The Winter 2026 JAF: A Global Quarterly is coming soon, with essays about cross cultural encounters, an immigrant laborer, and Perspectives on Crisis and Action—plus obituaries and reviews of recent work in the field.
Recent Releases
The Journal of Folklore Research released their special issue, "Latinidades: Reflexivity, Research, and the Creative Process" and is also inaugurating a new section of the journal, "Creative Practice in Process."
Chinese Patchwork (MFA Publications) is the first English-language publication on the art of Chinese patchwork textiles. It includes reproductions of patchwork objects, accompanied by scholarly essays about the tradition and history of the art form, and interviews with makers.
Considering what songs say about texts and what texts say about songs, The Unraveling Heart (Columbia University Press) offers new insight into the importance of labor and gender to aesthetics and develops a novel approach to the concept of the literary.
In Historical Roots of the Wondertale (Indiana University Press), Propp compares folktale structures and content to rituals and customs of aboriginal societies from around the world and with people who were the first to envision religion and myth. This book is freely available as an Open Access monograph.
Custom Made Woman (The University of North Carolina Press) tells the story of Grammy-nominated old-time and bluegrass musician Alice Gerrard through the music, the folk festivals, the kids, and the relationships—both personal and professional—that defined her storied life and career.
In Never-Ending Tales (Princeton University Press), AFS Fellow Jack Zipes presents more than two dozen stories addressing "the Jewish Question." Humorous and bittersweet, and filled with ironic reversals, these are stories of fantasy, magic, and transformation.
Public Humanities (Michigan State University Press) examines historical and contemporary sites of education and pedagogy, challenges dominant narratives about certain symbolic sites in the U.S. and across the Americas, highlights the struggle of marginalized communities, and features public humanities projects that address themes relating to place and environment.
Angalkut/Shamans in Yup’ik Oral Tradition (University of Alaska Press) collects over thirty years’ worth of Yup’ik angalkut stories and is the first book devoted exclusively to these shamans and their roles in Yup’ik life.
Folklorist Dorothy Noyes teams up with political scientist Tobias Wille to publish Exemplarity in Global Politics (Bristol University Press)—a volume that draws on folkloristic theories to give a new account of a mechanism that is celebrated in liberal discourse but trickier in practice: the performance and uptake of examples.