Menachem Kipnis was a Jewish eastern European ethnomusicologist, folklorist, and photographer. This book brings his photographs and stories into dialogue with one another, bridging the Jewish communities in Poland and in America during the interwar period.
Recent Releases
In Heroes of the Gael (Princeton University Press), Natasha Sumner traces the evolution of the Fenian tradition of story and song over 1,400 years.
The latest volume of TFH: The Journal of History and Folklore published by the History and Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society has been released. The volume is devoted to a 40-year index of the journal covering its run since being launched in 1983.
Literary scholar and author Jack Zipes publishes Alex in the Land of Liars (Vanguard Press), a modern political fairy tale intended for young adults.
The Exeter Companion to Changeling Lore (University of Exeter Press) is the first multi-author volume dedicated to changelings and the most comprehensive study of these beliefs across West Eurasia and the Mediterranean.
Make/Unmake (Open Book Publishers) captures the voices of playworkers, teachers, and artists and documents the ingenuity of children turning objects into tools of imagination and change. The book is freely available to read and download in both PDF and HTML formats.
Sacred Springs in the Camps (University of Wisconsin Press) explores how legend creates, negotiates, and challenges collective memory; how lived religious practices intersect with the current revival of the Russian Orthodox Church; how politics intertwine with belief; and how the social construction of sacred places affects folk narratives, faith, and local identity.
Jo Farb Hernández, a writer and curator who has worked in the field of vernacular art environment builders for over five decades, will release a visual documentation of self-taught built environments during U.S. Architecture Week.
Folklorists Ebony Bailey and Lamont Pearley joined the Society of Reluctant Anthropologists (SORA) Podcast to deep dive into the film 'Sinners', exploring its themes of cultural appropriation, historical context, and the interplay of music and desire.
In Banshees, Hags, and Changelings (Syracuse University Press), Molly Ferguson examines how contemporary writers reappraise Irish folklore replete with images of transforming women.