The American Folklore Society would like to congratulate all the honorees and prize recipients named at the 2019 Annual Meeting on October 16–19 in Baltimore, Maryland.
American Folklore Society Honors:
The following individuals received AFS lifetime achievement prizes for 2019:
Amy Shuman (The Ohio State University) received the American Folklore Society Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award.
Amanda Dargan (City Lore) received the Benjamin A. Botkin Prize for lifetime achievement in public folklore.
Michael Ann Williams (Western Kentucky University) received the Kenneth Goldstein Award for Lifetime Academic Leadership for outstanding achievement in building and strengthening academic programs in folklore
Moira Marsh (Indiana University) received the Judith McCulloh Award for lifetime service to the field.
Todd Lawrence (University of St. Thomas) and Elaine Lawless (University of Missouri) received the Chicago Folklore Prize, honoring the best book of folklore scholarship of the year, for their book: When They Blew the Levee: Race, Politics, and Community in Pinhook, Missouri.
Allie Martin received the Zora Neale Hurston Prize for the best student work on African American folklore.
Claire Schmidt (Missouri Valley College) received the Américo Paredes Prize for excellence in integrating scholarship and engagement with the people and communities one studies.
James Lane (Crisfield, MD) received the Archie Green Award for a local cultural leader who has made significant contributions to their local community.
The following individuals were named to the Fellows of the American Folklore Society: Ana Cara (Oberlin College and Conservatory), Ray Cashman (Indiana University), Jason Baird Jackson (Indiana University), Kimberly Lau (UC Santa Cruz), and Jeannie Banks Thomas (Utah State University).
The following individuals were named Honorary International Fellows: Haya Bar-Itzhak (University of Haifa), Chao Gejin (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), Gao Bingzhong (Peking University), and Ülo Valk (University of Tartu). International stipends were awarded to Ojaswini Hooda, Angelina Kozlovskaya, Ting Lei, Shengzhu Li, Okello Ogwang, Govinda Varma Raja, Senganglu Thaimei, and Yuanhao Zhao.
Gerald L. Davis Travel Awards were given to Jade Banks, Andrew Carter, Ting Ting Chen, Mariana Esquivel, Ojaswini Hooda, Priyanka Jindal, Maria Lewis, Selina Morales, Lamont Jack Pearley, and Lijun Zhang.
AFS Section Prizes and Awards:
The Archives and Libraries Section has awarded the 2019 Polly Grimshaw Prize for folklore or ethnomusicology projects with a significant connection to libraries and/or archives to Ashley Minner (University of Maryland Baltimore County) for her work connecting the cultural knowledge of the Lumbee Community of East Baltimore with historic archives in the Baltimore area. Her work will continue to build these connections, providing elders with copies of archival documentation and enhancing the archives with information held by the Lumbee Community.
The Section awarded the 2019 Brenda McCallum Prize, which went to the book “Visions and Traditions: Knowledge Production and Tradition Archives,” a collection of essays on issues in folklore and tradition archives authored by a cohort of European scholars from nine countries. Two of the authors, Audun Kjus (The Norwegian Museum of Cultural History) and Cliona O’Carroll (University College, Cork) attended this meeting to speak about their excellent work.
The Children’s Folklore Section awarded two 2019 Aesop Prizes to:
- Elizabeth Brewer for Peg Bearskin, adapted by Philip Dinn and Andy Jones and illustrated by Denise Gallagher (Running the Goat Books & Broadsides Inc., 2019)
- Susan Tarcov forRaisins and Almonds: A Yiddish Lullaby, illustrated by Sonia Sánchez (Kar-Ben Publishing Inc., 2019)
The section also awarded Aesop Accolades to two books:
- Honu and Moa, by Edna Cabcabin Moran (BeachHouse Publishing, 2018)
- Takaanaaluk, by Herve Paniaq, illustrated by Germaine Arnaktauyok (Inhabit Media Inc., 2018)
The section also gave two Lifetime Achievement Medals in Children’s Folklore, awarded to John H. McDowell (Indiana University) and Elizabeth Tucker (Binghamton University).
The Folk Belief and Religious Folklife Section awarded two Don Yoder Graduate Student Paper Prize in Religious Folklore, Folk Belief, and Religious Folklife to:
- Afsane Rezaei (The Ohio State University) for a paper titled “The Ritual Fusion: Framing and Affect in Faith-Based Gatherings of Iranian Women in Los Angeles”
- Kristof Smeyers (University of Antwerp, Belgium) for a paper titled “Making Sense of Stigmata: How Victorians Understood the Wounds of Christ”
The section also launched a new travel award named in honor of folklorist Elaine Lawless. This year, the Elaine J. Lawless Travel Award for Graduate Students is awarded by the AFS Folk Belief and Religious Folklife Section to two recipients:
- Zahra Abedi (Western Kentucky University) for a paper titled “Resistance and Reconciliation in the Shrine: The Role of Imamzadeh in the Reformulation of Iranian Vernacular Shiite Communities”
- Ben Danner(Indiana University) for a paper titled “Paul Drews’ “Religiose Volkskunde” and its importance to the Field of Folkloristics”
The Folklore and Education Section awarded the 2019 Robinson-Roeder-Ward Fellowship to Andrew Feight, director of the Shawnee Digital History Lab and developer of Scioto Historical, an educational mobile app and website with map-based, interactive, multi-media virtual historic tours.
The section also awarded two Dorothy Howard Prizes to:
- Sound Ideas, an after-school artist residency program conducted in Philadelphia by Neighborhood Engagement at the University of the Arts (NEUARTS) built on children’s rhythmic play that was rich in tradition yet banned in school
- The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic, an online program in traditional folk narratives that shows an innovative entrepreneurial effort–a folk school for the digital age that brings scholarly rigor to the often non-rigorous field of fantasy literature
The Foodways Section awarded its 2019 Sue Samuelson Travel Award for Foodways Scholarship to Julia Fine (Harvard University) for her paper, “‘Without Sympathy There Is No Cookery’: Imperial Knowledge and the Creation of Indian Cuisine.”
The Independent Folklorists’ Section has joined with the Public Programs Section to give a travel award to folklorist Christine Zinni (College of Brockport, Explore & More Children’s Museum).
The Nordic-Baltic Section’s Barbro Klein Prize in Nordic and Baltic Folklore recognizes outstanding article-length student essays on a folklore topic having to do with Northern Europe and/or the diasporas. The 2019 Barbro Klein Prize goes to Sallie Anna Steiner (University of Wisconsin, Madison) for her paper “Layers of Meaning and Belonging in Expressive Communication.”
The Public Programs Section has given the 2019 Archie Green Student Travel Awards to Charish Bishop (Utah State University), M.L. Mutrux (University of Texas, Austin), and Jared Schmidt (University of Wisconsin, Madison).
The Transnational Asia-Pacific Section awards the Saboohi I. Khan Award to Mario DeGrandis (The Ohio State University) for a paper titled “’Camel Spring’: Shifting Representations of Salars’ Myth of Origin in China.”
The Women’s Section awarded the 2019 Polly Stewart travel stipend to Priyanka Jindal and Christine J. Widmayer (University of Wisconsin, Madison).