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Posts from the ‘Good News’ Category

Nov 18

“Sheer Erudition”

As my IU folklore colleague Hasan El-Shamy continues publishing a steady stream of major works in international folkloristics, a steady stream of favorable reviews are flowing back to him from the field. His book Types of the Folktale in the Arab World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004) has recently been reviewed in the journal Marvels and Tales (available in Project MUSE) by Roger Allen of the University of Pennsylvania. (see volume 21, number 2, 2007, pp. 288-291). Of this work, Allen writes:

Once in a blue moon, a reviewer is privileged to recieve for evaluation a work that in its sheer erudition and comprehensiveness is clearly destined immediately to become the major source text in its field. The name of Hasan El-Shamy is, of course, already known in the field of folklore studies, but with this particular tome (and with its 1,255 pages and tiny print, it deserves that designation)–coupled with his previous and already much utilized two-volume study Folk Traditions of the Arab World: A Guide to Motif Classification (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995)–he has now presented the field of Arabic studies in general and folklore studies in particular with a major source that will remain the primary resort of scholars for years to come (288-289).

Congratulations to Professor El-Shamy for this continued success and for such well-deserved accolades. Find the book here. Find the review here. (The journal is not open access, thus not everyone will have access to the review, unfortunately.)

Nov 17

Contemporary Navajo Peyote Arts

My friend and collaborator Daniel C. Swan has a new paper out in American Indian Art Magazine. It is “Contemporary Navajo Peyote Arts” and it appears in Winter 2008 issue (pages 44-55, 94). The saying “on newsstands now” actually applies, as American Indian Art Magazine is sold in places like Borders and Barnes and Noble. The paper is great and it is illustrated beautifully with many bright color images of wonderful works now in the Gilcrease Museum and Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History collections. The paper draws on interviews that Dan has been doing for many years with active artists in Navajoland, on his many years of close collaboration with members of the Native American Church, and on the spectacular collections that he has purchased from contemporary artists for the museums where he has worked.

Nov 15

Get out the Vote (for Open Access)

Spearheaded by Chris Kelty, the key anthropology weblog Savage Minds is organizing a grassroots awards effort for open access (and open access-spirited) publishing efforts in (and near) the field of anthropology. There are three categories–best OA journal, best weblog, and best digital media project. Several projects that I nominated, or that I am a big fan of, are on the short list and can now be considered in the voting that will determine who wins big during the upcoming AAA meetings. Everyone should vote for their own favorites, but I would like to highlight three folkloristics-meets-ethnology journals on the list:  Cultural Analysis (on whose editorial board I serve), Asian Ethnology and Oral Tradition. It is exciting that they are under consideration. In the digital project category is the Digital Ethnography project, which I really like, and the wonderful work of my friend Kim Christen and her collaborators: The Mukurtu Archive (An Indigenous Archive Tool). If you care about supporting open access and/or open source (and open minded) projects such as these, please visit Savage Minds (here) and cast your vote.

Nov 12

Catching up with FolkPub

The student editors and publishers in the Folklore and Ethnomusicology Publications Group (a.k.a. FolkPub) have been very busy in recent months. An enterprise of the graduate students in IU’s Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, FolkPub is the publisher of the venerable journal Folklore Forum and of books under the Trickster Press imprint. Much of their work has been migrating online in recent days and I wanted to note some highlights.

Current articles and reviews–in open full-text– in Folklore Forum are appearing at a new website: http://folkloreforum.net/ . The new site offers an RSS feed, so you can easily keep up with new content in a feed reader. Earlier this year, the new site and format debuted with an issue on folklore studies in East Asia in honor of Roger L. Janelli. In recent days, several new reviews have been added to the site and new contributions are expected on a continuing basis. Several special issues are in the works.

The entire back run of Folklore Forum back to its beginnings in 1968 have been made freely and fully available in the IUScholarWorks Repository service here at Indiana University. Find the whole collection, in searchable form here.

Work on the book side continues as well. At the recent American Folklore Society meetings, the FolkPub crew were an active presence, selling backlist titles and unveilling both a new title and a new business model. They were proud to release a a new, enhanced edition of Sandra Dolby’s classic work Literary Folkloristics and the Personal Narrative. This title returns to print re-typeset with a new preface by the author and a foreward by Richard Bauman. Unlike past Trickster Press titles, this work has been published using a Print-on-Demand approach which means that it can be offerred at modest cost, that it should be available forever and that the students will not need to worry about managing complex shipping and storage problems. Literary Folkloristics and the Personal Narrative is available directly from Amazon.com here. Also available in this new format is Trickster Press’ best-selling textbook The Emergence of Folklore in Everyday Life: A Fieldguide and Sourcebook, edited by George H. Schoemaker. It too is now available via Amazon.com. Find it here.

Information on the entire Trickster Press backlist can be found on the Press’ website at: https://www.indiana.edu/~folkpub/trickster/

One Trickster Press book title has already joined Folklore Forum as an open access resource in IUScholarWorks Repository. The book The Old Traditional Way of Life: Essays in Honor of Warren E. Roberts edited by Robert E. Walls and George H. Schoemaker and published in 1989 can not be found in its entirity here. (Find its open worldcat record here.)

Congratulations to the current FolkPub staff on all this good work. Well-wishes go as well to FolkPub staff who served in recent years. Their efforts provided a significant foundation for present accomplishments.

Nov 3

CFP: Public and Private

From a press release from the conference organizers:

IU/OSU Joint Student Conference call for papers:

We are happy to announce the 2008-2009 collaborative conference between the Indiana University Folklore & Ethnomusicology Student Associations and The Ohio State University Folklore Student Association. This conference aims to create a space for graduate and undergraduate students to share their research in folklore, ethnomusicology, cultural studies, material culture, performance studies, and related disciplines, as it relates to the study of academic and vernacular interpretation of everyday life.

“Public and Private”

Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
March 27-28, 2009

This year’s conference seeks to explore the following questions:

(1) How do we negotiate notions of public and private in our work?
(2) What are we learning, and what can we teach others, about this seeming dichotomy?
(3) How might we think beyond sectors and consider public and private in light of our
fieldwork, field notes, presentations, and as emerging in our research of expressive forms?

We are seeking papers and posters that engage the following topics as they relate to the theme of “Public and Private”:

Identities
Sectors
Spaces
Boundaries
Traditions
Histories
Memories
Narratives
Performances

We also welcome submissions of papers and posters on other topics.

The conference will have three opportunities for participation: paper presentations, poster sessions, and a discussion forum for all attendees. We will be accepting 250-word abstracts for 15-minute papers and poster presentations. We highly encourage poster submissions, particularly for research projects in progress, as there will be opportunities for active dialogue. Abstracts must be submitted by February 1, 2008. Please email submissions to iu.osu.conf@gmail.com. Please see the IU FSA website for details on submissions: www.indiana.edu/~folksa.

The discussion forum will allow all attendees to engage with enduring issues in our fields and to consider how those issues have emerged in their own research. Conference attendees are encouraged to submit three issues that have emerged in their own research for inclusion in developing this forum. Come join this important conversation. Remember, together we are shaping the future of our fields!

For more information on the details of the conference (lodging, location, etc.) visit
www.iub.edu/~folksa in the coming months.

Please register for the conference by February 28, 2008!

Oct 30

More Published Book Reviews

I am happy to note the publication of some more reviews by some current and former student colleagues. Teri Klassen and Rhonda Fair both have reviews in the new issue of Museum Anthropology Review. Carrie Hertz has a review in the latest issue of Material Culture. Jodine Perkins has a review out today in JFRR.

Teri’s review is of Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt and Rhonda’s is of Playing Ourselves: Interpreting Native Histories at Historic Reconstructions. Because MAR is an open access journal, these reviews are available at no cost online. Carrie’s review is of The Silk Weavers of Kyoto: Family and Work in a Changing Traditional Industry. Material Culture is, to the best of my knowledge, a print-only journal. Find it in your nearest library here on Open WorldCat. Jodine’s review is of Long Gone, a narrative account of American farm life in the 1930s and 1940s. Like all JFRR reviews, hers is available for free online.

Oct 29

Museum Anthropology Review 2(2)

I am happy to announce the publication of Volume 2, Number 2 of Museum Anthropology Review. This issue features eight smart reviews and two fine articles. Please check it out here. Huge thanks go to everyone who has been supporting the effort–readers, reviewers, boosters, publishers, the IU LIbraries, and especially the journal’s generous authors.

Oct 2

Two Reviews

Congratulations to Suzanne Ingalsbe and Teri Klassen for each publishing book reviews this week. Suzanne reviewed Yard Art and Handmade Places: Extraordinary Expressions of Home (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008) by Jill Nokes with Pat Jasper in JFR Reviews. This review is available open access online here.

Teri reviewed Quilts in a Material World: Selections from the Winterthur Collection by Linda Eaton (New York: Abrams, 2007) for the July 2008 issue of Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture 6(2):205-207. Textile, published by Berg, is a commercial journal and the review is only available online in a toll access format. ($29.99 in pay per view!) Some libraries may provide electronic access at this point. The means by which the IU Bloomington libraries provide IU folks will electronic access can not yet get us to the latest issue (there is a 6 month delay for electronic access at IUB).

Congratulations to both reviewers. The hassle of getting to Teri’s review and the ease with which we can all read Suzanne’s reveals again the virtues of open access publishing in folklore, ethnomusicology and anthropology. Lets show JFRR some love!

Sep 23

Cattelino’s High Stakes: Florida Seminole Gaming and Sovereignty

Just a quick note to sing the praises of my friend Jessica Cattelino’s new book High Stakes: Florida Seminole Gaming and Sovereignty. It is an excellent ethnography examining the ramifications and impacts of gaming on Seminole life and cultural reproduction in the context of my own topsy turvey home country, South Florida. It is a wonderful work that is poised to contribute much to the fields of anthropology and Native American studies.  Jessica has just joined the faculty at UCLA. Learn more about her book from this UCLA press release and in this posting on antropologi.info. Congratulations Jessica!

Sep 22

Korean Shaman: Possession by the Spirit of Changun

I wanted to share a short film produced by my friends Liora and Shai Sarfati. It derives from Liora’s doctoral work on the material culture of Korean Shamanism. Liora is a student in East Asian Languages and Cultures and in Folklore at Indiana University.

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