This photo of an unknown Crow Indian girl has always fascinated me. Everything about her tells a story — but I don’t know the full story. The American Folklife Center’s Montana Field Survey, which includes this photo, was done fairly quickly, identifying places and people that might be studied in more depth at a later […]
That’s right, Episode Two of the Folklife Today Podcast is ready for listening! Find it at this page on the Library’s website, or on iTunes, or with your usual podcatcher. Get your podcast here! This blog post provides more background for the stories and the audio in the podcast. The first thing you’ll hear is […]
This series of blog posts has turned to looking more closely at the roots of the ‘intangible cultural heritage’ (ICH) concept, laying a foundation for examining the global policy – and thereby framework – from which it draws its strength: the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of the United Nations […]
The following is a guest post by Matt McCrady, Digital Conversion Specialist. United States participation in World War I lasted a little over a year, from April 1917 to November 1918, but the cost would be deeply imprinted on the entire history of the 20th century and the lives of the individuals who fought in […]
November 11, 2018 is the 100th anniversary of the formal end of World War I. It seems appropriate to say something about what this new day meant and came to mean. Also, I want to provide some highlights of Folklife Today blogs that marked the 100th anniversary of World War I. These were a part […]
Today, the Veterans History Project (VHP) debuts the newest installment of our online exhibit, Experiencing War, entitled “Personal Snapshots: Picturing the Vietnam War.” While curating this exhibit, I was reminded of Tim O’Brien’s brilliant collection of wartime stories, The Things They Carried. One scene in particular connected with the exhibit’s subject: Many years after the […]
On the 11th hour, on the 11th day, of the 11th month of 1918, land, sea and air power ceased and the Great War finally concluded. Whether you know it by the original name of Armistice Day, or as Remembrance Day, Poppy Day, or Veterans Day, as it is known in the United States, November […]
In the Botkin Folklife Lectures Plus series, we’ll present selected lectures in our Benjamin Botkin Folklife Lectures series that also had accompanying oral history interviews, placing both together in an easy-to-find blog post. (Find the whole series here.) We’re inaugurating the series with one of last year’s most fascinating lecturers, the late Burt Feintuch, who […]
Happy Blogiversary! As our longtime readers may recall, the first post on Folklife Today was posted five years ago today for Halloween 2013. That means we’ve been around for five whole years! All of us at Folklife Today would like to thank all the readers out there who have read our posts over the years. We’d also […]
The Folklife Today Halloween Podcast is Live As we hope you’ve come to expect, we have something very special in store this Halloween. As I mentioned in our last post, we’re launching the Folklife Today Podcast on October 29, and hey…that’s today! The first episode is called “Haunting Tunes for Halloween.” It’s hosted by John […]