The following installment in Botkin Folklife Lectures Plus post introduces James P. Leary, a distinguished folklorist and researcher who has published extensively on Library of Congress collections in the American Folklife Center. In addition to his lecture video, it includes photos, audio, and video from AFC's collections of Midwestern folk music, including Croatian, French, Scandinavian, Oneida, English, Welsh, and other ethnic groups. Most of the quotations from Leary in this article come from an email interview we did in July 2015, but I also quote occasionally from the lecture itself, which is also here as an embedded video.
Part two of this article is available at this link. Part One: The Development of the Railroads The advent of railroads in the United States is part of the country’s coming-of-age story as an industrial power during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Because of this, trains and people associated with the developing railways became …
The following is a guest post by Dr Emily Marshall, who specializes in Postcolonial and migrant literatures and cultures at Leeds Beckett University in the UK. In April I visited the incredible folklore archives at the American Folklife Center in Washington, D.C., supported by Leeds Beckett University Early Career Researcher funding. The Center is housed …
This is the second in a series of six posts presenting AFC’s new traveling exhibit Treasures of the American Folklife Center Archive. The exhibit takes the form of lightweight, colorful vinyl banners containing information about AFC, the Library of Congress, and (as the title suggests) some of the treasures found in our archive. We’ll be …
War disrupts populations, and refugees fleeing the conflict may leave their country permanently to settle elsewhere. The first World War caused such disruptions throughout Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia. Crossing one border was no longer an escape for many of these people on the move. Refugees fled to countries distant from their …
Note: The whole AFC staff was saddened by the death of Jean Ritchie earlier this month. We paid tribute to her immediately in a Facebook post, which you can see here, and the Chairman of our Board of Trustees, C. Kurt Dewhurst, made a moving statement about Jean at the Board’s June meeting. However, I …
The American Folklife Center is pleased to announce the arrival of our new traveling exhibit, Treasures from the American Folklife Center Archive. The exhibit is a series of lightweight, colorful vinyl banners containing information about the American Folklife Center, the Library of Congress, and (as the title suggests) some of the treasures found in our …
In my last post for Folklife Today, I shared some of the great recordings on the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry, a program of the Library that honors historically significant recordings and draws attention to the importance of audio preservation and audio archives in the stewardship of American culture and history. Specifically, I discussed …
Last week, the Library announced this year’s inductees to the National Recording Registry. There, along with classics by The Doors, Radiohead, Steve Martin, and Joan Baez, was a fascinating AFC collection: The Benjamin Ives Gilman Collection Recorded at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago. This collection of 101 wax cylinder recordings was created by …
