Archives - 49 News Items

Students from Mason's Field School, in collaboration with the West Virginia Folklife Program, traveled throughout West Virginia, recording oral history interviews with coal miners, musicians, and artists.

Dr. Lisa Gilman will join our faculty in fall 2018.

The Smithsonian Institution has selected Violeta Palchik, a graduate student in the Folklore Program, as one of three participants in the United States for their Communities Connecting Heritage program. This program was designed in partnership with the Department of State to create an exchange between cultural heritage students in the United States and India. 

Folklore Studies faculty member Dr. Joy Fraser has been awarded the 2017 Polly Grimshaw Prize by the Archives and Libraries Section of the American Folklore Society.

Folklore Studies alumna Kim Stryker has been named the 2017 Distinguished Alumna of the MA program in Interdisciplinary Studies.

Folklore Studies faculty member Dr. Joy Fraser will present at a special workshop in Edinburgh, Scotland, this fall, focusing on media representations of Scotland's food and drink.

Jon Lohman, our Virginia State Folklorist, curates an impressive selection of music and craft demos in the folklife area each year. The theme of this year’s event is “Feed Your Soul” and will be featuring both food and music from around Virginia that literally and figuratively feed your soul. Presenters will include Southern Soul legend Big G, the Old Regular Baptist hymns of Frank Newsome, tortilla-making workshops with Luz Lopez, a soul food feast and singing with the Ingramettes, an oyster-shucking contest between sisters Clementine and Deborah and much much more.

Continuing the tradition of innovation, the Folklore Studies program will offer a new course in Digital Storytelling for fall 2017. The course will combine the techniques of effective oral storytelling with open source technology to create compelling digital stories.

Within the backdrop and context of the racial tension and rioting that enveloped Washington, D.C., in 1968, the National Park Service (NPS) launched an innovative, community-based recreational and enrichment program called Summer in the Parks (SITP). Mason’s summer 2017 Field School for Cultural Documentation, a partnership between the Folklore Studies Program and the Library of Congress-American Folklife Center, offered a SITP option to graduate students seeking hands-on learning, rigorous training in oral history collection, and instruction on archiving in Library of Congress methods.

During a research trip to Newfoundland this summer, Folklore Studies faculty member Dr. Joy Fraser was featured on the Living Heritage podcast, hosted by provincial folklorist Dale Jarvis.