Finalists Announced for the 2024 Wayland D. Hand Prize

The History and Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society (AFS) announces the finalists for the 2024 Wayland D. Hand Prize given to an outstanding book integrating historical and folkloristic methods and materials. The prize honors Professor Wayland D. Hand (1907–1986), an international scholar, who as president of the AFS and in his teaching and scholarship at UCLA championed the integration of historical and folkloristic research.

In 2024, the committee logged the highest number of submissions since the Prize was established in 2006. The Prize has two categories: authored and edited volumes. The winners will be announced at the AFS annual meeting in Albuquerque, November 6–9, 2024, and communicated in TFH: Journal of History and Folklore, published by the History and Folklore Section of the AFS. The finalists are:

Authored (in alphabetical order):

Attebery, Jennifer Eastman (Idaho State University). As Legend Has It: History, Heritage, and the Construction of Swedish American Identity (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023).

Mitchell, Stephen A. (Harvard University). Old Norse Folklore: Tradition, Innovation, and Performance in Medieval Scandinavia (Cornell University Press, 2023).

Sharps, Ronald LaMarr (Montclair State University). Black in Pursuit of Equality: African-American Identity and Cultural Politics, 1893-1943. (Lexington Books, 2023).

Edited:

Toms Ķencis (University of Latvia), Simon J. Bronner (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), and Elo-Hanna Seljamaa (University of Tartu), eds. Folklore and Ethnology in the Soviet Western Borderlands. (Lexington Books, 2023).