The American Folklore Society congratulates all the honorees and prize recipients named in 2023. For more information on prizes and honors awarded by AFS and its sections, please click here.
American Folklore Society Honors
The following individuals received AFS lifetime achievement awards for 2023:
Bill Ellis, emeritus professor of English and American studies at Pennsylvania State University, received the 2023 AFS Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award.
The Américo Paredes Prize was given to Dr. Russell C. Rodríguez of UC Santa Cruz for his stellar performance as a scholar, program manager, colleague, and mentor over the past twenty years. The prize is awarded by the Cultural Diversity Committee, the Chicana/Chicano Section, and the Folklore Latino, Latinoamericano, y Caribeño Section in collaboration with the AFS Executive Board.
Jill Linzee and Charlie Seemann were awarded the 2023 Benjamin A. Botkin Prize, given by the Public Programs Section of the American Folklore Society along with the AFS Executive Board.
Other AFS honors went to:
Patricia Sawin, Chair of the Department of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was awarded the Kenneth Goldstein Prize for Lifetime Academic Leadership for her important scholarship, her leadership within the venerable and important folklore program at UNC, and her important service to the American Folklore Society.
Diarmuid Ó Giolláin is the recipient of the 2023 Chicago Folklore Prize for Exotic Dreams in the Science of the Volksgeist: Towards a Global History of European Folklore Studies (The Kalevala Society). Second place prizes were awarded to Patricia A. Turner for trash talk: Anti-Obama Lore and Race in the Twenty-First Century and to Christopher B. Teuton and Hastings Shade, with Loretta and Larry Shade, Illustrated by MaryBeth Timothy. Cherokee Earth Dwellers: Stories and Teachings of the Natural World.
Jordan Woodward, PhD student at The Ohio State University, was awarded the 2023 Zora Neale Hurston Prize Prize by AFS. Woodward’s project is titled “Environmental Racism as Diffused Carcerality: Stories from the ‘Women of Cancer Alley.’”
The winners of the 2023 AFS Graduate Fieldwork Grant are Ruzhica Samokovlija Baruh, Molly McBride, Israt Lipa and Iryna Voloshyna.
The AFS Cultural Diversity Committee is proud to announce the recipients of the inaugural Gerald L. Davis Presence Pathway Award. This year’s recipients are Mauricio Bayona, Mauro Romualdo, Debra J Robinson, Hess Love, Niger Sultana, and Mary Big-Bull Lewis. In memory of folklorist Gerald L. Davis and in partnership with the AFS Cultural Diversity Committee (CDC), the American Folklore Society provides the Presence Pathway provides funding for travel arrangements to support participant’s presence and participation in the AFS Annual Meeting.
Fellows of the American Folklore Society
The following individuals were named to the Fellows of the American Folklore Society:
- Tina Bucuvalas
- Ann Ferrell
- Marjorie Hunt
- Jerrilyn McGregory
- Olga Nájera-Ramírez
- Suzanne Seriff
- Daniel Sheehy
- Beverly Stoeltje
- Jessica Turner
- Daniel Wojcik
The following individuals were named Honorary International Fellows:
- Annika Kaivola Bregenhöj
- Fernando Fischman
- Steve Roud
AFS Section Prizes and Awards
Marion Bowman and Bonnie O’Connor are the first recipients of the 2023 Leonard Norman Primiano Retired Scholar Travel Award, which is given by the Folk Belief and Religious Folklife Section.
Steve Siporin received the 2023 Wayland D. Hand Prize from the History and Folklore Section for The Befana Is Returning: The Story of a Tuscan Festival.
Selina Morales is the recipient of the 2023 AFS Independent / Public Programs Section Public Folklore Travel Stipend, which is awarded to a professional public folklorist who earns a significant portion of their income from independent consulting work or as an independent scholar.
Millie Tullis (Utah State University) received the 2023 Don Yoder Prize for the Best Graduate Student Paper in Folk Belief or Religious Folklife, which is awarded by the Folk Belief and Religious Folklife Section of the American Folklore Society, for her paper, “Comfort, Counsel, Money, and Livestock: Mormon Women’s Divination Communities.”
Naomie Barnes (Memorial University of Newfoundland) was awarded the second prize for the 2023 Polly Stewart Travel Stipend. The Women’s Section‘s Polly Stewart Student Travel Stipend is given to emerging scholars with the hopes of facilitating participation in the annual meeting by those students who show promise of furthering the study of women’s folklore, gender issues in folklore, and/or feminist approaches to the study of folklore.
Katie Bennett (Western Kentucky University) received first prize for the 2023 Polly Stewart Student Travel Stipend.The Women’s Section‘s Polly Stewart Student Travel Stipend is given to emerging scholars with the hopes of facilitating participation in the annual meeting by those students who show promise of furthering the study of women’s folklore, gender issues in folklore, and/or feminist approaches to the study of folklore.
The Folk Belief and Religious Folklife Section of AFS is pleased to award the first ever Leonard Norman Primiano Graduate Student Travel Award to Indiana University graduate student Fionnán Mac Gabhann (Indiana University).
Samantha Ruth Brown (University of Oregon, Department of Geography), received the 2023 Sue Samuelson Award for best student paper on food and foodways. Brown’s paper, “Burning Love: Pork Politics, Nationalism, and Othering in Contemporary Denmark,” was a well-explored and theorized analysis of a foodstuff in relation to ethnic and national identity. The award is given by the Foodways Section of the American Folklore Society.
Taylor Nasim Stone (San Francisco State University) was awarded the 2023 Elaine J. Lawless Graduate Student Travel Award, which provides a stipend to a graduate student to support participation in the AFS Annual Meeting. The award is given by the Folk Belief and Religious Folklife Section of AFS.
Victoria Danielle Blake Bliss (Sophomore, University of Houston) Victoria Danielle Blake Bliss (Sophomore, University of Houston) was awarded the 2023 William A. Wilson Prize recognizes the best undergraduate student paper in folk belief or religious folklife for her paper, “Tales of the Supernatural as Told by My Parents.”
Leah Lowthorp received the 2023 Folklore and Science Senior Prize for her paper, “DNA Identities: Narrative and Authority in Genetic Ancestry Performance on YouTube.”
The Folklore and Science Junior Prize, awarded by the AFS Folklore and Science Section, is awarded to Ben Bridges (Indiana University) for the year 2023.
Shelly R. Craig and Brettagne Aleck, both teachers in the Mt. Adams School District in White Swan, Oregon, received the 2023 Robinson-Roeder-Ward Fellowship awarded by the AFS Folklore and Education Section for their participation in the Local Learning workshop at AFS in Portland, Oregon: Learning Tradition, Learning Traditionally: Indigenous Teachers and Allies Examine Pathways to Systemic Educational Transformation.
Ozgun Ozata (Indiana University) received the 2023 W.W. Newell Prize, awarded by the AFS Children’s Folklore Section. In her study of the children’s game, “London Bridge,” Ozata used examples housed in the Irish folklore archives to analyze children’s playground traditions as rites of passage, in which children symbolize their escape from the overlooking judgment of adult teachers and administrators.
The American Folklore Society’s Folk Belief and Religious Folklife Section awarded the 2023 Leonard Norman Primiano Book Prize on Vernacular Catholicism to Elizabeth Pérez (University of California, Santa Barbara) for her book The Gut: A Black Atlantic Alimentary Tract. The author skillfully expands on the metaphor of the gut, drawing on historical, ethnographic, and religious studies scholarship to analyze magic at the heart of Afro-Caribbean religions including Lukumí, Vodou, and Candomblé.
Lydia Cambpell-Maher (Indiana University and ArtMix) and Gavilán Rayna Russom (Goucher College) were the recipients of the 2023 Archie Green Student Travel Award awarded by the AFS Public Programs Section. The committee was particularly encouraged by Cambell-Maher’s interest and research into furthering the expanse and understanding in the areas of public folklore work. The committee was impressed by Rayna due to her contributions as a public folklorist, particularly her dedicated passion, extensive fieldwork and ethnographic research into transgender and non-binary artistic expressions in communities.
The winner of the The Folk Arts and Material Culture Section 2023 Warren E. Roberts Prize for Best Student Project is Jack Daly (Penn State Harrisburg). His project Project “Devil in the Skies, Stars on the Barns: The Snallygaster, Hex Signs, and Barn Stars,” brings together his ideas about the three phenomena in an essay rooted in folklore scholarship and theory, with existing scholarship woven in with his own research.
The 2023 recipient of the John Wesley Work III Award sponsored by the AFS African American Folklore Section is DieDra Hurdle-Ruff, The Alabama Blues Queen and Executive Director of the Pinson Valley Arts Council. The award committee said of Hurdle-Ruff, “Hurdle Ruff demonstrates a sustained effort in the preservation, study, or transmission of African American folklife.”