Jan 3
Congratulations to Flory Gingging who has attracted attention from antropologi.info for her paper on headhunting heritage in Sabah, Malaysia. Her paper was published in Cultural Analysis and Lorenz has provided an engaging description and discussion of it on the antropologi.info weblog. Check it out.
Congratulations to Gabrielle Berlinger who completed her M.A. in Folklore in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University today with a very successful oral exam covering her studies in general and her thesis project “Ritual Interpretation: The Sukkah as Jewish Vernacular Architecture” in particular. Her well recieved thesis is an ethnography of Sukkot observance in Bloomington, Indiana, with an emphasis of the physical structures built and used by families and community organizations here. A significant contribution to research on Jewish material culture and to the study of Jewish life in the smaller communities of North America, the study is also a pilot project for future examinations of the topic in other communities elsewhere in the world. Her committee was uniformly pleased with her efforts and I am very proud to have served as her chair. Well done.
Continuing with a theme… Congratulations to Suzanne Ingalsbe on the completion of her M.A. in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. Suzanne’s thesis project centered on the building of a gallery exhibition exploring the work and works of a large number of Indiana makers of musical instruments. This exhibition, which was staged last spring at the John Waldron Arts Center, was an extension of a long term research and interpretation project pursued by Traditional Arts Indiana. (Learn more about the broader project here.) The exhibition was attractive, lively, well-researched, and well-received. In her accompanying paper, Suzanne documented the behind the scenes work that went into the exhibition and set it within the larger contexts of scholarship related to the history of artistic and ethnographic museum display and conceptual debates within folklore studies. Great job Suzanne.
Congratulations to Jody Perkins on the completion of her M.A. in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. Jody’s thesis project focused on collecting, processing and archiving oral history interviews related to the The Hinkle-Garton Farmstead, which is now maintained as a museum by Bloomington Restorations, Inc., “a private not-for-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of Bloomington and Monroe County’s historic architecture and old neighborhoods.” In addition to the original farmstead-related research that she and her collaborators complled, Jody presented and defended a thesis placing this work within the context of the scholarly literatures on oral history, folk and open air museums, and historic preservation practice. Well done!
The following is the IU Bloomington press release sharing news of my colleague Dick Bauman’s AFS Lifetime Achievement Award, which was presented at the recent Society meetings in Louisville. Congratulations to Dick on an honor well deserved.
Honor culminates more than 40 years of scholarly research
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Indiana University folklore professor Richard Bauman has studied the acts of speaking and of silence as communicative modes among 16th century Quakers and Medieval Icelanders. He’s also taken a keen ear to coon dog traders in East Texas and researching practical jokesters.
“There’s a kind of widespread notion that coon hunters lie about their dogs,” noted Bauman, an IU faculty member since 1986, whose 1981 article about them was titled, “Any Man Who Keeps More’n One Hound ‘ll Lie to You.”
“My work centered around a trade day in Canton, Texas,” he recalled. “On the Friday-Saturday-Sunday preceding the first Monday of the month, you had these guys gathering with their dogs. For the sociability of it, for visiting with other coon hunters, they’d go out and hunt, shoot dice, get drunk, but tell a lot of stories about dogs.
“The stories,” he observed, “offered me a wonderful vantage point on the tension between truth and lying in everyday life and the role of stories in calibrating and recalibrating that tension.”
Bauman, Distinguished professor emeritus of folklore and ethnomusicology at IU, recently was presented with the Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award by the American Folklore Society. This is the highest honor that the society bestows and it is bestowed upon a living senior scholar in recognition of outstanding scholarly achievement over the course of a career.
He is the fourth person to receive the honor and the first of his generation so recognized. Linda Dégh, also a Distinguished professor emeritus of folklore at IU, was a recipient of the award, which is presented every two years.
“There were some major paradigm shifts that went on with my generation,” Bauman explained. “The previous winners were transitional in a sense. They were trained in an older approach to folklore that was very item-oriented and very historical in its focus. I had a hand in introducing perspectives that were much more anthropological, much more linguistic and much more ethnographic.”
He is describing a revolution that the field of folklore went through during the 1960s. As an example, instead of looking at the comparative, textual history of individual folk tales or folk songs, Bauman and his folklore colleagues began to branch out and study the social context of such tunes, proverbs and riddles. He has observed how “these things have currency in their communities,” he said.
Read more
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Shreds and Patches 