Benjamin A. Botkin. Photo courtesy of the National Council for the Traditional Arts.

Benjamin A. Botkin Folklife Lecture Series

Through the Benjamin A. Botkin Folklife Lecture Series, the American Folklife Center presents the best of current research and practice in Folklore, Folklife, and closely related fields. The year-round series of monthly lectures invites professionals from both academia and the public sector to present findings from their ongoing research and fieldwork. The Botkin series is free and open to the general public. In addition, each lecture is video and audio recorded by the AFC for permanent deposit in the Archive of Folk Culture, where students, scholars, and other interested people can access them.

Benjamin A. Botkin (1901-1975) was a pioneering folklorist who believed that people continually create folklore out of their collective experiences. According to historian Jerrold Hirsch, Botkin "attempted to formulate an approach to the study of American folklore that took into account the nation's different regions, races, and classes, and showed the interrelationship between folk, popular, and high culture." Botkin worked on the interregional Folk-Say anthologies (1929-32), was national folklore editor of the Federal Writers' Project (1938-39), chief editor of the Writers' Unit of the Library of Congress Project (1939-1941), head of the Archive of American Folksong (1942-45), and author of numerous folklore treasuries, beginning with A Treasury of American Folklore (1944). Botkin left today's folklorists an inspiring treasury of ideas and phrases that they readily use and honor, and the American Folklife Center itself is heavily indebted to his work as both a folklorist and a government official. For all these reasons, the American Folklife Center has chosen to name this lecture series in his honor. >> more about Benjamin Botkin

2008 LECTURES

May 21, 2008, 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm
Pickford Theater, 3rd Floor, James Madison Building

Empires, Multiculturalisms, and Borrowed Heartsongs: What Does It Mean to Sing Russian/Mennonite Songs? presented by Jonathan Dueck, Ethnomusicologist, Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Maryland School of Music

It's often said that music is never new, but always borrowed. But, though we often fail to mention it, these borrowings can be as full of feeling, as meaningful, and as politically important as 'the real thing.' This paper tries to juxtapose these two aspects of musical practice (historically situated borrowing, and emotional investment in the fabric of society) by retelling the story of Russian Mennonite choral music. As 'colonists' in nineteenth-century Russia, Mennonites sang German diasporic choral musics and also borrowed Russian choral musics. When war and revolution drove many to North America and Canada in particular, Mennonites drew on this repertoire and borrowed new repertoires to forge links to a new élite: North American classical choral singing circles. This paper traces this story, not as a linear narrative, but as a set of genealogical fragments, beginning with stories of the resonances of particular songs for present-day Mennonite writers, poets, historians, and myself, as a Mennonite singer; and then exploring past moments of production and reception of these songs in Russia and North America.

Jonathan Dueck is Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland; prior to this, he taught at the University of Alberta, his alma mater. Jonathan Dueck's research interests center on social identity in music, especially the role of music in religious groups and in religious identity. He has researched Mennonite music in urban Canada, shape-note music, and church music in sub-Saharan Chad; and published articles on ethnomusicological representation and intellectual property, African church music and development workers, Mennonite studies and identity theory, individual biographies of songwriters, music and class, popular music scenes, and rap music.

Image caption: (top left) Mennonite group from Odessa, Russia, bound for Nebraska or Dakota Territory; wood engraving by Thomas Worth, Harper's Weekly, May 30, 1874, p. 452. LC Prints and Photographs Division, Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-49438.

April 23, 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm
Pickford Theater, 3rd Floor, James Madison Building

From Oral Tradition to Critical Edition: The James Madison Carpenter Collection of Folk Music and Drama, presented by the James Madison Carpenter Project team: Julia C. Bishop, David Atkinson, Elaine Bradtke, Eddie Cass, Thomas A. McKean, Robert Young Walser, The Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen, UK

The James Madison Carpenter Collection comprises a wealth of British and American folksong and folk drama. It was amassed by Carpenter, a native of Mississippi and a Harvard graduate, in the period 1927-ca 1943 using a Dictaphone machine and a portable typewriter. Despite transcribing and editing parts of the collection, however, he never published it and it was purchased by the Archive of Folk Culture, Library of Congress, in 1972. This lecture will showcase the variety and importance of this fascinating and voluminous collection, which has been digitized and is intended for online presentation as part of the Performing Arts Encyclopedia. The talk will also describe some of the editorial challenges facing the team as they prepare a critical edition of the collection.

The James Madison Carpenter Project team, comprising folk music and folk drama scholars from the US and the UK, led by Julia C. Bishop, has been working on the collection since 2001 in close cooperation with staff at the American Folklife Center. The team has compiled a detailed finding aid, using xml and, specifically, Encoded Archival Description, which allows the collection to be searched at item level (see http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/carpenter/). This has formed an essential foundation for the team’s current work on preparing the entire collection for publication in a critical edition (funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, in cooperation with the American Folklore Society, and the British Academy).

Image captions: (top left) James Madison Carpenter. The James Madison Carpenter Collection, Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, AFC 1972/001 Photo 099; (above right) The Mummers (Bampton); The James Madison Carpenter Collection, Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, AFC 1972/001 Photo 006.

March 19, 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm
Pickford Theater, 3th Floor, James Madison Building

“Force and Violins: What the FBI had on Folksingers” presented by David King Dunaway, Professor of English, University of New Mexico and Professor of Broadcasting, San Francisco State University

Among the sufferings of those pursued during the McCarthy era, the situation of folksingers and folklorists was unique. Suspected by their government, they were hunted by the FBI almost everywhere. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, one can now know the extent of privacy crimes committed against Pete Seeger and other folklorists.

For over twenty years, the FBI and CIA conducted surveillance on folk musicians and folklorists organizing the folksong revivals of the 1930s and ‘40s. As a result of David Dunaway’s successful suit under the Freedom of Information Act, it is now possible to reveal that surveillance, the texts it generated, and how it affected history.

David King Dunaway received the first Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, studying folklore, history, and literature. For the last thirty years he has been documenting the life and work of Pete Seeger, resulting in How Can I Keep From Singing: Pete Seeger, published initially by McGraw Hill in 1981, and currently revised, updated, and republished by Villard Press at Random House in March, 2008. He has served as a visiting lecturer and Fulbright Scholar at the Universities of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Copenhagen University, Nairobi University, and the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Author of a half dozen volumes of history and biography, his specialty is the presentation of folklore, literature, and history via broadcasting. Over the last decade he has been executive producer in a number of national radio series for Public Radio International; his reporting appears in NPR’s “Weekend Edition” and “All Things Considered.” He is currently Professor of English at the University of New Mexico and Professor of Broadcasting at San Francisco State University.

2007 LECTURES:

September 19, 12 noon - 1:30 pm
Pickford Theater, 3rd Floor, James Madison Building

"Afghan Women’s Stories: The Problematics of Cover" by Margaret Mills,
Ohio State University

Afghan women in burkas have become iconic representations of women’s oppression in western media, but this representation is contested in various ways by Afghan women and men. The most common observation by Afghan women activists is that we westerners should get over it, that the burka, hot, uncomfortable and inconvenient as it is, is certainly not their most pressing problem. It has even proved useful at times as an enabling device to preserve women’s mobility and anonymity under circumstances of surveillance or constraint. Westerners have their own preoccupations with visual access and its meanings, reflective of our ideas about bodily privacy and self-determination. This talk, illustrated with Afghan women’s folktales and personal reminiscences about the use and misuse of cover, both imaginary and actual, will explore how Afghan women understand and strategize around constraints on their public presence and social authority. We will use these observations to reflect on certain recent mismanaged representations of Afghan women and families in global media and their repercussions for the women so represented. (Photo credit on left: Storyteller in Herat, 1975. Margaret Mills.)

Margaret Mills was raised in Seattle and educated at Harvard, where she developed her lifelong interest in Persian-language oral narrative under the tutelage of Albert Lord and Annemarie Schimmel. She has taught ethnographic field research methodology in the U.S., Bangladesh, India and Tajikistan, has done research on schooling and foodways in Pakistan, on everyday ethical speech in Tajikistan, and continues her work on Afghan oral narrative, both fiction and oral history. Her previous publications include Rhetorics and Politics in Afghan Traditional Storytelling (1991) and she co-edited South Asian Folklore: An Encyclopedia (2003) with Peter Claus and Sarah Diamond. She has a book project under way presenting the oral history of an Afghan family as well as a monograph on tricksters and gender in Persian-language oral tradition. Dr. Mills recently completed a term of service as the Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Ohio State University. (Photo credit on right: Woman in a burka (actually called a chadri in Afghanistan - burka is a Pakistani term) in front of the shrine of Ali in Mazar-i Sharif, 1975. Grace Brigham.)

August 15, 12 noon - 1:00 pm
West Dining Room, Sixth Floor, James Madison Building

"Folklore’s Champion: Ben Botkin," presented by Roger D. Abrahams, Hum Rosen Professor of Humanities, Emeritus, at the University of Pennsylvania.

Among Benjamin Botkin's accomplishments, the gathering of slave narratives has received the greatest amount of attention, though not always with his name attached. As folklore editor of the Federal Writers’ Project, and later head of the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress, Botkin guided the fieldworkers who collected the narratives, amassed and edited the raw materials, and produced seventeen bound volumes entitled Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves (Washington, D.C., 1941). In this lecture, Roger Abrahams will discuss this project, Botkin’s place in it, its impacton subsequent scholarship, and how one can take these studies further to understand more fully the ways in which the slaves achieved liberation themselves, before and after Emancipation.

Roger D. Abrahams is Hum Rosen Professor of Humanities, Emeritus, at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author and editor of many books, including After Africa (with John Szwed), African Folktales: Traditional Stories of the Black World, Singing the Master: The Emergence of African-American Culture in the Plantation South, African-American Folktales: Stories from Black Traditions in the New World, Everyday Life: A Poetics of Vernacular Practices, and Man-of-Words in the West Indies.

July 24, 12 noon - 1:00 PM
Pickford Theater, 3rd Floor, James Madison Building

"Quilters' Save Our Stories," presented by Bernie Herman, Professor of American Material Culture Studies and Professor of Art History at the University of Delaware. Bernard Herman's illustrated lecture demonstrates the rich potential of the Quilters' Save Our Stories collection, now happily housed in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, through an examination of the archetypal and ubiquitous Sunbonnet Sue quilts.

Industry estimates place the number of individuals engaged in some aspect of quiltmaking in the United States alone at roughly 20,000,000 individuals generating annual revenues, excluding buying and selling quilts, in excess of $2,000,000,000. How is it then that so many Americans from all walks of life are engaged in artistic production about which the rest of us know so little? The Alliance for American Quilts addressed this lacuna in 1999 when a working group conceptualized Quilters' Save Our Stories, a project intended to capture and preserve the voices of the quiltmaking community from the ardent hobbyist to the avant-garde art quilter. The project pilot, conducted with the support of Quilters, Inc., at the Houston International Quilt Festival, collected nearly fifty interviews that were transcribed and placed online at www.centerforthequilt.org. As the archive grew, the Alliance and its partners at the University of Delaware worked to transform the Q.S.O.S. into a grassroots effort. New national and statewide projects were added including interviews with a Texas quilt guild, exhibitors in Philadelphias biennial quilt expo "Art Quilts at the Sedgwick," state chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and many individual and group projects. To aid in the collection and processing of the interviews, The Alliance compiled a comprehensive manual edited by Karen Musgrave. Like the interviews, the Manual is on The Alliance website and free to all. The Q.S.O.S. continues to thrive as an Alliance grassroots project under the leadership of Karen Musgrave and invites volunteers to aid in the collection and preservation of the living voice of the quilt.

Bernard L. Herman, Chair and Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg Professor of Art History at the University of Delaware, teaches courses in material culture, vernacular architecture, folk and ethnic arts, historic preservation, and writing.  His books include Everyday Architecture of The Mid-Atlantic (1997), The Stolen House(1992), A Land and Life Remembered: Americo-Liberian Folk Architecture (1989) with Svend Holsoe and Max Belcher, Architecture and Rural Life in Central Delaware, 1700-1900(1987), and most recently Town House: Architecture and Material Life in the Early American City, 1780-1830 (2005) . In 2006 and he contributed an essay, "Architectural definitions,"to the volume Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt. In 2005 he worked with twelve students in a senior writing seminar, compiling, designing, and producing People Were Close, an oral and photographic history of Newark, Delaware's historic African-American community. A second volume, Food Always Brings People Together: Stories, Poems, and Recipes from the New London Road Community was published in 2006.  Currently Dr. Herman is working on two book projects: the first period houses of the Delaware Valley, 1675-1740, and "Quilt Spaces,"with a particular emphasis on the quilts of Gee's Bend, Alabama, and the worlds of contemporary quiltmaking. 

Quilt images, above right -- left: traditional Sunbonnet Sue quilt, Courtesy of Michigan State University Museum; right: "The Sun Sets on Sunbonnet Sue," courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives.

July 5, 12 noon - 1:30 PM
Pickford Theater, 3rd Floor, James Madison Building

"Down in the Old Belt: Voices from the Tobacco South," film screening and lecture by documentary film maker Jim Crawford.

It was the gold of Jamestown, the birthplace of our nation. Now, in the storied landscape of the Old Belt, tobacco farmers speak to the end of a culture 400 years in the making. From Jamestown to the 2004 buyout,  Jim Crawford's documentary film Down in the Old Belt: Voices from the Tobacco South, reveals the decline of the tobacco culture in the Old Belt of Virginia. Told in the context of tobacco's cataclysmic human history, this film weaves a complex picture of the livelihoods and traditions that compose this declining culture. The farmers in this documentary tell their stories not for sympathy but to reveal what is fading in the wake of this change. Their stories personify the cultural changes occurring in agriculture throughout the United States today. Image credits (right): Virginia Chamber of Commerce.

James P. Crawford, is a Cultural Geographer, writer and film maker living in Roanoke, Virginia. He has taught Geography at Virginia Tech and Hollins University, but is presently focusing his efforts on his documentary production company, Swinging Gate Productions, LLC. His first documentary, the award-winning Down in the Old Belt: Voices from the Tobacco South will be broadcast on PBS to 48% of US households in the fall of 2007.

Botkin Lecture Series Online Archives

Includes descriptions of each lecture and informational essays from the event flyers. Online video of the lectures are available for selected events.

2006 Lecture Series

2005 Lecture Series

2004 Lecture Series