Connecting Themes and Stories

Introduction The West Virginia Folklife Collection housed at West Virginia University Libraries holds over 2,500 items of documented fieldwork produced by the West Virginia Folklife Program, a project of the West Virginia Humanities Council. Digital and publicly...

Ethnographic Collections in the Classroom

Introduction: Archives and the Culturally Responsive Classroom Instructors of Language Arts, History, and Social Studies in the United States are tasked with helping their pupils compare perspectives across time and space. They must teach students how to locate and...

The Black Diaspora Quilt History Project

Numerous people have acknowledged the importance of quiltmaking within the African American experience. Zora Neale Hurston, who closely examined Black vernacular cultural traditions, included references to quilts in her folklore-infused writing. Alice Walker (1973)...

OurStoryBridge

For thousands of years tribal elders would sit down with the children and tell them stories. The stories were always the same, there was never a word out of place. It had to be that way, it had to be accurate.   Darren Parry, author of  “History and Perspective” and...

Folklife Education

I work at the Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School (FACTS) in Philadelphia. New teachers coming to teach at our school are unlikely to have had any courses in folklife education in their preservice training, so we kick off new staff orientation with a day that...