A Future from the Past

by | Sep 16, 2023

The American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, houses the works of the ethnomusicologist Frances Theresa Densmore, including a collection of more than 2,500 American Indian songs she recorded between 1907 and 1941. Approximately 260 of Densmore’s cataloged...

“An Electromagnetic Tenderness of Remembering”

by | Sep 15, 2022

This interview engages with how one folklorist’s interests in recording spoken sounds and memories of his grandmother opened a pathway to recording the memories and sounds of living descendants of traditional Appalachian balladry. Through the processes of engaging...

Engaging with Discomfort

by | Sep 15, 2022

Death is not just the end of life; death is also a complex and cultural phenomenon. As such, the shifting boundaries between life and death call for a reexamination of existing social norms and practices and the various educational resources surrounding death and...

“Il repose ici”

by | Sep 15, 2022

The Great October Storm of 1893, despite remaining one of the largest natural disasters in the U.S. to date, was lost to history for nearly 100 years. It remained untold in hurricane treatises and in general literature and lingered only in the colloquial memory of...

Riding with James

by | Sep 14, 2022

  Let me tell you about my cousin James. First of all, he was almost 50 years older than me and we were actually like fourth cousins, once removed. I think. Anyway, from the time my Aunt Dorothy—who is actually not my aunt, but also a distant cousin, a couple of...