the third in a series of blog posts relating to the Medal of Honor. The recent slew of superhero films have me recognizing that while they are brilliant and entertaining, at movie’s end the superheroes …
Posted in: Afghanistan War, Veterans History Project, Vietnam War