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Posted by: Stephanie Hall
This is part three of a three-part series presenting the lesson suggestions on the Explore Your Community Poster (PDF), designed for middle school and high school classrooms. Read Part One. Read Part Two. Mapping Your World All communities—whether urban, suburban, or rural—have their own cultural heritage. Did you ever explain your neighborhood to someone visiting …
Posted in: AFC Publications
Posted by: Stephanie Hall
This is part two of a three-part series presenting the lesson suggestions on the Explore Your Community Poster (PDF), designed for middle school and high school classrooms. Read Part One. Read Part Three. Community Culture: It’s All Around You One important aspect of culture that is hard to remember when when we go out to …
Posted in: AFC Publications
Posted by: Stephanie Hall
This is part one of a three-part series presenting the lesson suggestions on the Explore Your Community Poster (PDF), designed for middle school and high school classrooms. Read Part Two. Read Part Three. The American Folklife Center and the the Rural School and Community Trust collaborated on an educational poster designed for middle and high school …
Posted in: AFC Publications
Posted by: Stephanie Hall
Summer solstice was traditionally a time of revelry as the end of planting and the beginning of summer were celebrated. As the summer crops ripen, the fruit of the labor of planting is celebrated in various ways, especially the harvest of staple crops. The grain and hay harvests in late July and early August is …
Posted in: Foodways, Native American History
Posted by: Stephanie Hall
Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean. Puerto Rican migration to the mainland United States has largely been driven by economic necessity, whether of individuals’ needs to earn more to support themselves and their families, or large scale economic events such as the Great Depression and other …
Posted in: Caribbean Americans, Folk Music, Folksong, Hispanic American History, Poetry
Posted by: Stephanie Hall
The Ethnic Heritage and Language Schools in America Project was conducted in the summer of 1982 by the American Folklife Center to survey selected religious and secular ethnic community-based schools conducted, at least in part, in a language other than English to document the continued ethnolinguistic and cultural diversity of the United States. This collection …
Posted in: Fieldwork, Ukrainian Americans
Posted by: Stephanie Hall
One frequent piece of advice for helping to keep our sense of well being as we need to stay home and stay safe during the pandemic is to find ways to be creative. Arts and crafts provide one way of doing this. I grew up with arts and crafts of all sorts as members of …
Posted in: Crafts, Ukrainian Americans
Posted by: Stephanie Hall
This post is part of a series of posts called Staff Finds During Difficult Times, in which staff members discuss collections and items that have been inspiring them while they are working at home during the COVID-19 pandemic or in other difficult circumstances. Find the whole series here! As I work from home and keep …
Posted in: Folklorists, Folksong, Games, Staff Finds During Difficult Times
Posted by: Stephanie Hall
A team of folklorists made recordings of Cuban folk and dance hall music as part of projects to document Florida arts for the WPA (Works Progress Administration). Found online in the presentation Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections, 1938-1942, these recordings occurred at a time when old songs from rural Cuba could still be found, …
Posted in: Folksong, Hispanic American History