Available Now! Fall 2024 JAF: A Global Quarterly

The Fall 2024 issue of JAF: A Global Quarterly (Vol. 137, no. 546) has been mailed to subscribers and is now available online. 

In this issue: 

• AFS President (2022-2023) Marilyn M. White reflects on her own journey as a folklorist, from her family roots through her research in family lore, Japan, Little Cayman, and in her work with professional folklore communities.
• Eva Þórdís Ebenezersdóttir draws on folklore studies and disability studies to understand a sociocultural process of re-defining human individuals with intellectual disabilities as supernatural beings in 19th-century Icelandic ghost stories.
• Leah Lowthorp examines performances of identity in YouTube genetic ancestry “reveal” videos to uncover what these performances reveal about conceptions of racial and/or ethnic identities and genetic determinism today.
• Kimberly Jenkins Marshall demonstrates how the skills and experiences gained from folklore training are precisely the ones needed for public humanities work, focusing on her experience producing a podcast for the Arts and Humanities Forum at the University of Oklahoma.
• We remember James Stanley Lane, Jr. (1951-2022), W. Lynwood Montell (1931-2023), Gillian Bennett (1939-2023), Joy Fraser (1977-2023), and Roland Freeman (1936-2023) in the Obituaries.
• A dozen reviews consider recent work in the field. 

Learn more about how to access JAF.

Contents

American Folklore Society 2023 Presidential Address

Roots, Rootlessness, and Uprooting: Personal, Ethnographic, and Folkloric Reflections on a Theme, by Marilyn M. White

Articles

Re-fitting the Misfit, by Eva Þórdís Ebenezersdóttir

DNA Identities: Narrative and Authority in Genetic Ancestry Performance on YouTube, by Leah Lowthorp

Perspectives

Folklore Training for the Public Humanities: Podcasting, by Kimberly Jenkins Marshall

Obituaries 

James Stanley Lane, Jr. (1951-2022), by Lora Bottinelli

W. Lynwood Montell (1931-2023), by Erika Brady

Gillian Bennett (1939-2023), by Bill Ellis

Joy Fraser (1977-2023), by Holly Everett and Meghan Forsyth

Roland Freeman (1936-2023), by Glenn Hinson

Book Reviews

Culture Work: Folklore for the Public Good (Frandy and Cederström), by Robert Baron

The Befana Is Returning: The Story of a Tuscan Festival (Siporin), by Sara Bell

Jewish Cultural Studies (Bronner), by Jillian Gould

John Henry and His People: The Historical Origin and Lore of America’s Great Folk Ballad (Garst), by Thi Lettner

Earth to Tables Legacies: Multimedia Food Conversations Across Generations and Cultures (Barndt, Baker, and Gelis), by Lucy M. Long

Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith (Szwed), by Jens Lund

Stringbean: The Life and Murder of a Country Music Legend (Hagood), by Bill Mansfield 

Myth Theorized (Segal), by Steven Merrell

The Meaning of Enchantment: Wondertale Symbolism Revisited (Vaz da Silva), by Steven Merrell 

Twilight of the Godlings: The Shadowy Beginnings of Britain’s Supernatural Beings (Young), by Stephen Miller 

Yōkai: Ghosts, Demons & Monsters of Japan (Katz-Harris), by Katharine R. M. Schramm 

Oral Tradition in Contemporary China: Healing a Nation (Zhang), by Timothy Thurston

Exhibit Review

Weaving Has a Heartbeat (Claw, Preston, Desireé, and Falk), by Yolanda Chávez Leyva

Electronic Media Resource Review 

Fionn Folklore Database (Sumner), by Kevin Murray