Preview the New Notable Folklorists of Color Online Exhibition

The Notable Folklorists of Color online exhibition, sponsored by the American Folklore Society, now features Expanding the Frames, with more than 135 new ancestor scholars who have contributed to folklore studies, as well as a variety of rich supplemental material. A preview of the new exhibition is available now, with the rest of the new material to be released over the course of the next few weeks. A display, discussion and celebration of the new work will take place at the 2022 AFS Annual Meeting. The new exhibition is curated by Phyllis May-Machunda, Olivia Cadaval, and Sojin Kim.

The Notable Folklorists of Color: Expanding the Frames exhibition extends the examination of the contributions of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) ancestor scholars to folklore studies that was begun in the AFS Notable Folklorists of Color: Remembering Our Ancestral Legacies exhibition in 2019. Remembering Our Ancestral Legacies, curated by May-Machunda and Cadaval, commemorates 25 folklorists in honor of the 25th anniversary of the AFS Cultural Diversity Committee. The new exhibition, Expanding the Frames, highlights 135 BIPOC ancestors—who often have worked within their own communities—as significant producers of scholarly knowledge about the communities and traditions they studied, presented by approximately 50 current African American, Native American, Latinx, Asian American, and Native Hawaiian authors from folklore studies and allied fields active in both public and academic arenas.

Both exhibitions will be on view in the Promenade Foyer for the duration of the 2022 AFS Annual Meeting. Accompanying the exhibitions are a 52-page guide to both Notable Folklorists of Color exhibitions, Remembering Our Ancestral Legacies (2019) and Expanding the Frames (2022), as well as two roundtables discussing the production and the meaning of this work, and a AFS Cultural Diversity Committee-sponsored reception honoring the authors of the panels for the exhibition.

Reception Celebrating the AFS Notable Folklorists of Color Exhibitions and Panel Authors

05-01 Notable Folklorists of Color, Roundtable, Part 1: Process and Praxis [hybrid]

06-01 Notable Folklorists of Color Roundtable, Part 2: Expanding the Frames with BIPOC Scholars [hybrid]

Visit www.notablefolkloristsofcolor.org to explore these short biographies of the BIPOC ancestor folklorists, peruse their extensive linked bibliographies, engage new questions and frameworks, and meet current BIPOC folklorists through their writings for these exhibitions.