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Category: Appalachia

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.

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Homegrown Foodways in West Virginia Film Series: “Ravioli and Sauce” and “Turkish Cuisine and Seed Keeping” Premiere September 15

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

The following is a guest post by West Virginia State Folklorist Emily Hilliard, who directs the West Virginia Folklife Program at the West Virginia Humanities Council. AFC staff have been working with Emily, as well as Mike Costello and Amy Dawson of Lost Creek Farm, to co-produce the Homegrown Foodways in West Virginia program, a …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Homegrown Foodways in West Virginia Film Series: “Korean Heritage and Kimchi” Premieres September 1

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

The following is a guest post by West Virginia State Folklorist Emily Hilliard, who directs the West Virginia Folklife Program, based at the West Virginia Humanities Council. AFC staff have been working with Emily, as well as filmmakers Mike Costello and Amy Dawson of Lost Creek Farm, to co-produce the AFC’s Homegrown Foodways in West …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Homegrown Foodways in West Virginia Film Series: “Foraging and Relations” Premieres August 18

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

The following is a guest post by West Virginia State Folklorist Emily Hilliard, who directs the West Virginia Folklife Program, based at the West Virginia Humanities Council. AFC staff have been working with Emily, as well as Mike Costello and Amy Dawson of Lost Creek Farm, to co-produce the Homegrown Foodways in West Virginia program, …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

“God put the good stuff where lazy people can’t have any”: Exploring West Virginia Foodways in a New AFC Film Series

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

The following is a guest post by West Virginia State Folklorist Emily Hilliard, who directs the West Virginia Folklife Program, based at the West Virginia Humanities Council. AFC staff have been working with Emily, as well as Mike Costello and Amy Dawson of Lost Creek Farm, to co-produce the Homegrown Foodways in West Virginia program, …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Appalachian Veterans: Our History, Their Story

Posted by: Lisa Taylor

The following is a guest blog post by Tea McCaulla, an English instructor at Pickaway-Ross Career & Technology Center (PRCTC) in Ohio. Each year, she incorporates the Veterans History Project (VHP) into her classroom curriculum, and her students reap the benefits of experiential learning. This year, they received state-wide recognition. Earlier this month, four students …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Memories of Alan Jabbour in the Field: Visiting the Hammons Family

Posted by: Stephen Winick

This recollection is in memory of the Center’s founding director, Alan Jabbour, who died on January 13, 2017, and whose career and contributions are described in this blog post.  Today’s text and photographs are by Carl Fleischhauer, a retired American Folklife Center staff member and a colleague of Alan’s for 46 years. Alan Jabbour and …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Finding aid to Eleanor Dickinson fieldwork collection now online

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

The following is a guest post from AFC processing archivist Marcia Segal. The remarkable audio and video recordings in the Eleanor Dickinson collection (AFC 1970/001), recorded circa 1969-1980, capture a moment in time in the years before the Internet and other technological developments changed the way people communicate. The immediacy of religious services, (uninterrupted by …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Kentucky Bourbon, Millennial Tastes, and the Language of Folklore

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The following is a guest blog post by Sarah Lerner, who is currently an intern at AFC. For the past forty years the American Folklife Center has devoted countless hours to the documentation and preservation of our nation’s traditional arts, cultural expressions, and oral histories. Our work is supported and presented though a vocabulary defined …