West Virginia Folklife Collection Now Online Via WVU Libraries

I'm so thrilled that the West Virginia Folklife Program's digital archives collection, The West Virginia Folklife Collection, is now accessible online to the general public and available for research via WVU Libraries at https://wvfolklife.lib.wvu.edu/.

The original, ongoing collection consists of over 2,500 items and constitutes a significant part of our work in folklife fieldwork and programs since November 2015.

Those items include unique primary source material such as field-recorded interviews and other audio recordings, transcriptions, photo and video documentation, ephemera, and some material objects documenting the vernacular culture, beliefs, occupational skills, and expressive culture of contemporary tradition bearers, folk and traditional artists, and cultural communities across West Virginia.

Collection highlights include documentation of the 2018 WV Teachers' Strike, UFCW Local 400 Kroger workers during COVID, the Scotts Run Museum and Trail community, foodways and community celebrations in the Swiss community of Helvetia, Summers County collector Jim Costa’s collection of 18th and 19th century farm tools and objects of rural life, and participants in the West Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program.

Learn more via the West Virginia Folklife Program

2021-2022 American Folklife Center Archie Green Fellowships

I'm so honored to be awarded an American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress 2021-2022 Archie Green Fellowship for my occupational folklife oral history project “Rural Free Delivery: Mail Carriers in Central Appalachia.” I've long admired Archie's work in occupational folklore and aspired to this fellowship, so I'm very grateful for this recognition and support.

Over the next year, I'll be documenting the expressive culture and experiences of approximately 25 rural mail carriers and clerks (formerly known as postmasters) in the upper mountain South (VA, WV, KY, OH, NC, and TN). The project will focus, in particular, on the function mail carriers serve as lifelines in their community, as well as how their place of work—rural post offices—are invaluable community hubs in remote rural areas. I'm also interested in recording how, through their regular routes, long-time rural mail carriers may have witnessed changes in the landscape—due to farm loss, deforestation, climate change, mountaintop removal mining, and other factors. The interviews and other project materials will be archived at the Library of Congress.

Thank you to Brett Ratliff at WMMT FM/ Appalshop for their support, past fellows Katy Clune & Kim Stryker for their guidance, and everyone at the AFC, especially Nancy Groce & John Fenn.

Read more about this year’s American Folklife Center fellowship awardees via Folklife Today.