Special Projects

In addition to its work on publications, annual meeting, prizes and awards, and interest-group activities, the AFS carries out special projects as a way of increasing public understanding of the field, supporting the work of Society members, and building partnerships with other organizations. Except where noted otherwise below, for more information on these projects please contact AFS Executive Director Timothy Lloyd.

New Special Projects

American Folklore Society Best Practices Consultancy and Professional Development Program

The American Folklore Society has received second-year funding from the Folk and Traditional Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts for its Best Practices Consultancy and Professional Development Program. This program provides contracts for consultancies and professional development opportunities that will create descriptions of best practices that AFS will share online with the folk and traditional arts field.

A major element of this program is the presentation of the best-practices information developed or learned through consultancies and professional development activities to the entire field of folk and traditional arts. The consultants with whom AFS contracts, and the folk and traditional arts specialists whose professional development we support, must provide AFS with a written report detailing best practices for the folk arts field in the area in which they have provided consultant services or undertaken professional development. We will make all of these reports freely available on the AFS web site.

This program supports two kinds of activities:

1. Short-term consultancies by experts who work with an organization in the field to identify and articulate best practices in such areas as archiving, concert or festival production, fundraising, exhibition or publication design, field documentation, marketing and publicity, media production, or organizational development and management, among others.

AFS will support up to $3,000 for the fees and travel associated with a consultancy. Requests for this support must come to AFS from the prospective consultants, and AFS will issue contracts, and provide fee and travel reimbursement payments, directly to those consultants. As part of the final report for each consultancy, the organizations that work with consultants must provide written documentation to AFS of the in-kind value of their staff or board members' time that was devoted to work with the consultant.

2. Professional development opportunities for the staffs of folk and traditional arts non-profit organizations and government agencies, and for independent contractors engaged in folk and traditional arts work, who may travel to visit other organizations or participate in events that will help them acquire best-practice information about some aspect of their folk arts work. Videoconferencing is also possible.

AFS will support up to $2,000 for the travel and related costs associated with professional development opportunities. (Note: You may not request funding from this program for travel to the AFS annual meeting.)

This program does not provide grants or support arts projects. Each activity we fund must be focused on discovering and communicating best-practice information for the folk and traditional arts. A single individual may receive only one contract (as a consultant or as a recipient of professional development support) per year.

We will offer Best Practices funds on a first-come, first-served basis beginning June 7, 2010, until May 31, 2011, or until funds have been fully expended, whichever comes first. If the first year of this program was any indication, our grant funds will have been spent well before the grant period ends, so if the consultancy you want to provide or the professional development activities you want to undertake will take place later in this period, we advise you to apply for AFS support well in advance.

We generally will be able to review and make decisions on requests within 2 weeks of receiving them. We will pay out contract funds within 4 weeks of the date when we receive written best-practice and financial reports from the consultancy (and for consultancies, as mentioned above, we will also require written in-kind documentation) or professional development activity.

To apply, please e-mail a PDF document to AFS Executive Director Tim Lloyd (lloyd.100@osu.edu) containing the following information:

Consultancies

1. Evidence of your relevant qualifications as a consultant

2. A summary of the mission and folk arts activities of the organization with which you will work (also include a letter from the organization indicating its willingness to work with you)

3. A description of the purpose and impact of, and a plan of work for, the consultancy, including the best-practices deliverables you will provide

4. A budget for the project, and a brief description of what changes you would make to the project if we cannot fully fund your request (allowable costs include those for consultant fees, transportation, lodging, and meals)

Professional Development

1. A brief summary of your professional work in folk arts

2. A description of the professional growth opportunities this travel will enable you to undertake, and of the best-practice information you plan to gain and share with the field

3. A budget for the project, and a brief description of what changes you would make to the project if we cannot fully fund your request (allowable costs include those for transportation, lodging, meals, meeting or conference registration, and videoconferencing)

AFS Request for Proposals for Folklore and Public Policy Working Groups

In 2008, the American Folklore Society Executive Board, in order to engage the field of folklore more fully in public policy arenas where the perspectives and work of folklorists can make significant contributions, created a five-person group to work toward these ends in the area of folklore and health policy. This working group will conclude its efforts by the end of 2010, having produced an article for a peer-reviewed health policy journal, a session at the 2008 AFS annual meeting, a public presentation for The Ohio State University’s Schools of Nursing and Public Health, and information resources for the AFS web site.

The Executive Board now invites Society members to submit proposals to form a similar small (ca. 6-member) working group that over 12-24 months will produce a series of related products designed to: 1) articulate the contributions that folklorists have made to the development, implementation, and evaluation of public policy in another area; and 2) highlight specific future applications of folklorists’ perspectives and work to that area of public policy.

When we say “public policy,” we mean decision-making initiatives engaged in by government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and community-based coalitions that result in regulations, laws, actions, and other efforts to address contemporary public issues. Folklorists have contributed to public policy in many ways (through problem identification, policy critique, research, consultation with local communities, needs analysis, strategy development, direction setting, advice, policy development and writing, evaluation, and information dissemination) in a variety of areas, including but not limited to intangible cultural heritage, cultural conservation, intellectual property, health, education, labor and employment, arts administration, the environment, rural and urban development, immigration, poverty, violence, language rights, and land rights.

Potential policy areas for this initiative might include ones of larger scale, such as immigration/refugee policy, food safety, sustainable agriculture, poverty, and climate change, or of smaller scope, such as diabetes, school violence, or obesity. AFS is happy to entertain proposals for work in all policy areas, but among our review considerations will be the appropriateness or “fit” of the proposed work and products to the scope of the public policy issues involved, the feasibility of the proposed work plan, and the ability of the group members (as evidenced by past accomplishments) to complete their work in a timely and effective manner.

We expect such working groups to produce the following four products:

� an article (or some other written deliverable that targets the attention of policy makers) meeting the two criteria listed in paragraph 2 above, submitted to an appropriate peer-reviewed journal in the selected public policy area

� resource materials on the selected public policy area (e.g., background readings, bibliographies, webographies) for the Society’s web site

� professional development activities and/or sessions at the Society’s annual meeting that will acquaint folklorists with the necessary approaches and tools for effective work in the selected public policy area and/or reveal advances in disciplinary understandings and contributions to the resolution of contemporary social problems

� participation in at least one other public presentation (e.g., a policy briefing or a conference presentation) in this public policy area

The Executive Board will select one proposal from those submitted, and will provide that working group with:

� AFS funds to support travel, accommodations, and meal costs for a two-day meeting of the working group at the Society’s offices in Columbus, Ohi

� $3,000 in additional financial support to be used for other working group activities as identified by the group

� Program time at an AFS annual meeting for the professional development activities and/or sessions mentioned above

We are looking for groups that bring together the best expertise in the field, and include participation by both senior and younger folklorists. An AFS member with proven experience in effectively coordinating team projects must serve as head of the group. Groups may include outside experts as appropriate.

To apply for this support, please submit an application of no more than five pages to AFS Executive Director Timothy Lloyd (lloyd.100@osu.edu) by December 1, 2010. Please submit your application in PDF format. It must:

� Describe the area of public policy in which your group wants to undertake work

� Summarize the relevance of the perspectives of our field and the strengths that folklorists can bring to the social issues involved in this public policy area

� Summarize any past and present engagement by folklorists in this public policy area

� Describe the specific activities the group will undertake and the specific outcomes of this work

� Provide a timeline for the group’s work

� Describe how the group will use the $3,000 in flexible AFS funding

In an appendix (and outside the page limitation noted above), please also provide brief professional biographies for all team members that focus on their previous work in your selected area of public policy, and evidence of the leadership experience of the person who will head the group.

The Executive Board will announce its funding decision by January 1, 2011. The project we support can begin immediately after acceptance, and must be completed within 12-24 months.

Big Questions and the Disciplines Project

The Society has received a two-year grant from the Teagle Foundation as part of its "Big Questions and the Disciplines" initiative. The Foundation received over 60 pre-applications, invited 15 applicants to submit full proposals, and funded five organizations nationwide.

This initiative provides grants to support the gathering of scholar-teachers from particular fields to discuss a Big Question of central importance to the humanities or social sciences and, based upon that Big Question, to develop and test curriculum materials to more deeply engage undergraduate student education.

The Big Question we chose for our project--"What is the relationship between lay and expert knowledge in a complex society?"--will allow us to bring the legacy of the field to bear on several critical questions and to design undergraduate curricula to address them more explicitly, including:

How does lay knowledge negotiate among experience, events, and social conventions?
How is it transmitted in the absence of codification, and in what sense does it persist over time?
How do informal and codified knowledge interact, or fail to interact, in different social and historical settings?
How do the rhetorical strategies of each affect their reception?

During 2010 and 2011 project co-directors Tim Lloyd (AFS) and Dorry Noyes (The Ohio State University) are convening a group of ten folklorists--

Michael Chiarappa, Department of History, Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo)
Danille Elise Christensen, Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University (Bloomington)
Sean Galvin, LaGuardia Community College (Long Island City, New York)
Jason Baird Jackson, Director, Folklore Institute, Indiana University (Bloomington)
Carl Lindahl, Department of English, University of Houston (Texas)
Sabina Magliocco, Chair, Department of Anthropology, California State University (Northridge)
Jay Mechling, Department of American Studies, University of California (Davis)
Tom Mould, Department of Anthropology, Elon University (Elon, North Carolina)
Leonard Norman Primiano, Department of Religious Studies, Cabrini College (Radnor, Pennsylvania)
Howard Sacks, Interim Provost, Kenyon College (Gambier, Ohio)--

who, with AFS associate director Lorraine Cashman, will carry out work on this project. Their academic homes--liberal arts colleges, urban commuter schools, small state schools, and large land-grant institutions--represent the diversity of institutions where folklorists teach today, of those institutions' student bodies, and of the knowledges those students are bringing to the classroom.

This project will also serve as a beginning for a long-term effort by AFS to strengthen undergraduate education in folklore--an effort in which we hope many of our members will take part--intended to deepen the contributions of our field to the academy, and to strengthen our field by attracting talented and committed young scholars and public humanists to undergraduate and graduate study in folklore.

Civil Rights Oral History Survey

The Society has received a contract from the Library of Congress to conduct a seven-month survey of existing archival collections of oral histories of participants in the Civil Rights Movement in the US during the 1950s and 1960s. Four scholars from the fields of archives and library science, folklore, and history (Danille Christensen, Bloomington, Indiana; Will Griffin, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Elizabeth Gritter, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and Andrew Salinas, New Orleans, Louisiana) are presently undertaking this survey work, which will result in a database designed to inform future interviewing work to round out the historical record, and to serve as an open-access resource for scholars and members of the public. This project is an outgrowth of the Civil Rights History Project Act (PL 111-19) passed by the US Congress in 2009.

Folklore and Health Policy Working Group

The individuals and communities that folklorists study have beliefs, values, and practices regarding their health that are affected in various ways by policies imposed from above. These policies often run counter to the values and goals of their intended beneficiaries, and in addition have unintended consequences that may be detrimental. Folklorists have the opportunity to better inform health policies through their fieldwork and scholarship in ways that will improve the well- being of these local communities and their members. The field of folklore has a responsibility to include this work among its activities.

In July 2008, five folklorists who work in the area of health policy (Erika Brady, Bonnie O’Connor, Diane Goldstein, Michael Owen Jones, and David Hufford) met in Columbus, Ohio, at the invitation of the AFS Executive Board to discuss ways in which the field could develop its contributions to the field of health policy, and to develop a series of products that a) will articulate the contributions that folklorists have made to the development, implementation, and evaluation of public policy in health care fields; and b) will highlight specific future areas of application of folklorists’ perspectives and work to health care public policy issues. The group also led a discussion forum on this work at the 2008 annual meeting in Louisville.

At present, the group is working toward completion of a jointly authored article (tentatively titled "Local Knowledge in Health Policy: An Unmet Need") for publication in a health policy journal.

Continuing Special Projects

James Madison Carpenter Collection Project

The AFS is managing a fourth two-year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create a scholarly edition of the James Madison Carpenter Collection, a groundbreaking collection of folk music, song, drama, dance, narrative, and children's folklore documented in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and the US between 1927 and 1955. A team of US and UK scholars, led by Julia Bishop and Ian Russell of the Elphinstone Institute at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, is carrying out work on this project in collaboration with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, in whose archives the Carpenter Collection is housed and maintained. The Center's web site includes a guide and finding aid to the Collection, and a catalogue of the Collection is also available online.

Ethnographic Thesaurus Project

The AFS, in partnership with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, has developed an Ethnographic Thesaurus. The Ethnographic Thesaurus is a searchable online vocabulary that can be used to improve access to information about folklore, ethnomusicology, cultural anthropology, and related fields.

The Society and Center developed the Thesaurus with the support of a generous grant from the Scholarly Communications Program of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Thesaurus provides a comprehensive controlled language of terms that folklorists, archivists, and librarians can use to classify the enormous variety of literature about cultural practices and expressions produced by folklorists, ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, and other cultural researchers.

Over a century of collecting and archiving ethnographic recordings and accompanying material has created a demand for the coordinated archival description of this body of work. In the coming century, the Ethnographic Thesaurus will be essential to efforts to describe ethnographic collections and to digitize them for online presentation and retrieval.

Veterans History Project

Since 2002, AFS has been engaged in a partnership with the Veterans History Project, an effort of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress originally supported by the US Congress and AARP. AFS provides folklorists and oral historians to lead workshops throughout the country for community groups of all kinds on collecting the personal experience stories and oral histories of US military veterans of war (and those civilians who supported them).

World Intellectual Property Organization

Since 2002, AFS has been accredited as an official non-governmental participant in the activities of the World Intellectual Property Organization's Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC-GRTKF). The WIPO, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, brings together over 90% of the world’s governments and over 150 non-governmental organizations to develop and oversee international policies, agreements, and treaties about intellectual property—the ownership rights of creators, artists, researchers, inventors, and the like to their work.

The AFS is concerned that protection of the rights of traditional communities and their members not be overlooked in WIPO philosophy, policies and agreements, or in other comparable international arenas, to be is replaced there by solely commercial interests. We are also concerned that many traditional communities’ own customary and traditional systems for protecting ownership and cultural rights are not sufficiently incorporated into the working knowledge of such international organizations or the governments of their nation-state members.

In 2002, the Society’s Executive Board approved a document, which we presented to WIPO late that year, outlining sixteen recommendations for actions the WIPO should take to mitigate the impact of transnational intellectual property systems on traditional communities and to bring traditional communities into more active participation in the international discussion of intellectual property issues. Since that time, AFS has been an active participant in the work and meetings of the IGC, and an advocate for the perspectives of traditional communities and the scholars who study them.

The Society's delegate to the IGC-GRTKF is Dr. Sandy Rikoon of the Department of Rural Sociology of the University of Missouri, Columbia; our alternate delegate is Steven Hatcher of Geneva, Switzerland. You can find a bibliography and webography of documents related to WIPO's work with folklore here.