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Posted by: John Fenn
The American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress welcomes a new Congressional appointee to the Center’s Board of Trustees: Heather Obernolte, Ph.D. Appointed to the Board by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, she will serve a term that expires June 1, 2028. With a long history as a volunteer and community activism, she …
Posted in: AFC History
Posted by: John Fenn
This guest post is from Doug Peach, a Folklife Specialist here at the Library of Congress. In it he describes materials that the Center has drawn on recently for two collection displays focused on sports and community. Introduction The American Folklife Center is, perhaps, best known for its collections of music and storytelling—and for good …
Posted in: AFC Events, AFC History
Posted by: John Fenn
This guest post by Joe Z. Johnson, one of the American Folklife Center's 2023 Folklife Interns, announces a new research guide focused on African American banjo players by sharing the motivation behind the guide and highlighting some of the content.
Posted in: AFC History, African American History, African American History Month
Posted by: Stephen Winick
On Wednesday, July 5, and Friday, July 7, 2023, the American Folklife Center (AFC) welcomed a delegation of Ukrainian and Ukrainian-American musicians to the Library of Congress. The musicians—Shchuka-Ryba, Bozhychi, Mariya Kvitka, Yaroslav Dzhus, Katya Chilly, and Ukrainian Village Voices—traveled to Washington, D.C. to perform at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Joining the groups were representatives from the Maidan Museum in Kyiv, Ukraine, the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative, and Dr. James Deutsch—a curator at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Find out about their visit, and about many of AFC's Ukrainian collections and programs, in this blog post!
Posted in: AFC History, AFC Reading Room Visitors, Ukrainian Americans
Posted by: Stephen Winick
If you've visited the American Folklife Center's main page on the Library of Congress website in the last few days, you may have noticed a change. The pages have been converted to the Library of Congress's new standard format for Research Centers across the Library's divisions. Our legacy URL of loc.gov/folklife will now redirect you to the new landing page. We're excited to share the new site with you, so this blog will guide you to some of its features and provide the link for you to explore.
Posted in: AFC History
Posted by: Guha Shankar
The American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress welcomes three new Presidential appointees to the Center’s Board of Trustees: Sara C. Bronin, Chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), Admiral Rachel Leland Levine, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Charles Sams III, Director of the National Park Service. Each appointee …
Posted in: AFC History
Posted by: John Fenn
Over the past several months we’ve become quite familiar with on-boarding new people here at the Center, as a steady flow of incoming staff and interns have arrived since April. It’s an exciting time for us, and we wanted to share a bit of information about the five wonderful team members who have joined us. …
Posted in: AFC History, Internship program
Posted by: Stephen Winick
This blog post details a visit by members of the the Swedish Women's Education Association of DC (SWEA DC) to the Library of Congress. Curators from the European Reading Room, the Manuscript Division, and the American Folklife Center presented treasures related to Swedish and Swedish American history, literature and folklore. In the post you can read more about these treasures, and follow links to view many of them for yourself.
Posted in: AFC History, Swedish Americans
Posted by: Guha Shankar
A June 16th Library symposium entitled Rewriting America: Reconsidering the Federal Writers' Project 80 Years Later will bring attention to the enduring legacy and importance of the archival materials and mansucripts produced by a small army of unemployed writers, historians, librarians, teachers, and others for the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) of the 1930s. The symposium will illustrate how this Library collection continues to inform and inspire public outreach and interdisciplinary scholarship in fields ranging from public and oral history to journalism to ethnic studies and folklore. Dr. Alessandro Portelli will deliver the keynote address, which will be livestreamed. Learn more about the in-person symposium and how to attend, as well as how to attend the livestreamed keynote address, in this blog post.
Posted in: AFC Events, AFC History, Benjamin A. Botkin, Federal Writers' Project