On Friday evening, May 2, 2025, numerous grants that were awarded or pending from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) were terminated or withdrawn. Take action to restore funding and staff at the NEA.
News from the Field
Folklore Fellows is currently holding a clearance book sale of their publication, Folklore Fellows' Communications—a refereed monograph series with 327 titles. Sale ends April 30, 2025.
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2025 NEA National Heritage Fellowships, the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.
Dr. Laura E. Ruberto and Dr. Joseph Sciorra have curated the exhibition Creativity and World War II Italian POWs in the United States, which presents the creative work and material culture made by Italian soldiers who were imprisoned by the Allied forces during World War II. The exhibit will open on May 1, 2025 and remain on view until September 26, 2025 at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute in Manhattan.
This morning (April 3), DOGE began terminating previously awarded NEH grants. We understand that this includes operating grants to the state and jurisdictional humanities councils, scholarly societies, community organizations, and individuals. Take action now to support the NEH and report impacts of eliminated funding.
The American Folklife Center will host “Documenting Ourselves: Impacts, Outcomes, and Insights from the Community Collections Grant Program”—a symposium on April 10th and 11th at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. AFS Members are invited to attend.
Academic and musician Ellen Stekert releases her first independent album, Go Around Songs, Vol. 1, on March 28, 2025. Stekert is a contemporary of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Dave Van Ronk but eventually chose to pursue academia. She is professor emerita of English and American Studies at the University of Minnesota and served as President of the AFS in 1976–77.
On Friday night, the Trump administration issued Executive Order (EO), Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy, targeting the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Support campaigns to save the IMLS.
The Independent Folklorists section of the AFS is starting a book group. Their first meeting will be held at 9pm ET on April 8, 2025, and the first book they will be reading is Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used by Peter Block.
Emily Hilliard is a folklorist, writer, and media producer based at Berea College in Kentucky. In 2021, she received an Archie Green Fellowship to document U.S. mail carriers in Central Appalachia as part of the American Folklife Center’s Occupational Folklife Project. With insights gained from this project, Hilliard published an article on the Jacobin magazine, arguing that "USPS privatization would cost rural America more than mail."