AFS Excited to Share New JAF Cover Design–In Step with AFS Website Redesign

After much deliberation and lively discussion among the JAF editorial team and the AFS Executive Board, the Journal of American Folklore has a bold new look consistent with the recent redesign of the brand and website of the American Folklore Society. Additionally, the new cover features the updated tagline “A Global Quarterly” to foreground  the long-established international scope of the journal.

JAF Editor-in-Chief Lisa Gilman notes, “The redesign emerged after a wonderfully complex and deliberative process of listening, exchanging ideas, and lots and lots of revising. I am grateful and inspired to work with such thoughtful and engaged colleagues on JAF’s editorial team and the AFS Executive Board.”

Discussions about updating the JAF cover were first initiated by the AFS Executive Board as part of the AFS rebranding process. The redesign of the AFS logo and website presented an opportune time to also address the look of the journal in a way that better reflects the relationship between AFS and the JAF and that emphasizes the journal’s global content and relevance.  

AFS Executive Director Jessica A. Turner says, “The vibrant redesign of JAF reflects the dynamic content and international reach of the journal. We’re proud to support JAF’s long-standing tradition, since 1888, of showcasing the strength of work in folklore studies and practice. We hope that people throughout the field continue to find JAF to be an inspiring space to present their research and ideas.”

As part of the redesign, JAF will now have four distinct covers over the course of each publication year that feature different color combinations for each issue. The design will remain consistent, using elements now familiar to those who have spent time on the new AFS website, including the distinct AFS weave logo. The latest issue of the journal for Summer 2021 will be the first of these, sporting the yellow and purple of the new AFS look. 

The first issue with the new design will arrive in mailboxes soon. 

Here’s a preview of the contents of our next issue: 

Articles

Race and Racism in the Practice and Study of Folklore (American Folklore Society 2020 Francis Lee Utley Memorial Panel)

• Telling Our Own Stories: Reciprocal Autoethnography at The Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender, by Diana Baird N’Diaye
• Tearing Down Monuments: Missed Opportunities, Silences, and Absences – A Radical Look at Race in American Folklore Studies, by Anand Prahlad 
• Systemic Racism in American Folkloristics, by John W. Roberts

Talking About the Weather: Common Sense, Common Sensing, Commonplaces

American Folklore Society 2019 Presidential Address, by Dorothy Noyes

Jalisco Is Mexico: Race and Class in the Encuentro Internacional del Mariachi y la Charrería in Guadalajara, Mexico (1994-2003), by Mary-Lee Mulholland

Katharine Lee Bates’ Ballad Book and the Pedagogy of the Ballad, by Michael J. Bell

Engaging the Past

Plantation Courtship (1894), by Frank D. Banks

Tracing a Black Folklore Practice: Frank D. Banks and the Journal of American Folklore, by Shirley Moody-Turner