American Council of Learned Societies Names Henry Glassie the 2011 Haskins Prize Lecturer

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) announces that Henry Glassie, College Professor Emeritus of Folklore at Indiana University, Bloomington, will deliver the 29th Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture at the 2011 ACLS Annual Meeting in Washington D.C.

Named for the first chairman of ACLS (1920-26), the Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture series, entitled “A Life of Learning,” celebrates scholarly careers of distinctive importance. The lectures are published in the ACLS Occasional Paper series. The list of previous lecturers includes John Hope Franklin, Gerda Lerner, Helen Vendler, Peter Brown, Clifford Geertz, and William Labov. Historian of science Nancy Siraisi will deliver the 2010 Haskins Prize Lecture at the ACLS Annual Meeting on May 7th in Philadelphia. (For more information, see www.acls.org/pubs/haskins.)

His first major ethnography, Passing the Time in Ballymenone (1982), demonstrated the centrality of folklore to people’s lives in times of dreadful crisis, and pioneered  the interdisciplinary breadth of folkloristics by embracing Irish vernacular architecture, folksinging, material culture, storytelling, oral history, and farming practices. His other major ethnography, in a totally different country, was Turkish Traditional Art Today (1993), an immensely detailed account of calligraphy, ceramics, woodworking, carpet weaving, pottery, and their creators. Between these two works, Glassie produced a major statement of aesthetic philosophy in The Spirit of Folk Art (1989). For him, “art is a universal reality . . .  works of art are the richest expressions of the manifold human experience, and . . . works are called ‘folk’ as part of an academic effort to designate for consideration creations that would be ignored if the presuppositions of study remained unexamined.”

Professor Glassie received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he also served in the Department of Folklore and Folklife before coming to Indiana University. He taught several generations of American folklorists, as well as students in Turkish, American, Central Eurasian, Middle and Near Eastern, and India Studies. He is the recipient of the Award of Honor for Superior Service to Turkish Culture from the Ministry of Culture of the Turkish Republic, and the Friend of Bangladesh Award in Recognition of Outstanding Contribution toward Bangladesh from the Federation of Bangladeshi Associations in North America. Glassie served on the board and as president of the American Folklore Society (1988-90) and was the first appointed state folklorist in the United States. In 2003, the Vernacular Architecture Forum renamed its award for outstanding achievement to honor Professor Glassie; in 2006, the Indiana University Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology did the same for its award for excellence in teaching by a graduate student.

ACLS, a private nonprofit federation of 70 national scholarly organizations, was founded in 1919 to advance humanistic studies in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, and to maintain and strengthen relations among national societies dedicated to such studies. As the pre-eminent representative of humanities scholarship in the United States, ACLS carries out its mission in a variety of programs. Awarding peer-reviewed scholarly fellowships is at the core of ACLS activity.

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“ACLS Names Henry Glassie the 2011 Haskins Prize Lecturer”

Assistant Professor Michael Dylan Foster & Alumnus Ray Cashman Share Chicago Folklore Prize

Courtesy of IU Press

A professor and an alumnus of Indiana University's Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology have been selected to share one of the most venerated awards in their field, the Chicago Folklore Prize.

Offered jointly by the American Folklore Society (AFS) and the University of Chicago, the honor has been bestowed upon Michael Dylan Foster, an IU assistant professor in the departments of folklore and East Asian languages and cultures; and Ray Cashman, an associate professor of folklore at Ohio State University who earned his doctorate at IU.

First awarded in 1928, the Chicago Folklore Prize is awarded to authors of the best book-length works of folklore scholarship for the year. It is the oldest international award recognizing excellence in folklore scholarship. Occasionally, it is presented to more than one recipient.

Foster and Cashman were presented with the honor last week at the AFS' annual proceedings in Boise, Idaho. This is the second major prize awarded this year to a member of IU's Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. A book written by Pravina Shukla, an associate professor of folklore and ethnomusicology, received the 2009 Millia Davenport Publication Award.

"It is unusual for the Chicago Folklore Prize to be shared," said Jason Baird Jackson, the folklore department's chair. "In their statement announcing the award, the committee highlighted the two sides of our discipline, the ethnographic and the literary-historical. Ray's book was cited as exceptional ethnography, Michael's as exceptional work in the literary-historical approach.

"This is a wonderful achievement for these two great scholars and a great bit of news for our entire program," Jackson added.

Foster was recognized for his book, Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yôkai (University of California Press). Cashman's book, published by IU Press, was Storytelling on the Northern Irish Border: Characters and Community.

Water sprites, mountain goblins, shape-shifting animals, and the monsters known as yôkai have long haunted the Japanese cultural landscape and have been expressed in the East Asian country's folklore, literature, art, science, games, manga, magazines and movies. In his book, Foster tracked yôkai over three centuries, from their appearance in 17th century natural histories to their starring role in 20th century popular media.

Foster, a member of the IU faculty since 2008, received his doctorate in Asian languages from Stanford University and also has studied at Kanagawa University and the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies (both in Yokohama, Japan); the University of California at Berkeley; Wesleyan University and the University of Edinburgh.

Cashman's book, which also has received the Donald Murphy Award for Distinguished First Book from the American Conference for Irish Studies, focuses on Aghyaran, a mixed Catholic-Protestant border community in Northern Ireland. Stories Cashman heard during local gatherings offered insights into the community and its identity in the wake of decades of violent conflict and change. It began as his IU dissertation.

Footprints in the Stars: A Public Lecture by Folklore Alum and Professor Emeritus George Lankford

When: Wednesday, November 11th
               7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Where: Rawles Hall, Room 100

The Big Dipper, Orion, Scorpio, and the Pleiades, familiar constellations of western culture, also figure prominently in the sky lore of the prehistoric peoples of the Americas, reflecting their own ancient, naked-eye astronomy.

Their stories of the night sky held the traditions and wisdom linking past and future generations, and the stars represented not the distant gods and goddesses, but a living, passable trail between the earth and the inhabited sky. The varied narratives associated with the familiar asterisms, however, provide clues to the interactions and migrations of different cultures among these early Americans. The prehistoric art and astronomical stories of prehistoric North America likewise provide a path for today's researchers to reconstruct how American Indian peoples understood the universe.

Dr. George Lankford, Professor Emeritus of Social Science at Lyon College, will share his study of the star knowledge among the American Indian peoples of Eastern North America, with illustrations from prehistoric art and the night sky. Professor Lankford is the author of many works, including Reachable Stars: Patterns in the Ethnoastronomy of Eastern North America (University of Alabama Press, 2007) and Looking for Lost Lore: Studies in Folklore, Ethnology and Iconography (University of Alabama Press, 2008). He is also an Indiana University alumnus, having earned his Ph.D. in folklore in 1975.

Undergraduate students can sign up for a luncheon, What is Written in the Stars?, with Dr. Lankford, hosted by the Wells Scholars Program. The luncheon is Wednesday, November 11th from 12:30 - 2:00 pm at the Harlos House (1331 E. Tenth St.). Sign up here.

Facebook users click here for the event on the departmental fan page.

This lecture is part of the Fall 2009 Themester at the College.

Professor's Book on Dress & Adornment Receives 2009 Millia Davenport Publication Award

Courtesy of IU Press

Pravina Shukla, an associate professor of folklore and ethnomusicology at Indiana University, has been awarded the 2009 Millia Davenport Publication Award given by the Costume Society of America for her book The Grace of Four Moons: Dress, Adornment, and the Art of the Body in Modern India (2008, Indiana University Press).

The Davenport Publication Award, named to honor the memory of Millia Davenport (1896-1992), noted costume scholar and theater designer, recognizes excellence in scholarship in the study of costume. The award seeks to promote research and publication on dress, recognizing a published book or exhibition catalog that makes a significant contribution to the study of costume, reflecting original thought and exceptional creativity, and drawing on appropriate research methods and techniques.

The 498-page bookdocuments the clothing decisions made by ordinary people in their everyday lives. Based on close ethnographic fieldwork, primarily in the city of Banaras in northeastern India, Shukla conceptualizes and realizes a model for the study of bodyart in a modern, urban setting. By attending to the production of items of bodily adornment, and to the key contexts of creation and commerce, the book portrays men and women as creative individuals who make deliberate choices on a social field of force and counterforce.

"The premise of the book is visual communication, that through what you do with your clothing you are saying so

much about your culture, gender, social-economic class, caste, religion and family," said Shukla, also an adjunct faculty member in anthropology, India studies and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and an associate curator at IU's Mathers Museum of World Cultures.

Through long interviews, and through the voices of Indian people, The Grace of Four Moons describes the fullness of creative action, tracing, for example, the journey of a gold ingot from the atelier of a goldsmith who fashioned it into a bracelet, through the shop where it was sold, to its final place in the assembled bodily display of a shy bride.

This year's Davenport Award jury had a strong field of short-listed books representing many aspects of dress scholarship. The jurors called The Grace of Four Moons "well researched and written," praising Shukla's efforts "to raise the profile of costume scholarship."

One juror commented, "Her evocation of the sight, sound, smell, and feel of dress and her emphasis on understanding the performative act of dressing is brilliant." Kristina Haugland, chair of the Davenport Publication Award Committee, said the book has been judged to be "an outstanding example of dress scholarship."

IU's Traditional Arts Indiana will have expanded presence at Indiana State Fair

For the past decade, IU's Traditional Arts Indiana (TAI) has been an active participant at the Indiana State Fair. This year, TAI has expanded its presence with a major exhibition in the Home and Family Arts Building at the fair that opens today (Aug. 7) and runs through Aug. 23, as well as hosting the Indiana State Fair Fiddle Contest Saturday (Aug. 15).

The Home and Family Arts Building exhibit features the works of more than 30 Hoosier folk artists, craftspeople and musicians. From hoop-net makers and African American quilting to handmade chocolates and fiddle tunes, the display celebrates the persistence of many of Indiana's traditions as well as the emergence of folkways brought to the state by its immigrant communities.

The Indiana State Fair Fiddle Contest (Saturday Aug. 15, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.) gathers some of the finest fiddlers in the state, from talented children to seasoned professionals and everyone in

between. The contest is in the Pioneer Village at the Fair Grounds and will feature a special performance by the Not Too Bad Bluegrass Band at noon.

Thursday, Aug. 20, is Traditional Arts Indiana Day at the State Fair, which features Indiana Bluegrass on the Main Street Stage. Throughout the day, Olivia Smiley's Bluegrass Band and the White Lightning Boys will perform. At 3 p.m., representatives from the State Fair and TAI will honor the Indiana State Fair Masters, an award highlighting the work of longtime fair participants. This year's honorees are Patti Light, a baton twirler from Boone County, and Tuttle Orchard from Hancock County. The ceremony will debut two short documentaries about each master.

In conjunction with the large exhibit at the fair, TAI will feature the following demonstrations throughout each day on the third floor of the Home and Family Arts Building at the fairgrounds:

• Sat., Aug. 8: Geoff Davis, Indiana ukulele music
• Sun., Aug. 9: Larry Hopkins, fiddle, mandolin and guitar builder
• Sat., Aug. 15: Roy Spight, African Drum Making and Harold Klosterkemper, Fiddle Tunes
• Sun., Aug. 16: Viki Graber, willow basketry and Carol Powers, Ukrainian eggs
• Sat., Aug. 22: Sisters of the Cloth, African American quilting and Dan Cain, hoop-net making
• Sun., Aug. 23: James Yang, Chinese calligraphy

For more information about Traditional Arts Indiana, see http://www.indiana.edu/~tradarts/.

Folklore Collection Enters Google Books!

This summer, IU’s Folklore and Ethnomusicology Collection will be the first “collection of distinction” to be digitized as part of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) agreement with Google. The agreement calls for Google to scan and digitize selected titles from the collections of partnering libraries. The result will be an online discovery tool that respects the intellectual integrity of the collection and opens new opportunities for research.

Contact Moira Smith, Librarian for Anthropology, Folklore, Sociology, and Social work, with questions: molsmith@indiana.edu.

Q:       What does this mean for the Folklore Collection?

• The entire folklore collection (ca. 57,000 volumes) will be digitized.
• Books will be shipped to Google for digitization.  During this period they will appear in IUCAT as checked out to Google Books.
• Each shipment will be approximately 10,000 volumes.
• Books will be off the shelves for 6-12 weeks.
• IUL staff will begin pulling books in mid-May; we expect to complete the process by the end of August 2009.
• Books that are checked out, on reserve, or on the folklore reference shelf will not be sent for digitization.
• Folklore books in the ALF will be sent for digitization.
• Google Books will not be able to scan a few books because of size or fragile condition; these volumes will be digitized here by the Digital Library Program.

Q:        What if the book I want now is checked out to Google?

• We will obtain another copy for you from Interlibrary Loan.   Most interlibrary loan requests are filled within 7-10 days.

Q:       When will the folklore collection appear online?

• Books from the collection will be added to Google Books gradually over time.  Some may appear very soon, others will take longer, but the exact timetable is unknown.

• Google Books now:

All the books will be fully searchable, but only some books will be fully readable online. There are three varieties for viewing books in Google:

• Full text online (books in the public domain--generally, those published before 1923)
• Limited preview (if the author or publisher has given permission)
• Snippets (shows your search terms in context only)

See http://books.google.com/intl/en/googlebooks/screenshots.html for more information

• The future of Google Books:

Google has recently reached an agreement with a consortium of book publishers that will permit you to read the entire text of books that are in copyright but out of print. Once the agreement is finalized (probably in about two years), you will be able to get full online access to these books with print on demand via a library subscription. See http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/ for more information. 

• The Hathi Trust:

Google Books will also send us digital copies of our books when they are scanned.  These digital files will be archived in the Hathi Trust, the CIC's shared digital repository http://www.hathitrust.org/). The Hathi trust will ensure that the folklore collection will be permanently preserved online while retaining its unique identity as a separate collection.

 Q:       If most of the books will not be readable online in full text for two years or more, what's the point?

• You can search the full text of all books in Google Books.  This is a useful research and discovery tool; having identified books with the information you want, you will be able to borrow them in print from the Folklore Collection.

Q:        What will happen to the original books?

• The Libraries will retain at least one copy of every print book in the collection, and they will continue to circulate to patrons as they always have.  

Krystie Herndon named 'Advisor of the Year' by the College of Arts & Sciences!

April 2009: Krystie Herndon, the undergraduate academic advisor for the Departments of Folklore & Ethnomusicology, Criminal Justice, and Linguistics, was named 'Advisor of the Year' by the College of Arts & Sciences.

IU professor Portia Maultsby a panelist, advisor for Carnegie Hall festival celebrating African American music

Featured artists at inaugural "Honor!" festival include Maya Angelou, The Roots, Toni Morrison, Cornel West and Gwen Ifill

Photo courtesy of Indiana University

March 17, 2009

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University Professor Portia Maultsby was closely involved with the development of "Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy," a groundbreaking, two-week festival at Carnegie Hall celebrating African American culture.

The festival, which began March 4 and runs through March 23, was conceptualized and curated by renowned soprano Jessye Norman.

Maultsby, an IU professor of ethnomusicology in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomuscology (College of Arts and Sciences), became involved with the project last June, working with Norman as a general consultant, artistic advisor and editorial assistant throughout the project's development. The festival celebrates current African American music and honors the pioneering artists who forged a path for subsequent generations.

"It's been an incredible experience working with Jessye Norman," said Maultsby. "I was inspired by her vision to create a festival that was all-encompassing of the musical legacy of African Americans, from Negro spirituals to jazz, from classical music and blues all the way to hip-hop."

Others involved in the festival from IU include Mellonee Burnim, a professor of ethnomusicology, who wrote the program notes for the upcoming performances of "Emancipation's Jubilations: Spirituals and Songs That Led A Nation" March 21 and "A Celebration of the Spiritual and Gospel Music" March 22; doctoral students in ethnomusicology Tyron Cooper and

Fredara Hadley; and program alumna Linda Williams. Cooper assisted in the archival research for the list of African Americans who performed at Carnegie Hall since 1892, Hadley wrote the text on "Holy Hip Hop" and Linda Williams co-authored with Maultsby the text on jazz for the interactive Web site on African American music.

The series of performances and events kicked off March 4 with "Honor: Blues, Jazz, Rhythm and Blues, Soul, and Beyond." Maultsby, director of IU's Archives of African American Music and Culture and the founding director of the Indiana University Soul Revue (a touring student ensemble specializing in black popular music), acted as an artistic advisor for this semi-staged revue and also oversaw the development of the narrator's script, delivered by Tony Award-winning entertainer Ben Vereen, actor Wendell Pierce (credits include "The Wire" on HBO) and Emmy Award-winning news anchor Sade Baderinwa from WABC Channel 7 in New York.

The series of performances and events kicked off March 4 with "Honor: Blues, Jazz, Rhythm and Blues, Soul, and Beyond." Maultsby, director of IU's Archives of African American Music and Culture and the founding director of the Indiana University Soul Revue (a touring student ensemble specializing in black popular music), acted as an artistic advisor for this semi-staged revue and also oversaw the development of the narrator's script, delivered by Tony Award-winning entertainer Ben Vereen, actor Wendell Pierce (credits include "The Wire" on HBO) and Emmy Award-winning news anchor Sade Baderinwa from WABC Channel 7 in New York.

"Honor!" has a prominent place on the Carnegie Hall Web site (www.carnegiehall.org/honor) and will continue outreach throughout the year with various school and community programs. For outreach programs with middle school and choral classrooms, Maultsby provided editorial assistance for the development of an American Roots curriculum that explores the history of African American music. She also developed and wrote the text for a historical, interactive timeline on African American music for the "Honor!" Web site (http://www.carnegiehall.org/honor/history/index.aspx) that will have a permanent place on Carnegie Hall's site.

"Honor!" so far has included a concert by Imani Wings; a gospel music workshop that closed with a concert at the Apollo Theater; a Stern Auditorium concert featuring current stars of soul, pop and jazz; a performance of excerpts from Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine; a panel discussion that featured Maultsby (with co-panelists Maya Angelou, Arthur Mitchell, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Judith Jamison and Gwen Ifill); and a multimedia presentation based on text by Langston Hughes, among many other events.

The remaining events include a Philadelphia Orchestra concert tracing the influence of African American music on European orchestral music on March 17; a national high school choral festival; and a March 21 panel discussion featuring Maultsby at Apollo Theater (with co-panelists Derrick Bell, Dr. Calvin O. Butts III, Chapman Roberts, Sweet Honey in the Rock and Olly Wilson) exploring historical and political issues associated with spirituals and gospel music.

"Honor!" will culminate with a March 23 performance that includes the works of Handel, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Duparc, Schumann, Verdi, Liszt, R. Strauss, Bernstein and Gershwin, performed by renowned, classical African American singers including IU Jacobs School alumna Angela M. Brown, a soprano, and Jacobs alumnus Kevin Maynor, bass.

Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Richard Bauman
Receives American Folklore Society
Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award

Photo courtesy of Indiana University

Nov. 24, 2008

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University folklore professor Richard Bauman has studied the acts of speaking and of silence as communicative modes among 16th century Quakers and Medieval Icelanders. He's also taken a keen ear to coon dog traders in East Texas and researching practical jokesters.

"There's a kind of widespread notion that coon hunters lie about their dogs," noted Bauman, an IU faculty member since 1986, whose 1981 article about them was titled, "Any Man Who Keeps More'n One Hound 'll Lie to You."

"My work centered around a trade day in Canton, Texas," he recalled. "On the Friday-Saturday-Sunday preceding the first Monday of the month, you had these guys gathering with their dogs. For the sociability of it, for visiting with other coon hunters, they'd go out and hunt, shoot dice, get drunk, but tell a lot of stories about dogs.

"The stories," he observed, "offered me a wonderful vantage point on the tension between truth and lying in everyday life and the role of stories in calibrating and recalibrating that tension."

Bauman, Distinguished professor emeritus of folklore and ethnomusicology at IU, recently was presented with the Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award by the American Folklore Society. This is the highest honor that the society bestows and it is bestowed upon a living senior scholar in recognition of outstanding scholarly achievement over the course of a career.

He is the fourth person to receive the honor and the first of his generation so recognized. Linda Dégh, also a Distinguished professor emeritus of folklore at IU, was a recipient of the award, which is presented every two years.

"There were some major paradigm shifts that went on with my generation," Bauman explained. "The

previous winners were transitional in a sense. They were trained in an older approach to folklore that was very item-oriented and very historical in its focus. I had a hand in introducing perspectives that were much more anthropological, much more linguistic and much more ethnographic."

He is describing a revolution that the field of folklore went through during the 1960s. As an example, instead of looking at the comparative, textual history of individual folk tales or folk songs, Bauman and his folklore colleagues began to branch out and study the social context of such tunes, proverbs and riddles. He has observed how "these things have currency in their communities," he said.

This recognition follows Bauman being presented the Edward Sapir Book Prize by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology in 2006. Bauman served as chair of the IU Folklore Institute in 1986-91 and 2003-07, directed IU's Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies in 1992-1998 and chaired the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology in 2005-07.

He also was a founding member of IU's Department of Communication and Culture.

"To be recognized for your scholarly work is as good as it gets," he said. "Why else do we do this, except in the hope that it will be useful and interesting to people. The award's one way of measuring that your work has made a difference."

Jason Baird Jackson, an associate professor of folklore at IU, noted the impact that Bauman has had on his field and on another generation of folklorists.

"I am mindful of Dick's absolutely crucial role leading -- intellectually and institutionally -- two of the most important centers for folklore studies in the world. When he took the helm of the IU program for the first time, it was in a moment of significant transformation not only intellectually, but also organizationally," Jackson said.

"He set the department on a course that enabled us to grow and change, while retaining our core commitment to the global study of vernacular arts and cultures," Jackson added. "In doing so, he extended further our international prominence as a field-defining center for the study of ethnomusicology and folklore."

A native of Manhattan, Bauman grew up on the same street where Richard Dorson, founder of the IU Folklore Department, had resided years earlier as a child. Bauman was a faculty member at the University of Texas for 19 years before coming to IU.

Bauman's scholarly work also has included ethnographies of expressive culture in Scotland, Nova Scotia, Mexico, Texas, and other settings. He is the author of more than a dozen books and monographs and more than 60 journal articles and has contributed chapters to more than 50 books.

He has served as president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, editor of the Journal of American Folklore, president of the Society of Fellows of the American Folklore Society and as a member of the American Anthropological Association's board of directors.

"The thing I've been interested in, more than anything else, has been the artfulness of everyday life," Bauman said. "The kinds of things that I've been drawn to have to do with performance, which is really about the enhancement of experience -- what kind of pleasure does the display of communicative skill, virtuosity, offer to people.

"I've tended to work on the ways people enrich their vernacular communication," he added. "The discovery process and the analytical process of uncovering what it is that makes these things so artful, that makes them effective for the enhancement of the experience of the people around them, has been the strongest motivation."

TAI Receives Indiana State Honor

BLOOMINGTON, Indiana. April 6, 2007 -- Traditional Arts Indiana (TAI), a partnership between Indiana University's Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology and the Indiana Arts Commission, on Monday (April 2) was honored with a resolution passed by the Indiana General Assembly. The resolution was sponsored by Rep. Eric Koch (R-Dist. 65), Rep. Peggy Welch (D-Dist. 60), Rep. Matt Pierce (D-Dist. 61), Rep. Cleo Duncan (R-Dist. 67) and Rep. Sheila Klinker (R-Dist. 27) in the House and by Sen. Vi Simpson (D-Dist. 40) and Sen. Teresa Lubbers (R-Dist. 30) in the Senate.

TAI's ongoing programs include a master artist apprenticeship program, which encourages the passing of traditional arts from one generation to the next; several activities at the Indiana State Fair, including annual fiddling contest; and traveling exhibits in libraries and museums. It also has developed radio programs about music originating from within Indiana.
It also goes into communities to conduct surveys of local and ethnic traditions and then provides them with technical resources to continue those heritage arts. It was established in 1998.
Koch presented the resolution, noting that "the overall goal of Traditional Arts Indiana is to integrate and connect cultural heritage to educational activities, cultural conservation, arts and community development at the local, state and national level and ... attempts to bring this art to the forefront and to archive and preserve it for future generations of Hoosiers."
Jon Kay, TAI's director, thanked the legislators for their support. "With this new affirmation, Traditional Arts Indiana will continue to identify and promote Indiana's living cultural heritage," he said.

Richard Bauman receives Sapir Prize

January 2007: Richard Bauman, distinguished professor of folklore and chair of the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University Bloomington, has been awarded the 2006 Edward Sapir Book Prize for his co-authored work Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality.

The Sapir Prize is awarded in alternate years by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology to a recent book that makes the most significant contribution to scholarly understanding of language in society. Bauman and his longtime research collaborator Charles Briggs received the award during the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association. Briggs is the Alan Dundes distinguished professor of folklore and head of the folklore program at the University of California, Berkeley.

Museum studies journal at IU

Museum studies journal, Museum Anthropology, is to be housed in IU's Dept. of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. Jason Baird Jackson, assistant professor of folklore and adjunct assistant professor of anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington, has been appointed as the next editor for Museum Anthropology, the journal of the Council for Museum Anthropology. More...

David Shorter receives NSF grant

IU Folklore faculty member David Delgado Shorter has recently received a research grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences.  This funding, from the directorate’s High Risk Research in Anthropology program, will enable Shorter to return to the Yoeme Pueblo of Potam in Sonora Mexico this winter to film a family ceremony called the lutu pahko or sorrow ritual. 

Washington Folklorist Honored with National Award

Jens Lund, folklorist based in Olympia, Washington, has been awarded the 2004 Benjamin A. Botkin Prize by the American Folklore Society, at their recent annual meeting in Salt Lake City. The Botkin Prize is awarded yearly to an individual for "outstanding achievement in public folklore." More...

New NEH Grants to Support Humanities Preservation Efforts: 127 U.S. Institutions Awarded $5.5 Million

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) today announced that 127 U.S. cultural institutions in 36 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico will receive $5.4 million for cultural history projects. More...

Laura Boulton Professor Announced

Ruth M. Stone of the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology has been named the first Laura Boulton Professor by Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Kumble Subbaswamy. This professorship, established by an endowment from the Laura Boulton Foundation, honors Laura Boulton (1899-1980), a scholar who recorded and annotated a notable collection of music recordings and musical instruments, many of which are housed at the Archives of Traditional Music and the Mathers Museum of World Cultures. Other recordings are held by Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Library of Congress. More...

Daniel Reed Receives Award

Daniel Reed, folklore and ethnomusicology, has been awarded the Amaury Talbot Prize for African Anthropology from the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI). The award is for the book, Dan Ge Performance Masks and Music in Contemporary Côte d’Ivoire. The RAI is the world’s oldest scholarly association dedicated to anthropology.

Bauman Awarded in China

Richard Bauman, Distinguished Professor and Director of the IU Folklore Institute, was given a Distinguished Folklore Achievement Award by the China Folklore Society at the International Conference on Calendars of Nation States, held in Beijing, February 14-15, 2005. In addition to his participation in the conference, Professor Bauman delivered lectures at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Peking University, and Beijing Normal University.

Museum Anthropology is the leading journal concerned with the study of museums and material culture. Jackson will assume his role in December, and the first issue of the journal under his editorship will be published next year. The Council for Museum Anthropology is a section of the American Anthropological Association. Its members include art historians, folklorists, archaeologists, cultural anthropologists and others concerned with the study of the material world, with professional practice in museums, and with the role of museums in societies around the world. The journal is published in cooperation with the University of California Press.

"The Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology has worked hard in recent years to develop museum studies as an area of scholarly training and research," said Richard Bauman, Distinguished Professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology and the department's chair. "To have our colleague Jason Jackson serve as editor of Museum Anthropology and to house the editorial office of the journal in our department will make evident to scholars and practitioners throughout the world our commitment to this burgeoning field."

"Our excellent faculty here in the College of Arts and Sciences on the Bloomington campus are often called on to serve as editors for prestigious journals like Museum Anthropology, and we are pleased that Professor Jackson will be editing the journal here," added Joseph E. Steinmetz, executive associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. "It is a sign of recognition for Professor Jackson by his peers. His editorship of this journal enhances the reputation of the institution and also enhances existing resources for museum studies in the College of Arts and Sciences on the IU Bloomington campus."

In the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, hosting the journal will advance its "public arts and culture" emphasis, which prepares students at the undergraduate and graduate levels for careers in museums, archives, arts agencies and other organizations concerned with the documentation, preservation and presentation of traditional arts and cultural heritage.

Each year, an IU folklore and ethnomusicology graduate student pursuing museum studies will serve as an editorial assistant for the journal.

Jackson came to IU Bloomington in 2004, after most recently serving in a joint position as assistant curator of ethnology at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History and an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. His research centers on the traditional arts of Native American peoples in Oklahoma, as well as on issues such as intellectual and cultural property policy.

He has organized 17 exhibitions and is the author of numerous works. Between 1998 and 2004, he served as an associate editor for the prestigious Handbook of North American Indians, published by the Smithsonian Institution. He teaches courses in a range of fields including museum methods, cultural theory, material culture studies and the intersection of intellectual property law and traditional cultures.

Lund was awarded this prize "for his legacy of positively affecting the lives of thousands of everyday people through his work in documenting community tradition-bearers across our nation." His colleagues have identified him as "a model for the essential work of the profession." During Lund’s thirty-year career in public folklore he has worked with the Library of Congress (most recently its Veterans History Project), the Smithsonian Institution, the Pew Charitable Trusts and numerous universities, museums, and state agencies, including the Washington State Arts Commission. He was director of the Washington State Folklife Council from 1984 through 1990. Lund has conducted field research in twenty-three states and in Canada. In 1988-89, he organized the statewide folk art exhibition for the Washington State Centennial. Lund has helped initiate many ongoing public folklore programs, including the National Cowboy Gathering in Elko, Nevada.

Lund has taught at six universities and is the author of over fifty publications, including the books, Flatheads and Spooneys and Folk Arts of Washington State. He received his Ph.D. in folklore and American Studies from Indiana University in 1983 and came to Washington State in 1984.

Folklore is at the heart of all cultures, including our own. It is the body of traditional belief, custom, and expression of what we do, know, make, and say. It is handed down largely by word of mouth and maintained without formal instruction or institutional direction. A folklorist is a scholar who researches and collects folklore, teaches about it, and presents it through publications and other media, such as exhibitions, films, and public events. Lund is currently the program manager of the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission’s Folk and Traditional Arts In the Parks Program.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) today announced that 127 U.S. cultural institutions in 36 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico will receive $5.4 million for projects that will take steps to preserve significant books, newspapers, films, audio recordings, papers, and other important records of cultural history. NEH Chairman Bruce Cole announced the awards today at Indiana University in Bloomington, which received two of the new grants. Several of the projects also have received offers of federal matching funds totaling $310,000; institutions receiving such offers must generate equivalent support from individual, foundation, and corporate donors. The new NEH grants include five for projects in research and development, three that will advance the Endowment’s program for the preservation of U.S. newspapers, five in education and training, and 114 “Preservation Assistance Grants” for projects in museums, libraries, and archives across the country.  [NEH has awarded a humanities preservation grant to one or more institutions in your state; please see the attached list.  For a complete list of new humanities preservation and access grants, please visit www.NEH.gov.]

“Throughout the United States, many collections of written materials, films, audio and video recordings, and material artifacts are threatened with physical deterioration as they age in our libraries, museums, and archives,” said NEH Chairman Bruce Cole.  “These new NEH grants will help the nation’s cultural institutions protect and preserve significant materials for study by future generations.”

Five grants will support research and development to advance the nation’s capacity to preserve and provide access to humanities resources.  Indiana University (Bloomington) will develop and test best practices for preserving analog sound recordings by converting them into digital form.  The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, Calif.) will construct and test a non-invasive, state-of-the-art optical scanning system that will recover recorded sound from a variety of mechanical formats, including 78 rpm, shellac, acetate, wax, and discs.  The University of California, Berkeley, will develop new standards for incorporating 14 historical and minority language scripts into the Unicode standard.  The University of Missouri, Kansas City, will develop tools that will facilitate the process of digitizing and encoding Latin books printed  prior to 1501.  Heritage Preservation (Washington, D.C.) will prepare and disseminate a “Field Guide to Emergency Readiness and Response,” which will provide step-by-step advice on how to salvage humanities collections immediately after a disaster. 

The Endowment’s U.S. Newspaper Program (USNP) is a cooperative national effort to locate, catalog, preserve on microfilm, and make available to researchers newspapers published in the United States from the 18th century to the present.  With technical support provided by the Library of Congress, NEH supports statewide projects conducted in accordance with national standards and best practices.  Three USNP projects will receive new grants and matching funds totaling more than $1.8 million to continue ongoing projects in California (University of California, Riverside), Illinois (University of Illinois, Urbana), and Virginia (Library of Virginia, Richmond). 

Five of the grants announced today will support education and training, which is an important component of the Endowment’s national preservation effort.  The Campbell Center for Historic Preservation Studies (Mt. Carroll, Ill.) will offer courses for mid-career practicing professionals in collections care.  George Washington University (Washington, D.C.) will develop a course and offer a long-distance learning curriculum in collections care and management.  Cornell University (Ithaca, N.Y.) will offer six one-week workshops on the preservation of digital resources for staffs in cultural organizations across the country.  Grants to the Balboa Art Conservation Center (San Diego, Calif.) and AMIGOS Library Services, Inc. (Dallas, Texas) will support regional preservation field service programs that provide surveys, workshops and seminars, disaster assistance, and information services to the staff of museums, historical organizations, libraries, and archives in the West and Southwest, respectively.

In Fiscal Year 2000 NEH launched “Preservation Assistance Grants,” a new grant category to enhance the capacity of institutions to preserve their humanities collections and to reach libraries, archives, museums, and historical organizations that do not normally compete for NEH funding through its other preservation categories.  With awards of up to $5,000, recipients may use these grants to support ·         preservation assessments of their collections (e.g., University of New Mexico, Albuquerque; the Northwest Railway Museum, Snoqualmie, Wash.; and the Mark Twain House, Hartford, Conn.);

·    consultations with preservation professionals (e.g., the MacGregor Charitable Trust, Estes Park, Colo.; the Geneva Public Library, Geneva, Ind.; and Friends of Hildene, Inc., in Manchester, Vt.);

·    attendance at preservation training events (e.g., Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; New England Quilt Museum, Lowell, Mass.; and the Ramsey County Historical Society, St. Paul, Minn.); and

·     the purchase of preservation supplies and equipment (e.g., 99s Museum of Women Pilots, Oklahoma City, Okla.; the Passaic County Historical Society, Paterson, N.J.; and Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Mich.).

NEH grants are awarded on a competitive basis.  Throughout the year, humanities experts outside of the Endowment and members of the National Council on the Humanities consider all applications and advise NEH on the quality and significance of each proposed project.

Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available on the Internet at www.NEH.gov.

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency,  the National Endowment for the Humanities supports learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities.  NEH grants enrich classroom learning, create and preserve knowledge, and bring ideas to life through public television, radio, new technologies, museum exhibitions, and programs in libraries and other community places.