AFS 2010 Annual Meeting, October 13-16, Nashville, Tennessee: Invitation for Participation
“Lay and Expert Knowledge” is the
theme for the American Folklore Society's 122nd annual meeting, to be
held at The Hilton Nashville Downtown in Nashville, Tennessee, on October
13-16, 2010.
The members of this year’s Annual Meeting Committee hail from a variety of
places and institutions: from Nashville, former AFS President Bill Ivey of
Vanderbilt University, Roby Cogswell and Dana Everts-Boehm of the Tennessee Arts
Commission, Jay Orr of the Country Music Foundation, and musician and writer
Larry Nager; Mark Jackson, Patricia Gaitely, and Martha Norkunas of Middle
Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro; Evan Hatch (President of the
Tennessee Folklore Society) from the Arts Center of Cannon County in Woodbury,
Tennessee; Scot Danforth of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville; David
Evans of Memphis State University; Teresa Lloyd and Ted Olson of East Tennessee
State University in Johnson City; and Katy Leonard of Birmingham-Southern
College in Birmingham, Alabama.
Meeting Theme: Lay and Expert
Knowledge
Not everyone is a novelist, but everyone
tells stories. Not everyone is an artist or a theologian, but
everyone works to give satisfying order to the material world and the
cosmos. Not everyone is a politician, but everyone negotiates
power relationships in his or her social milieu. And not everyone
is a doctor, but everyone looks after body and soul according to conceptions
of health shaped in long-term conversation with other people.
The "lore" studied by folklorists
has long been the object of learned suspicion. In the Middle Ages,
theologians labored to eradicate peasant superstition. In the
early modern period, grammarians purified the rudeness of vernacular
speech and early scientists criticized "popular errors."
With the triumph of professionalization in the late nineteenth century,
medical authorities shut down the practices of midwives and nutritionists
criticized the traditional diets of immigrant groups. In the twentieth
century, scientific agriculture overrode traditional practice in the
developing world and urban revitalization schemes disrupted neighborhood
economies and systems of social control.
Today the stigma is as likely to go
in the other direction. Clashes over science, ethics, politics,
and economics have destabilized the authority of expert knowledge, whether
of evolution, the definition of life, climate change, international
conflict, or mortgage-backed securities. “Street smarts” are
prized and the “ivory tower” mistrusted. Populists find applause
in denouncing “cultural elites." Political theorists question
the viability of democracy in a society wholly dependent on specialized
technical knowledge for its everyday functioning. Critics of the
failures of modern city planning or agriculture praise the particularistic
knowledge embedded local lifeways and landscapes. Alternative
and traditional forms of medicine find adherents even among physicians.
Pharmaceutical companies fight to capture the "traditional knowledge"
of indigenous peoples, while intergovernmental organizations strive
to transform it into intellectual property and an instrument of economic
development.
Since its formal inception in the late
nineteenth century (in fact, since its foundations in the seventeenth),
our field has studied local and lay knowledge, whether of health, nutrition,
climate, agriculture, history, or the social order. It has documented
and interpreted the ways in which everyday knowledge is constructed
and transmitted, the relationship of knowledge to practice, how knowledge
is granted authority or brought into question, and how informal knowledge
is codified into systems. These issues are of scholarly interest
in their own right, but their practical importance is also widely recognized,
both by educators trying to impart codified forms of knowledge in the
classroom and by professionals obliged to exercise their expertise in
a complex social world.
For the 2010 annual meeting, we especially
encourage panels, papers, forums, poster presentations and sessions,
and media sessions that articulate, explore, challenge, and otherwise
engage with these ideas and issues. We also welcome sessions and
individual presentations on any topic in the field.
Location
Our host hotel for the Nashville meeting, the Hilton
Nashville Downtown, is conveniently
located one-half block from the museum, library, and archives of the Country Music Foundation, including the Country Music Hall of Fame;
and one block from the Lower
Broadway district of music
clubs and music stores, including such local landmarks as Gruhn Guitars, Hatch
Show Print, Robert’s Western World, Tootsie’s
Orchid Lounge, and the Ernest Tubb Record Shop.
The Nashville International Airport
(airport code BNA) is served by 19 airlines: American, American Eagle,
Air Canada, Comair, Continental, Corporate Express, Delta, Delta Express,
Frontier, Independence Air, Midwest, Northwest, Pace, Skyway, Southwest,
United, United Express, US Airways and US Airways Express.
Nashville is also within a day’s
drive of folklore programs at Indiana University, Michigan State University,
The Ohio State University, the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, the
University of Missouri, the University of North Carolina, the University
of Wisconsin, and Western Kentucky University.
Exhibition Registration
AFS invites vendors and organizations of interest to AFS members to exhibit at the
annual meeting and/or advertise in the program book.
Table and advertising orders
are due July 1; AFS special interest sections are also invited to
reserve exhibit space by July 1.
Registration Deadlines
The deadline for proposals for the AFS 2010 annual meeting has passed. If you plan to
attend the annual meeting but will not make a presentation, you may register any time
between now and the pre-registration deadline of August 31, 2010, or you can register
on site at higher fees.
Financial Support
The Society is offering several forms
of financial support to those planning on participating in the AFS 2010
annual meeting.
Applicants should submit a letter stating
their specific reasons for wanting to attend the AFS meeting, the impact
they expect the meeting will have upon their work, estimated expenses,
and the amount requested. Applications will be reviewed and grant
recipients selected by the AFS Task Force on Cultural Diversity.
The deadline for applications is April 15, 2010. Send letters of application by mail to Marilyn
White, Chair, AFS Cultural Diversity Task Force, Department of Sociology
and Anthropology, Kean University, Union NJ 07083 USA or by e-mail to mawhite@cougar.kean.edu.
AFS Student Travel Stipends
AFS will provide stipends of $300 each
to selected students whose presentations are accepted for the annual
meeting program. There are no additional application requirements
for these stipends; your presentation proposal, if accepted, will serve
as your stipend application. Decisions will be made on the basis
of the quality of the proposal and geographical representation among
students’ institutions. Previous recipients of these stipends
are not eligible. We will notify recipients in July.
Archie Green Student Travel Awards
The AFS Public Programs Section will
provide up to three awards of up to $500 each, named for folklorist
and activist Archie Green of San Francisco, for students to defray costs
for traveling to the meeting. The Section is interested in supporting
graduate and undergraduate students who have an interest in working
as public folklorists, or who have chosen an area of public folklore
as a primary topic of research.
Application materials will consist of:
(1) a two-page letter written by the applicant, (2) a letter of support
written by a faculty member or public folklorist that describes the
student’s interest in public folklore and supports the student’s
plan for using the AFS meeting to further her or his interests in public
folklore, and (3) a budget outlining anticipated expenses. The
applicant’s letter should address her/his interest in public folklore,
goals for attending the meeting, and plans for using the resources of
the meeting to further her/his academic and/or professional development.
Previous recipients of student travel awards are not eligible to apply.
The deadline for receipt of applications
is July 1, 2010. Awards will be announced by August 1.
To apply, send three copies of all materials to review committee chair
Tamara Kubacki, Western Folklife Center, 501 Railroad Street, Elko NV 89801; tkubacki@westernfolklife.org.
2010 AFS Annual Meeting Deadlines and Important Dates
- July 1
- Preliminary program posted on AFS web site
- Deadline for applications for Archie Green Student Travel Stipends
- July 15
- Deadline for receipt of changes or corrections to preliminary program schedule
- Deadline for ordering
exhibition tables and/or program book advertising and
section table reservations
- August 31
- Deadline for registration at lower pre-meeting rates
- Deadline for registration refunds
- Deadline for registration for pre-meeting tours and other special events, the details for which will be announced at the beginning of June
- October 13
- AFS 2010 Annual Meeting begins, Hilton Nashville Downtown