Recently, the American Folklife Center published a new collection from the Occupational Folklife Project, which features 16 interviews with religious workers in Kentucky and Indiana. In this post, Senior Folklife Specialist Nancy Groce interviews folklorist Taylor Dooley Burden, who created the collection with support from an Archie Green Fellowship from the American Folklife Center.
This blog highlights a new episode of the Folklife Today podcast, which explores an important collection of Gullah Geechee sound recordings in the archives of the American Folklife Center. The collection features over four hours of Gullah Geechee people singing sacred music, preaching to congregations, and giving testimonies in 1955 and 1956. Courtney Siceloff, then-director of Penn Community Services, recorded this collection at community centers and churches across St. Helena Island, South Carolina. Dr. Eric Crawford, Interim Chair of the Music Department at Claflin University and the author of Gullah Spirituals: The Sound of Freedom and Protest in the South Carolina Sea Islands (University of South Carolina Press), joins this episode to contextualize these recordings and to inform listeners about the people who made them.
Recently, the American Folklife Center (AFC) published a new collection for the Occupational Folklife Project, "Poultry Workers in North Carolina," on the website of the Library of Congress. In this post, AFC Senior Folklife Specialist Nancy Groce interviews Dr. Leigh Campoamor, the anthropologist and recipient of the AFC's Archie Green Fellowship who interviewed 18 poultry workers for the collection.
In this post, the American Folklife Center announces a new online collection for the COVID-19 American History Project. The collection, titled Reflections from the COVID-19 Pandemic from Last Responders, features 19 oral history interviews with embalmers, funeral home owners, and other funeral professionals about their pandemic experiences. The collection was created by Anita Grant, Joél Maldonado, and Jasmine Johnson, of Gran Enterprises LLC, between 2023 and 2024.
In 2023, the American Folklife Center awarded folklorist Selina Morales with an Archie Green Fellowship to interview traditional healers living and working in Puerto Rico. Morales, in collaboration with filmmaker Alexis Garcia, used the fellowship to create a new Occupational Folklife Project collection, titled “Healing Work in Puerto Rico.” In this post, Morales and Garcia discuss their collection with Dr. Nancy Groce (Senior Folklife Specialist, American Folklife Center).
On March 12 and 13, 2026, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress will host a symposium titled, “From Lived Experience to Public Memory: Commemorating, Documenting, and Archiving Experiences of the COVID-19 Pandemic." The American Folklife Center is now accepting proposals for the symposium from scholars, artists, documentarians, archivists, and community-based practitioners working at the intersection of COVID-19 and cultural heritage. In this post, find more information about the symposium and how to submit a proposal.
The state of Minnesota is home to many traditions, communities, and forms of expressive culture. In this post, we highlight collection materials from the American Folklife Center pertaining to the folklife and cultural heritage of the North Star State.
On March 11, 2025, the American Folklife Center held a panel discussion with four cultural documentarians of the COVID-19 pandemic, as part of the COVID-19 American History Project. In this post, we feature the webcast of the panel discussion, alongside photos from the event.
