Now Available: JAF Special Issue on Folklore Studies and Disability (Summer 2024)

The JAF editorial team is pleased to announce the release of the 2024 Summer issue of JAF: A Global Quarterly (v. 137, no. 545), a special issue on “Folklore Studies and Disability,” which will be available online and arrive in mailboxes soon. This ground-breaking special issue, curated by guest editor Anand Prahlad, features key articles that both insist upon and embody an inclusive vision that embraces interdisciplinary methods while, critically, approaching materials from a disability-centered ideology.

The contributors consider the knowledge systems, reflections, philosophies, and perspectives of disabled people as a form of theory to be met on their own terms. Practitioners must accept diverse forms of expression and communication as intellectually equal to traditional academic discussion. Fortunately, the field of folklore offers a venue for practicing and honing this acceptance within the subfield of folklore and disability studies, but also in general.

Special Issue Editor: Anand Prahlad

Articles

American Folklore Studies and Disability: An Introduction, by Anand Prahlad

All the World’s a (Neurotypical) Stage: Neurodivergent Folklore, Autistic Masking, and Virtual Spaces for Discussing Autistic Identity, by Allison Stanich

Folklore, Disability, and Plain Language: The Problem of Consent, by Olivia Caldeira and Amy Shuman

“You May Now Become Who You Thought was Disposable”: COVID-19 Politics and Ableism, by Andrea Kitta

Folklore and Disability: An Important—and Too Often Overlooked—Factor in Global Health and International Development Efforts, by Nora Ellen Groce

Self Portrait: Waking Up with/to Cat Companions, by Ann Millett-Gallant

The Lost Cherokee, by Gwendolyn Paradice

Living in the Nexus of Disability and Caregiving: An African American Parental Caregiver’s Critical Observations as a Folklorist, by Phyllis M. May-Machunda

Rewilding My Brain: Folklore, Disability, and the Non-Human World, by Traci Cox

Folklore Made Me Disabled: Integrating Disability Studies into Folklore Research, by Teresa Milbrodt

Obituaries

Gwendolyn Meister (1947-2023), by Todd Richardson 

Claude D. Stephenson (1952-2023), by Michael Luster           

Book Reviews

Carnival in Alabama: Marked Bodies and Invented Traditions in Mobile (Machado), by Emily Blejwas

The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (Price), by Colin Gioia Connors

Erna Brodber and Velma Pollard: Folklore and Culture in Jamaica (Bryan), by Daryl Cumber Dance

JEWels: Teasing out the Poetry in Jewish Humor and Storytelling (Zeitlin), by Annette B. Fromm

Fairy Tales of Appalachia (Sivinski), by Abigail R. Heiniger

Patapsco Spirits: Eleven Ghost Stories (Hart), by Stephen Miller

MennoFolk3: Puns, Riddles, Tales, Legends (Beck), by Lawrence Morris

Choreographing Mexico: Festive Performances and Dancing Histories of a Nation (Cuellar), by Olga Nájera-Ramírez

Event Review

The Pandemic. By COVID-19. (Global, 2020), by Enzina Marrari