Jun 6
I am honored to have learned that my post “Getting Yourself Out of the Business in Five Easy Steps” will be included in the edited book version of Hacking the Academy. The essay focuses on resistance to commercial enclosure in scholarly publishing. Thanks to everyone involved in the ongoing effort.
May 19
In a paper that I published in 2002, I drew upon unpublished ethnographic notes compiled in 1940-1941 by then University of Pennsylvania graduate student Robert R. Solenberger. Solenberger was a student of Frank G. Speck and others on the faculty at Penn. The notes that I drew upon in my paper are part of the Speck Papers at the American Philosophical Society. I have today been working on a new paper that draws upon the same unpublished manuscript by Solenberger. In 2000, when I was working on the paper mentioned above, I was able to track down Professor Solenberger in retirement in Tuscon, AZ and to speak with him on the phone about his graduate studies and the materials that I was then drawing upon.
Taking up work on a new project based on his notes, I went online tonight to see what more I could learn about Solenberger’s career. I learned that he passed away (in his 90s) a few years ago. I found various bits of information on his life, work, and history, but did not find a professional obituary. Based on the information that I pieced together tonight, I offer the following brief sketch.
Robert R. Solenberger (1916-2006) earned a M.A. in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1940 with a thesis on “An Interpretation of Material on the Anthropology of East Africa Based upon Mediaeval Arabic Writers.” and was on the faculty of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Bloomsburg State College (now Bloomsburg University). He published a prominent series of articles focused on the Marianas Islands, where he worked in the 1950s. (These appeared in Human Organization, Anthropological Linguistics, and Oceania, among other outlets.) During his graduate training, he participated in archaeological research at Clovis, New Mexico in 1937 (under the direction of John L. Cotter). He was a Quaker and a conscientious objector during World War II.
My sources include published works discoverable via Google Scholar and the Internet Archive, as well as the following Google discoveries:
http://www.biblerecords.com/solenberger.html
http://www.fum.org/QL/issues/0709/passages.htm
http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0302/0302notes.html
http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0707/obits.html
He appears on the AAA Honor Roll of Donors in the last years of his life, but I could find no professional obituary in a AAA publication or elsewhere. A Society of Friends memorial sketch is available.
It was an honor to speak with this anthropology elder early in 2000. I record here my thanks for his kindness and his interest in my work. I also express appreciation for his work, including the six pages of Southeastern Indian ethnography that he compiled in 1940 while on a road trip with through Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida.
Rest in Peace.
(Additions and corrections to this sketch are very welcome.)
Congratulations to Kimberly Marshall on the successful defense of her Ph.D. dissertation today. Up until today, Dr. Marshall was a doctoral student in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology and the Department of Anthropology, both at IU. Her doctoral fields are ethnomusicology and cultural anthropology (she has a folklore M.A. already!) and her research is focused on the expressive and religious lives of Navajo Christians. As noted previously, Kim will soon begin work as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. Congratulations Kim!
Congratulations to Rachel Biars on the very successful completion of her M.A. degree in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. Rachel has also completed her concurrent work on her M.L.S. degree in the IU School of Library and Information Science. Rachel did a fine job in her folklore M.A. exam a week ago last Friday. Her M.A. project was a public folklore/exhibition project pursued collaboratively with artisans of the Miami Tribe of Indiana. Well done Rachel!
Ruth Finnegan’s book Why Do We Quote? The Culture and History of Quotation has just been published by Open Book Publishers, a not-for-profit, academic run publisher that combines no-cost online access to published works with the sale at modest cost paper and PDF versions. The no-cost online version is (interestingly) accessible via the Google Books platform. I highlight this book both because it is a contribution to the fields in which I work by a very senior and well respected scholar and because it is the first instance of an Open Book Publishers title that I have learned about and have had an chance to study. The business model, goals, and production framework of the publisher are all noteworthy and worth further study. It is important to note that the World Oral Literature Project, a “Friend of Open Folklore” organization is announced as a partner on the Open Book Publishers website where a new Oral Literature Series is announced. These are major developments for the Open Folklore and open anthropology communities. Congratulations to everyone involved in these efforts.
(Thanks to D.N. for the tip.)
Did everyone notice that the position of Executive Director of the Institute of Texas Cultures is open? This is a major position for someone with the right public folklore and/or museum work background. See: http://chronicle.com/jobs/0000677703-01/
I am thrilled to have more happy job news to report. Carrie Hertz has just been appointed to the post of Curator of Folk Arts at the Castellani Art Museum of Niagara University. This is a great curatorial position for a great museums and material culture scholar in folklore studies and anthropology. Carrie is also a doctoral candidate in folklore studies (major field) and anthropology (minor field) at Indiana University. In her research, her special emphasis is on dress and adornment in the United States. For her dissertation, she is completing conducting an ethnographic study of wedding dresses in the Midwest. She has held a range of museum posts previously and also served with me as editorial assistant for Museum Anthropology and Museum Anthropology Review. The Castellani Art Museum has excellent collections and a remarkable track record of research and exhibition work on folk and vernacular arts. Congratulations to both Carrie and the museum!
In still more great job news, friend and collaborator Michael Jordan (a Ph.D. student in anthropology at University Oklahoma) has just accepted a tenure track job in anthropology at Texas Tech University. Mike is a native Texan and he collaborates in his research with the Kiowa people. The Kiowa live today in not-too-distant Southwestern Oklahoma and Texas Tech is in their ancestral homeland, thus from the point of view of family life, research work and easy and sensible travel/geography, this is a perfect fit. It looks like an ideal job in many other ways. Mike is a hardworking scholar and I am so happy for him and his family. Congratulations to Mike and to all of this season’s other job getters and job changers.
The Indiana University Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology has recently announced the 1st Annual Richard M. Dorson Memorial Lecture with Dr. Roger Abrahams.
“The Zoot Suit Kid Goes Global: From Tango to Hip Hop”
Tuesday, April 5th
6:00 – 8:00 pm
Wells House, 1321 E. 10th St.
The lecture series is named for Richard M. Dorson, who is credited with establishing folklore studies as an academic discipline in the United States through his many years directing the IU Folklore Institute, beginning in 1956. He later chaired the Folklore Department, until his death in 1981. For these efforts, he has been called the “father of American Folklore.”
In this lecture, Roger Abrahams brings into focus the development throughout the post-emancipation era of high-flash street-corner groups that have emerged in virtually every port of call in the commercial Atlantic world. Abrahams argues that there is a pattern linking these manifestations, though they are commonly regarded as being unique to one metropolitan area or another. Each has founding legends, stories of the great song-makers, dancers, stick-fighters, and so on. This research tests the argument between those who have argued for the retention of African cultural traits and those who have argued for culture-loss under enslavement conditions. The West Indian performers with whom Abrahams has worked maintain that their repertoires are played not only for enjoyment but more importantly, as embodiments of the history and the strength of ties within the community. The burden of the argument, at last, is that doing folklore involves both extensive live-there field work and comparative study to situate what it is that you have collected.
Roger D. Abrahams is a prominent folklorist whose work focuses on the expressive cultures and cultural histories of the Americas, with a specific emphasis on African American peoples and traditions. He is the Hum Rosen Professor of Humanities, Emeritus, at the University of Pennsylvania where he taught in the Department of Folklore and Folklife. He is the author of a large number of books, among which Everyday Life: A Poetics of Vernacular Practices is a recent title.
A light reception will follow Dr. Abrahams lecture.
From an email circulated by Lorraine Cashman, AFS Associated Director:
This is your final reminder: the deadline for all proposals for the AFS 2011 annual meeting program is March 31.
If you intend to submit a proposal, please do so as soon as possible. The high volume of submissions increases the likelihood of difficulties in the final days of March. Please allow extra time for our part-time administrative staff to respond to your questions during business hours.
Remember, submitting your proposal requires registration, and to receive the members’ registration rate, you will have to Sign In at www.afsnet.org.
If you don’t know your password, you can reset it from the Sign In screen. If you don’t know your username, use the “Forgot your password?” link and enter your email address. If that address matches the one we have on file, you will still be able to sign in. If you have any trouble, please use the website to “Contact Us” — http://www.afsnet.org/general/?type=CONTACT.
When you are ready to submit your proposal, you will start the registration/submission process on the 2011 Annual Meeting page — https://afsnet.site-ym.com/?page=2011AM
Finally, please note that you can use the 2011 Annual Meeting Forum (www.afsnet.org/forums/) for meeting-related discussions. In particular, you can use the “Accommodations” forum topic to coordinate housing, transportation, childcare, or other local arrangements. If you have any suggestions for new annual meeting forum topics that will be useful later this year for those attending the meeting, please let me know.
Thank you for your support of our field and Society.
Lorraine Cashman
Associate Director
Shreds and Patches 