Siporin Receives Wayland D. Hand Prize

Steve Siporin has been awarded the Wayland D. Hand Prize for The Befana Is Returning: The Story of a Tuscan Festival (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2022). Siporin combines fieldwork and archival evidence to introduce the Befanata and its historical and social contexts: what it is, what it means, and how it feels. 

Steve Siporin’s The Befana is Returning places the centuries-old mumming tradition of the Befanata centered in southern Tuscany of Italy during the Christmas season in historical context to derive meaning from ethnographic observation. The Befana refers to the main character of a kindly old woman or grandmotherly witch who delivers toys, candies, and gifts. Dr. Siporin offers keen insights into her character and others who visit residents’ homes, the deep symbolism of foods given to the revelers, and the characteristics of the songs and narratives associated with the festive custom. Siporin’s crisp writing rivets readers by taking them inside the place and the throngs of people participating in the custom. Calling on his long experience in the Italian field, Siporin places the custom in the larger frame of folklore’s and tradition’s significant function, and future, in the region and world.

The History and Folklore Section has awarded the Wayland D. Hand Prize for an outstanding book that combines historical and folkloristic perspectives on a biennial basis since 2006. The prize honors Wayland D. Hand (1907-1986) who as president of the American Folklore Society (AFS) and in his teaching and scholarship encouraged the integration of historical and folkloristic research. The prize-winning book will be publicized at the annual meeting of the American Folklore Society and receive notice in the pages of the Folklore Historian, the annual publication of the History and Folklore Section of the AFS.

The finalists for this year’s Wayland D. Hand Prize were:

Sarah Covington, The Devil from Over the Sea: Remembering & Forgetting Oliver Cromwell in Ireland. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2022.

Kristina R. Gaddy, Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo’s Hidden History. New York: W. W. Norton, 2022.

John M. Shaw, Following the Drums: African American Fife & Drum Music in Tennessee. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2022.

Steve Siporin, The Befana Is Returning: The Story of a Tuscan Festival. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2022.

With kudos to all the finalists, the jury of international scholars ultimately selected Steve Siporin’s The Befana is Returning as the winner.

Steve Siporin is professor emeritus in English and history (folklore) at Utah State University, where he also served as the director of the folklore program and coordinator for public folklore studies. He is the author, coeditor, and translator of several books, most recently Stories of Jewish Life: Casale Monferato-Rome-Jerusalem, 1876–1985 by Augusto Sergre.