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Category: Cultural Heritage

AAPI hosts wokshop and itneriews with VHP Los Angeles, CA, May 2023.

Celebrating AAPI Heritage Month with VHP interviews in Los Angeles

Posted by: Lisa Taylor

The following is a guest blog post by Andrew Huber, a liaison specialist for the Library of Congress Veterans History Project (VHP). The idea of an event focusing on collecting stories from Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) veterans all stemmed from a simple question asked during a VHP workshop in 2020. I was teaching …

Candace Milburn with the contencts of the African-American veteran themed "Go Box"

Black History Month ‘Go Box’ – Surrogates from the Veterans History Project Collection

Posted by: Lisa Taylor

The following is a guest blog post by Candace Milburn, a liaison specialist for the Veterans History Project (VHP). You might ask, “What’s the meaning behind a ‘Go Box?’” To answer your question, the story began when former VHP Director Karen Lloyd shared that during her service in the Army, each service member was given …

Violet Hill Gordon in uniform.

The Courage to Deliver: The Women of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion

Posted by: Lisa Taylor

The following is a guest blog post by Nathan Cross, an archivist for the American Folklife Center. This African American History Month, the Veterans History Project (VHP) is pleased to announce a new resource designed to introduce VHP’s holdings related to the veterans of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, an all-African American, all-female unit …

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

“A Central Thread of Our History”: African American Heritage Lasts Longer than a Month

Posted by: Guha Shankar

“In the case of American Negroes, their labor founded the nation and was prime cause of the industrial revolution and the capitalist system of the modern world:  their slavery, revolt, escape, protest and emancipation is a central thread of our history: and without their music and laughter American art and literature would never have attained …

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

Flashbulb Memories: Where Were You When…?

Posted by: Lisa Taylor

Flashbulb memories are those vivid, autobiographical memories that form when we learn of a particularly surprising, traumatic or impactful event. These kinds of memories burrow themselves deep into our memory banks, and often remain dormant until triggered to resurface. An image. A sound. A scent. Anything, really, can be the catalyst that sets the wheels …

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

Folklife at the International Level: Happy Anniversary to the 1999 UNESCO-Smithsonian Meeting

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

The Folklife at the International Level series has set out on a winding road, tracing the concept of “intangible cultural heritage” (ICH) as developed through a series of international initiatives over the course of the late 20th century. As the signs posted throughout have indicated, this road leads to the global framework for ICH promotion and …

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

Folklife at the International Level: the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowships, with Clifford Murphy

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

Our journey in the Folklife at the International Level series last took us to long-established East Asian “Living Human Treasures” programs for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (ICH). As discussed, during the 1990s, UNESCO recommended to Member States that they adopt similar systems of subsidizing (or, at the least, officially recognizing) people in their own territories …

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

Folklife at the International Level: The Roots of ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’ Part V, Globalization and Death

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

Now that we have introduced UNESCO’s 1989 Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore in the last blog post in this series, and discussed some of its recommended approaches, let’s delve back into tracing the development of the ICH concept. As a starting point, the 1989 Recommendation offers us this: Folklore (or traditional and popular culture) is …

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

What is a Veteran?

Posted by: Lisa Taylor

The following is a guest blog post by Kerry Ward, Liaison Specialist for the Veterans History Project (VHP). As this Veterans Day approaches, I find myself really pondering the word “veteran,” and all it encompasses. If you ask most people to describe what they visualize as “veteran” comes up, chances are many will envision a white-haired, Caucasian …