This COVID Recollections entry details an upcoming American Folklife Center symposium and concert, both focused on COVID-19 and cultural heritage, which will take place at the Library of Congress on March 12 and 13, 2026. These events are free and open to the public, but the concert requires pre-registration. The American Folklife Center is organizing these events as part of the COVID-19 American History Project.
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.
In this post, the American Folklife Center announces the online publication of a new interview collection from the COVID-19 American History Project—It Takes a Village: Rural Central Appalachian Childcare Providers’ COVID-19 Experiences. The collection features 25 interviews with rural childcare workers in Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee, detailing their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2024, Los Pleneros de la 21--a NYC-based organization whose members specialize in teaching and performing the Puerto Rican musical genres of bomba and plena--were awarded with a Community Collections Grant (CCG) by the American Folklife Center, to document musicians, teachers, and community members involved in bomba and plena music in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. This post is an excerpt of an interview with LeAna López, the primary interviewer for the project, about the group's CCG work. The full interview is accessible on the Library of Congress' Of the People blog.
The American Folklife Center announces the launch of the Chicago 1977: People, Places, and Cultures transcription campaign, as part of the Library of Congress By the People volunteer transcription initiative, and based on the Center's Chicago Ethnic Arts Project Collection from 1977.
The first interviews documented for the COVID-19 American History Project--an initiative of the American Folklife Center to create an archival collection of Americans' experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic--are now available in the online collections of the Library of Congress. In this post, learn more about the workers featured in the interviews, find out how to access their stories, and explore how you can have your pandemic story preserved as part of the COVID-19 American History Project.
