As you prepare for the new academic year, those of you who teach can provide an important—and easily accomplished—service to AFS. Support AFS by assigning online access to JAF.
News
Whispers from Celtic Seas (Reaktion Books) revisits coastal traditions from the Celtic fringes of northwest Europe, showing how they preserve memories of dramatic environmental change—floods, land loss and shifting shorelines—carried forward through oral storytelling for generations.
MUSICultures, the peer-reviewed journal of The Canadian Society for Traditional Music / La Société canadienne pour les traditions musicales, is currently seeking articles for publication. Submissions are due October 1, 2026.
In A Singing Game (University Press of Mississippi), Jeanne Pitre Soileau traces “When I Was a Baby” through its many permutations, from its earliest appearance in folklore to variations uploaded to YouTube, and introduces the varied folklorists who collected it through its history.
Charles "Gordon" McCann, nationally acknowledged as a premiere preservationist of traditional Ozarks fiddle music and other facets of Missouri-Arkansas hill country culture, died on July 17, 2026 at the age of ninety-four.
Vernacular Religion in the Iranian Diaspora (University of Wisconsin Press) is a detailed, respectful ethnography that reaches beyond the binary of piety and resistance and offers new and nuanced understandings of Iranian American lived religion.
Arts Midwest is now accepting applications for the Midwest Culture Bearers Award. This year, eighteen awardees will each receive $5,000 to support their work. Applications are due August 18, 2026.
The Folklore of Democracy (University Press of Mississippi) explores how cultural practices serve as both a foundation for democratic engagement and, at times, tools for division.
The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) Italy and the International Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICICH) will hold a symposium in Italy this November. Abstract submissions are due August 15, 2026.
In The Village Project (University of Wisconsin Press), Sarah Craycraft uses ethnographic and folkloristic methods to study the Bulgarian responses to Europeanization, carried out through neoliberal folklife projects as they collide with ongoing efforts to build a revitalized rural Bulgaria in the ruins of the past.
Share your news
Have some important news to share? We can help you get it out there! Fill out the submission form and send it our way.