In late July, the American Folklife center was privileged to host a book talk by Billy Bragg, who spoke about his book, Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World. A new blog post over on the Library of Congress blog tells the story of how we came to get the well known English singer/ …
The following is a guest post by Justina Moloney, a Library of Congress Junior Fellow who worked with the Veterans History Project (VHP) this summer. Correspondence, be it analog or email, is a running theme within the collections of the Veterans History Project. Of the nine World War I collections I worked with this summer, …
The following is a guest post by Nancy Groce, Senior Folklife Specialist and Director of the Occupational Folklife Project. After seven years of planning, research, fieldwork, and archiving, the American Folklife Center is delighted to announce that the first installment of its Occupational Folklife Project (OFP) launches today on the Library of Congress’s website with …
This blog post about the novelist Ralph Ellison is part of a series called “Hidden Folklorists,” which examines the folklore work of surprising people, including people better known for other pursuits. Ralph Ellison was born March 1, 1914 in Oklahoma City. The grandson of slaves, he grew up to be a brilliant writer, who produced …
[This post is part of a series of blog posts about the song “Hal An Tow.” You can find the whole series at this link.] It’s May 6, and the people of Helston, Cornwall, are celebrating Flora Day [1], a large outdoor festival featuring dancing in the streets throughout the town [2]. One of the …
Kelly Revak is a new processing archivist at the American Folklife Center. She has a master’s degree in folklore and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. Cumulatively, she has 20 years of experience in archives, including 7 years in various capacities at the Berkeley Folklore Archive. Since starting her job …
The following is a guest post from AFC folklife specialist Michelle Stefano. On February 22 at noon, the Library of Congress will host the talented dancers of Urban Artistry, Inc. in the Coolidge Auditorium as part of the Homegrown Concert Series of the American Folklife Center. Audience members are in for a treat: three rounds …
Note: this is the fifth, and probably the last, post on Folklife Today concerning Far Away Moses, a nineteenth century Jewish guide and merchant whose face was the model for one of the “keystone heads” sculpted in stone on the outside of the Library of Congress’s Thomas Jefferson building. For the other posts about Moses, …
The American Folklife Center is pleased to welcome John B. Fenn III as the Head of the Research and Programs section. Fenn will be supervising the members of our staff involved in public programming, publications, research, and training in the field of folklife. John Fenn’s academic training is in folklore and ethnomusicology (Ph.D., Indiana University, …