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Finnish accordionist Art Moilanen of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Moilanen has received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Photograph by Alan R. Kamuda, courtesy of the Michigan Traditional Arts Program, Michigan State University Museum. From the Masters of Traditional Arts DVD-ROM, produced by Alan Govenar and published by ABC-CLIO
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AFS 2010 Annual Meeting, October 13-16, Nashville, Tennessee: Invitation for Participation2010 Annual Meeting Final Program Schedule (PDF)
“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 KnowledgeNot 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. LocationOur 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 RegistrationAFS 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 DeadlinesThe 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 SupportThe 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 StipendsAFS 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 AwardsThe 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
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