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Posted by: Nicole Saylor
Recently, the American Folklife Center received a generous donation from the estate of Peter Bartis, a former AFC staff member, to support our internship program. In this post, we express our appreciation to the Bartis family and detail the excellent work of our former interns, who were supported by previous financial contributions.
Posted in: AFC History, ethnomusicologists, Internship program
Posted by: Nicole Saylor
The American Folklife Center is pleased to announce the selection of three summer interns who will work on public programs, outreach activities and descriptive access work. One intern comes to us from the Utah State University folklore studies program, and two are supported by the AFC Internship Fund. Hanna Salmon is a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research examines how Palestinian storytellers foster affective atmospheres through their performances. Maggie Jones has just graduated magna cum laude from First Nations University of Canada’s Indigenous Languages Program with a Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics. They have an interest in Algonquian languages, Indigenous oral history, language revitalization, and journalism. Melanie Kimball is earning an MA in folklore studies at Utah State University. Her research interests include supernatural legends, folk beliefs, vernacular religion, and ethnomusicology. Her thesis investigates how people use music as an apotropaic and folk remedy for fear. Since 2017, the AFC Internship Fund has supported 12 paid internships. It was started by a generous donation from the late Peter Bartis, a former staff member. As the American Folklife Center approaches its 50th anniversary in 2026, we are committed to building this fund to help train a new generation of cultural workers.
Posted in: AFC History, Internship program
Posted by: Allina Migoni
This is a guest blog post by Drew Holley, a master's student in the Folklore Studies program at Utah State University with a particular interest in food and film. Drew completed his internship at the American Folklife Center earlier this year. Today’s blog will showcase foodways collections (traditions and practices surrounding food) found at the American Folklife Center.
Posted in: Animals, Foodways, Internship program
Posted by: Stephen Winick
We're back with another episode of the Folklife Today podcast! In this episode, John Fenn and I talk to our latest cohort of Bartis interns about their work. Each of them created a research guide for the Center, Joe Zavaan Johnson on African American banjo materials and Deena R. Owens on shape-note singing. In this blog we'll give you links to their great work and related resources, and of course the link to the podcast episode itself!
Posted in: Internship program, Podcasts
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
During her internship here at the American Folklife Center, Elisa Alfonso had the opportunity to explore many wonderful digital collections here at the Library of Congress. In particular she found many versions of a Spanish-language lullaby, “Señora Santana,” and noted fascination variations among versions, suggesting that a version collected primarily from Cuban Americans has become a vessel through which migrants talk about the sensations of trauma and loss that come with childhood forced migration. Read her observations, and hear several versions of the song, in her guest post.
Posted in: Folksong, Hispanic American History, Internship program
Posted by: John Fenn
The American Folklife Center staff happily welcomes our 2022 Folklife Interns, especially since they will be onsite with us at the Library of Congress! Elisa Alfonso and Bryan Jenkins deserve a hearty congratulations as the pool was again quite competitive this year, with over 170 candidates submitting applications. As with all prior years, the final …
Posted in: Internship program
Posted by: John Fenn
We are happy to announce that applications are open for our paid summer internship program—and this year we plan to host interns onsite! In summer 2018, the AFC at the Library of Congress launched a paid internship opportunity as part of a program established through a generous gift from the late AFC staff member Peter …
Posted in: Internship program
Posted by: John Fenn
The American Folklife Center staff is thrilled to welcome our 2021 Folklife Interns: Camille Acosta and Kennedi Johnson. It was a competitive application pool this year, with over 350 candidates—and extremely difficult to make final selections! They’ve both officially “on-boarded” at this point and are navigating the challenges and opportunities of doing a full-time internship …
Posted in: Internship program