The following is a guest blog post by Sally Sims Stokes, the daughter of World War II “Code Girl” Jean Ashby Sims. “Dear Library,” my mother begins the World War II memoir she completed in 2008 for the Library of Congress Veterans History Project. This salutation was her way of responding, as if in a …
June 6, 2019 marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the Allies’ famed invasion of the beaches of Normandy. In honor of this momentous occasion, the Veterans History Project (VHP) is publishing a special series of blog posts revealing hidden facets of D-Day illuminated within VHP’s collections. This post, a guest post by Library Technician Sam …
Folklorists are often very interested in movements to improve social conditions. They do not necessarily focus on famous or prominent people, though sometimes they do. Ethnographers often are interested in the grass roots origins of movements and the consequences of such movements for ordinary people. For women in the workplace, the American Folklife Center has …
In the Homegrown Plus series, we present Homegrown concerts that also had accompanying oral history interviews, placing both together in an easy-to-find blog post. (Find the whole series here!) We’re continuing the series in Women’s History Month with Sheila Kay Adams, a singer, banjo player, and storyteller from North Carolina. Like Flory Jagoda, whom we featured last …
In the Homegrown Plus series, we present Homegrown concerts that also had accompanying oral history interviews, placing both together in an easy-to-find blog post. (Find the whole series here!) This is a special post for Women’s History Month, featuring an artist who exemplifies the importance of traditions passed from grandmothers to their granddaughters. She is a …
Now that we have introduced UNESCO’s 1989 Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore in the last blog post in this series, and discussed some of its recommended approaches, let’s delve back into tracing the development of the ICH concept. As a starting point, the 1989 Recommendation offers us this: Folklore (or traditional and popular culture) is …
Episode five of the Folklife Today Podcast is ready for listening! Find it at this page on the Library’s website, or on iTunes, or with your usual podcatcher. Get your podcast here! Our latest podcast episode, “The Civil Rights History Project,” explains the background of one of AFC’s congressionally mandated oral history projects, and presents interviews …
This is a guest post by American Folklife Center archivist Maya Lerman. Imagine a time before hipsters started migrating to Brooklyn, and gentrification hadn’t taken hold. Though celebrations by immigrant communities throughout the calendar year are still quite evident in Brooklyn today, the early 1980s was an especially fruitful time to witness these traditions. The Brooklyn Rediscovery Folklife Study Project …
This guest post is by Professor Bob Bussel of the University of Oregon Labor Education and Research Center in Eugene, who organized the documentary team that produced the collection now online as “Taking Care”: Documenting Home Health Care Workers that is part of the Occupational Folklife Project. Home care workers represent what scholars describe as a …
