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Archive: December 2023 (9 Posts)

A green face surrounded by leaves and flowers.

The Green Man in the Modern World

Posted by: Stephen Winick

In the last entry in our series on the Green Man, we look at this figure from folklore as people encounter it in the modern world, including its appearances in art, music, performance, and spiritual practice. We especially look at enactments of the Green Man as they occur in the folk revival, renaissance faires, and faerie festivals. Following other scholars, we suggest that the Green Man in modern contexts often suggests creative resistance to environmental destruction, the modern, and the mundane. The post includes many photos of Green Man enactments and artworks.

A group of 14 people in costumes

Happy Holidays! AFC’s 2023 Literary Ball Mummers Play Video

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Happy holidays from the American Folklife Center! Watch a video of the AFC Mummers performing our 2023 mummers play! Then you can read the play, see the pictures, and even read the annotations if you’re interested in the history of holiday customs. This year’s play is called “Artificial Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity: A Literary Ball Mumming.” When Artificial Intelligence tries to make writers obsolete, can St. George Eliot, Sherlock Holmes and Enola Holmes save the day? Find out in this play set at the North Pole Library Literary Ball, which includes wassailing carols and dancing to traditional tunes as well! Mummers plays are short plays which were traditionally performed in Britain, Ireland, colonial America and the West Indies at holiday time. Mummers went from house to house and pub to pub, collecting food, drink and small change as a reward for their entertainment. The American Folklife Center’s archive boasts a large collections of British mummers play texts in its James Madison Carpenter Collection.

An outdoor photo of homes being rehabilitated in the historic district Larry Johnson III (Tre) removes debris from a historic home that he and his father Larry Johnson Jr. are restoring in Tenth Street Historic District.

Catching up with Community Collections Grant Recipients: If Tenth Street Could Talk with Tameshia Rudd-Ridge and Jourdan Brunson

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

The following is an excerpt of an interview with Tameshia Rudd-Ridge and Jourdan Brunson of the Dallas, Texas Community Collections Grant project, If Tenth Street Could Talk, as part of the Library of Congress Of the People blog series featuring awardee of the American Folklife Center's Community Collections Grant program.

Screenshot of Archive Activation wesbite

American Folklife Center Launches COVID-19 Archive Activation Page with StoryCorps

Posted by: Douglas D. Peach

This post celebrates the launch of Archive Activation, a website to empower anyone with an internet connection to share their COVID-19 experiences, or interview someone else about their COVID-19 story. Submitted stories will then be deposited into archives of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, creating a diverse archive of American experience during this tumultuous time in our national history. Archive Activation is a collaboration between the American Folklife Center and StoryCorps.

Man stands against rear bumper of car parked on side of rural road.

Rural Free Delivery: Folklorist Emily Hilliard and the Occupational Folklife Collection, “Mail Carriers of Central Appalachia”

Posted by: John Fenn

The American Folklife Center is delighted to announce that another outstanding oral history collection has just been added to the hundreds of interviews with contemporary American workers already available online as part of the Occupational Folklife Project. This one could not be more timely! It features interviews with 25 contemporary rural mail carriers and clerks (formerly known as postmasters) whose work contributes so much to the holiday season. In this blog, staff folklorist Nancy Groce talks with folklorist Emily Hilliard, the project’s director, about her fieldwork and experiences researching Rural Free Delivery: Mail Carriers in Central Appalachia, which was made possible by a 2021 Archie Green Fellowship.

Two women standing outdoors with trees behind them

Song Hunting in the Appalachians with Karpeles and Cowell: In the Footsteps of Cecil Sharp, Part 2

Posted by: Stephen Winick

On September 8th, 1950, two women set out from Washington DC for the Appalachian Mountains on a hunt for folk songs. The veteran English folklorist Maud Karpeles, 65 years old and intent on revisiting some of the singers she had encountered with Cecil Sharp more than thirty years before, was accompanied by the American folk song collector Sidney Robertson Cowell, 18 years her junior, who had worked in many areas including the Appalachians. Their 27-day expedition in Cowell’s car, bearing an Eicor tape recorder loaned by the Library of Congress, took them from Virginia to North Carolina, and yielded 91 recordings, plus a number of photographs. In this series of blog posts we will be exploring their adventures along the trail, meeting some of the wonderful singers they encountered, and comparing the versions of the songs they recorded. This is the second post in the series.

A painted sculpture of a face covered in golden leaves

The Green Man, Vernacular Christianity, and the Folk Saint

Posted by: Stephen Winick

This post is part of an occasional series about the Green Man, a figure from European folklore. In this post we approach the Green Man through the lens of vernacular religion, suggesting that in the Middle Ages he was an element of vernacular Christianity. We suggest the folk saint as a frame of reference for understanding the Green Man. This allows us to understand how a figure rooted in paganism, which once appeared on pagan temples, could become, for medieval Christians, a focal point of religious ideals.

Song Hunting in the Appalachians with Karpeles and Cowell: In the Footsteps of Cecil Sharp Part 1

Posted by: Stephen Winick

On September 8th, 1950, two women set out from Washington DC for the Appalachian Mountains on a hunt for folk songs. The veteran English folklorist Maud Karpeles, 65 years old and intent on revisiting some of the singers she had encountered with Cecil Sharp more than thirty years before, was accompanied by the American folk song collector Sidney Robertson Cowell, 18 years her junior, who had worked in many areas including the Appalachians. Their 27-day expedition in Cowell’s car, bearing an Eicor tape recorder loaned by the Library of Congress, took them from Virginia to North Carolina, and yielded 91 recordings, plus a number of photographs. In this series of blog posts we will be exploring their adventures along the trail, meeting some of the wonderful singers they encountered, and comparing the versions of the songs they recorded.