Watch recordings of webinars hosted by AFS Fellows.
Emerging Perspectives in the Study of Folklore and Performance
This webinar highlights the publication of Emerging Perspectives in the Study of Folklore and Performance (Indiana University Press, 2025). Authors engage in discussions on how folklore and performance intersect in their chapters on dance ethnography, social movements, ritual and narrative, archival practices, and the performance of tradition. Charles Briggs, Soli Otero and Anthony Bak Buccitelli moderate the discussion as Kay Turner and Stephen Gencarella provide critical commentary on the volume.
Emerging Perspectives in the Study of Folklore and Performance reveals the captivating world where folklore and performance studies meet up, revealing both the connections and disparities between the two fields. From the mid-20th century to the present day, luminaries like Richard Bauman, Erving Goffman, Roger Abrahams, Charles Briggs, Richard Schechner, Dell Hymes, José Esteban Muñoz, Peggy Phelan, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Deborah Kapchan, and Diana Taylor have woven a rich tapestry of discourse, seamlessly blending the realms of folklore and performance. Editors Solimar Otero and Anthony Bak Buccitelli present a magnificent collection of chapters that delve into the intricacies of this enduring relationship. These diverse essays explore how folklore and performance intersect in realms as varied as digital culture, social movements, ritual, narrative, race and technology, archival practices, ambient play, post-human intersectionalities, speculative world-making, and embodied knowledge.
Learn more about moderators, discussants, and participants on the AFS news posting for this event.
Gathering at the Intersections of Folklore and the Environment
The Diverse Environmentalisms Research Team (DERT) in association with the American Folklore Society Fellows, the Folklore and Science Section of the American Folklore Society, and the Climate Change Interest Group of the American Folklore Society, organized a webinar titled “Gathering at the Intersections of Folklore and the Environment” in September, 2024.
The webinar convened a diverse assembly of scholars, community workers, artists, and activists, to share our ideas, experiences, hopes, and strategies in arenas where expressive culture and traditional worldviews are brought to bear on concerns and conflicts tied to environmental degradation and ecological collapse.
The goals of the webinar were to bring people together to share ideas, learn about what others have been and are doing, and strengthen connections among a broad range of individuals and groups. This online gathering offered an opportunity to assess the state of research and practice to date and to identify directions for the future. In lieu of prepared papers, the webinar encouraged participants to discuss their projects and collaborations, to recognize common themes and issues, to identify promising trends in projects and folkloristic research on environmental topics, and to begin planning for special issues in folklore publications and other collaborative activities.
The Diverse Environmentalisms Research Team is research and public programs team based in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. DERT brings attention to the ways local and indigenous groups are addressing climate change through a collaboration of folklorists and ethnomusicologists conducting research on local epistemologies and indigenous knowledges. DERT focuses its work on expressive culture and traditional practices as they inspire and ground environmental activism, and drawing on the emerging fields of ecomusicology and ecopoetics. DERT integrates this folkloristic and ethnomusicological research within the growing field of environmental humanities through research, curriculum design, and public education. And, DERT generates new strategies for better incorporating local and indigenous groups—and their knowledges and practices—into global conversations and activities focused on meeting the challenges of a changing environment.