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Feb 5

Cashman on the Visual Culture of Northern Ireland

Congratulations to Ray Cashman, who has just published an article in the Journal of Folklore Research (JFR) interpreting the verbal and visual culture of Northern Ireland. JFR is as toll access journal, but I can pass on the abstract and encourage everyone to track the article down in print or behind the pay wall.

Murals, graffiti, flags, and annual commemorative parades are common in urban Northern Ireland where Irish Catholic nationalists and British Protestant unionists use these vernacular forms of custom and material culture to reiterate their differential identities in terms of ethnicity, denomination, and politics. Rural areas, on the other hand, present a very different visual scene with far fewer public visual displays broadcasting political messages and affiliations. Nevertheless, this lack does not necessarily signify that rural dwellers are somehow less politically minded or more peacefully integrated in comparison to their urban counterparts. Moving beyond the visual scene alone, we must pay attention to how rural dwellers contextualize their seemingly unmarked environment through oral legendary and personal narrative. In particular, the oral traditions of one rural, majority-nationalist community in County Tyrone demonstrate significant differences between urban and rural ways of imagining and internalizing the Irish Catholic nationalist cause. Many urban murals, for example, focus outward, gesturing to a secular, cosmopolitan, and international consciousness, while the Tyrone landscape—as contextualized by oral tradition—focuses inward on the local, autochthonous, and sacred. Despite advances in an on-going peace process, this rural, radically emplaced vision of the Irish nationalist cause may well have significant staying power.

Ray Cashman (2008 ) “Visions of Irish Nationalism.” Journal of Folklore Research: An International Journal of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. 45(3):361-381.

Feb 4

Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology

From a Dear Colleague Letter from Candace Greene, Director of the Smithsonian Institution Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology (SIMA):

Dear Colleagues – I am pleased to announce a new research training initiative being launched by the Smithsonian Department of Anthropology with support (pending) from the National Science Foundation.

The Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology is an intensive four-week training program that will teach graduate students how to use museum collections in research, incorporating Smithsonian collections as an integral part of their anthropological training. Support from the Cultural Anthropology Program at NSF will cover full tuition and living expenses for 12 students each summer.

Please help us get the word out on this program, which will begin in June 2009 and is already accepting applications. Full information including application instructions and dates is available at http://anthropology.si.edu/summerinstitute.

Candace Greene
Director, Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology
Ethnologist, Collections and Archives Program
Department of Anthropology
National Museum of Natural History
Smithsonian Institution

Jan 30

One Hundred Summers

I am pleased to note that One Hundred Summers: A Kiowa Calendar Record, a book by my friend Candace S. Greene, has just been released by the University of Nebraska Press. Candace’s study is an important outcome of a project that I initiated while serving as Assistant Curator of Ethnology at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. Through text and color images, the book presents and interprets a remarkable pictoral calendar by the Kiowa artist Silver Horn.  Covering 100 years of Kiowa tribal history, the calendar was donated to the museum during my tenure at SNOMNH. With IMLS funding, teaching materials have been prepared to faciliate use of the calendar in K-12 contexts. In addition, my friend Daniel Swan, the current SNOMNH curator of ethnology is preparing an exhibition focused on the calendar. In the period since the project began, the fragile calendar has been completely conserved and stabilized with funding provided by the Save America’s Treasures program. My friend Victoria Book, SNOMNH’s conservator supervised this effort working with paper conservation specialist Ellen Livesay-Holligan.

The University of Nebraska Press has done an exceptional job in designing the book. It is really beautiful. Check it out and help spread the word.

100_summers

Jan 22

Teri Klassen on Depression-Era Quilters and their Uses of Domestic Space

Congratulations to Teri Klassen on the publication of her new paper “How Depression-Era Quiltmakers Constructed Domestic Space: An Interracial Processual Study” in the journal Midwestern Folklore (Klassen 2008). This fine peer-reviewed paper draws upon research reported in her M.A. thesis (Klassen 2007) exploring neglected aspects of the wider social history of quilting in the United States.

Klassen, Teresa Christine

2007 Historical Ethnographies of Quiltmaking. M.A. Thesis, Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University.

Klassen, Teri

2008 How Depression-Era Quiltmakers Constructed Domestic Space: An Interracial Processual Study. Midwestern Folklore. 34(2):17-47.

Jan 3

Antropologi.info Discusses Gingging Paper in Cultural Analysis

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.

Dec 28

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Big OA Journal Project Underway in India

An ambitious gold open access journal publishing effort for folkloristics and neighboring fields (ethnomusicology, tribal studies, regional studies, and performance studies) is underway in India. The National Folklore Support Centre is using Open Journal Systems to host fourteen journals, both new and established. Some have been publishing for some time, others have launched with inaugural issues, others are announced but still in the works. The journal editorial offices seem to span India, with a diversity of editorial teams and research concerns.  See what the effort looks like at the NFSC portal, here. Congratulations to all involved.

Dec 13

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Storytelling on the Northern Irish Border

Here is a quick note to celebrate the publication of my friend Ray Cashman’s new book Storytelling on the Northern Irish Border, which has just been released by Indiana University Press. Here is the blurb:

Folklore is crucial to life in Aghyaran, a mixed Catholic-Protestant border community in Northern Ireland. Neighbors socialize during wakes and ceil (informal nighttime gatherings) regardless of religious, ethnic, or political affiliations. The witty, sometimes raucous stories swapped on these occasions offer a window into community and identity in the wake of decades of violent conflict and change. Through local character anecdotes, participants explore the nature of community and identity in ways that may transcend exclusively Catholic or Protestant sectarian histories and identities.

IUP would be happy to sell you a copy here.  Coming soon to a library near you here.

Congratulations Ray!



Dec 13

Gabrielle Berlinger Defends M.A. Thesis

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.

Dec 12

On The Grace of Four Moons

IU media relations has distributed a press release profiling my colleague Pravina Shukla’s fine ethnography of dress and adornment in India, The Grace of Four Moons, recently published by Indiana University Press. Find the release online here. (Image: Courtesy of Indiana University.)

The Grace of Four Moons (cover)

The Grace of Four Moons (cover)

Dec 11

Museum Anthropology 32(1)

mua32_1

Editorial work on Musueum Anthropology volume 32, number 1 is almost complete. The issue will soon go to the publisher. As a preview, here is a Wordle of the issue’s contents.

Find the full-size version online here. Thanks http://www.wordle.net/ Thanks as well to the authors and peer-reviewers whose work will be showcased in this, the Spring 2009, issue.

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