Coming Soon: The JAF Fall 2023 Issue

The 2023 Fall issue of the JAF: A Global Quarterly (v. 136, no. 542) will be available online and will arrive in mailboxes soon. This issue showcases diverse formats, dialogue, and engagement with critical contemporary social and professional issues, as well as with overlooked scholarship of the past.

Articles

• Anastasiya Astapova’s “Conspiratorial Thinking among Russian Speakers in Estonia: From COVID-19 to the War in Ukraine” analyzes the intertangled themes related to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine in the conspiracy theories of Russians speakers in Estonia. 

• “Departures: Irish Emigration and Supernatural Belief Narratives” by Timothy Corrigan Correll examines supernatural Irish legends documented in the late 19th and 20th centuries to shed light on Irish emigration and the belief systems of that time.

Engaging the Past

In “Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa’s ‘Great(er) Spain’: The Snares of Querencia and the Pitfalls of Cultural Nationalism and Fundamentalist Hispanismo,”  Enrique R. Lamadrid provocatively invites readers to revisit Espinosa’s important contributions to folklore studies. Lamadrid argues that the field may have thrown out the proverbial baby with the bathwater in its dismissal of Espinosa because of his political alliance with Spanish Nationalism. 

Perspectives

This issue includes two discussions: 

• “A Cross-Boundary Dialogue in Need: Racial, Ethnic, or Folk Groups?” is a series of short essays from diverse folklorists who consider critical and controversial questions about race, ethnicity, and cross-boundary work.
• The three-part “Tending the Taproot Forum” brings visibility to and engages the Alliance for California Traditional Arts 2022 report “Tending the Taproot: Opportunities to Support Folk & Traditional Arts in the United States.” The first part is the “Executive Summary” and “Introduction” of the report. The second is a summary of the Living Cultural Heritage and the Traditional and Folk Arts in the Nonprofit Sector report that was commissioned to produce data for the Tending the Taproot report. The third is a forum of short responses by diverse people working in public folklore and allied professions who offer their assessments of the reports.

Obituaries

We memorialize the loss of four valued colleagues: Jan Rosenberg, Vivian Williams, Phil Williams, and Rordon Rohlehr. 

Book reviews

Overthrowing the Queen: Telling Stories of Welfare in America (Mould), reviewed by Wanda G. Addison

Ballad Hunting with Max Hunter: Stories of an Ozark Folksong Collector (Nelson), reviewed by Gregory Hansen

Roman Legends Brought to Life (Garland), reviewed by Martin M. Winkler

Film Review

The Early Films of William Ferris (1968-1975) (Ferris, Graves, Ledbetter, and Ledbetter), reviewed by  Jennie Williams

Featured and reviewed projects

The Folklore Podcast (Norman), by Mark Norman