The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress (LOC) invites proposals to a symposium titled, “From Lived Experience to Public Memory: Commemorating, Documenting, and Archiving Experiences of the COVID-19 Pandemic,” on March 12 and 13, 2026. The deadline for submissions is June 16, 2025, at 11:59 PM ET.
Calls for Submissions
The History and Folklore Section of the AFS invites submissions for the Wayland D. Hand Prize given to an author of an outstanding book in English that combines historical and folkloristic content and perspectives. A work submitted for consideration would have been published between June 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025. The deadline for submission is July 1, 2025.
The final conference of the Swiss project “Claiming Folklore – Politics and Practices of Folk Music on Swiss Television (1960s-1990s)” at the University of Zurich has extended the deadline for presentations on the theme of Media, Modernity, and the Transformation of Tradition(s) – The Role of Audiovisual Media from an International Perspective until April 10, 2025.
The Folk Belief and Religious Folklife Section of the AFS invites submissions for the annual Leonard Norman Primiano Book Prize on Vernacular Catholicism. Works submitted must be book-length monographs in English published in the 24 months prior to the annual submission deadline of May 1, 2025.
The 2025 National Humanities Conference will be held November 12–16 in Detroit, Michigan. This year’s theme is “Roots of Invention, Innovation, and Revitalization.” The Planning Committee invites proposals for sessions that highlight connections across the humanities and other disciplines and practices. Submissions are due by April 10th at 11:59 p.m. PT.
The 42nd Perspectives on Contemporary Legend conference has extended the deadline for abstracts for papers on the themes of Threats, Rumors and Legends in Contemporary Society until March 31st, 2025.
Drs. Mila Zhu and Sarah Morrison are calling for chapter proposals for their forthcoming volume, Edible Tales: Folklore, Myths, and Food Narratives in Higher Learning, to be published by Myers Education Press. Submission deadline is May 30, 2025.
In response to the many profound challenges of the current historical moment, the Editorial Collective of the Journal of American Folklore invites written contributions to a special “Perspectives” section on the theme of “Crisis and Action.”
"Claiming Folklore – Politics and Practices of Folk Music on Swiss Television (1960s-1990s)" is a Swiss National Science Foundation-funded project based at the University of Zurich (UZH). The final conference of this project, titled "Media, Modernity, and the Transformation of Tradition(s) – The Role of Audiovisual Media from an International Perspective," will be held on September 8 and 9, 2025. The deadline for submitting a proposal is March 31, 2025.
This year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Francis James Child, ballad scholar and first president of the AFS. To commemorate this occasion and to explore the present-day state of scholarly studies in folksong and ballad, the History and Folklore section and the Music and Song section of the AFS in conjunction with the Traditional Song Forum and the Kommission für Volksdichtung are proposing to sponsor a series of panels at this year’s AFS annual meeting. The deadline for submitting a proposal is March 10, 2025.