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Potter Lanier Meaders of Georgia. Meaders has received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Photograph by John Burrison, courtesy of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution. From the Masters of Traditional Arts DVD-ROM, produced by Alan Govenar and published by ABC-CLIO.
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AFS 2009 Annual Meeting, October 21-25, Boise, Idaho: Invitation for Participation2009 Annual Meeting Program Schedule (Word)2009 Annual Meeting Program Schedule (PDF)
“Examining the Ethics of Place” is the theme for the American Folklore Society's 121st annual meeting, to be held at The Grove Hotel and The Boise Centre in Boise, Idaho, on October 21-25, 2009. The Annual Meeting Committee for this year’s meeting is drawn from throughout the Intermountain West: Maria Carmen Gambliel of the Idaho Commission on the Arts, located in Boise; Bob McCarl of Boise State University; Andrea Graham of Pocatello, Idaho; Jennifer Attebery of Idaho State University in Pocatello; Nathan Bender of the University of Idaho in Moscow, Meg Glaser and Tamara Kubacki of the Western Folklife Center in Elko, Nevada; Christina Barr of Nevada Humanities in Reno; Lisa Gabbert of Utah State University in Logan; and Maryanne Andrus of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming. The theme for the meeting invites us to think about folklore both theoretically and pragmatically. The origin of ethics in the Greek ethos refers to "an accustomed place" (Liddell and Scott) and by extension "the characteristic spirit . . . of a people or community" (OED) that develops in response to that accustomed place and in turn ultimately reshapes it, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically. An ethics of place draws no distinction between land ethic and human ethic. Ethical responses to place are expressed through cultural practices that shape the land, as well as intangible and verbal traditions. We invite papers and other presentations examining the ways in which folk cultures interact with the physical environment and how such interactions may reverberate in shaping other human activities in broader social, urban, mediated, or even virtual places. Presentations concerning the ethics of place might examine topics and questions appropriate to the landscape, history, and cultures of Idaho, but with resonances in many other locales: the varying gardening practices that respond to issues in the urban-wildland interface, contrasts between scientific narratives of geology and American Indian narratives of cosmology and creation, or how religious diversity may serve as a marker of functionally healthy urban "cultural ecosystems." Does the loss of cultural diversity slow or limit the development of new social practices or technologies? Many Idaho landscapes embody social justice issues as a component of an ethics of place, such as Indian country, farmlands dependent upon Bracero labor, and WWII internment camps. These landscapes, their aesthetics, and their boundaries, represent contested ethics of place. Papers and other presentations might consider how the ethos of a place may be defined by its relations to other places, or how an ethics of place implies an ethics of globalization. An applied approach to ethics of place leads to pragmatic considerations: How have solutions to place-specific problems been developed by different cultures? Are there functionally advantageous cultural ethics for a given place? Papers and other presentations on applied ethics might, for example, examine the efficacy of the practices of traditional healers, the return to subsistence gathering of "locavore" foods like mushrooms and berries, and the new enthusiasm for folk practices that use solar and wind energy. The LocationBoise, the capital of the state of Idaho, has a compact, lively, and pedestrian-friendly downtown, with many restaurants, coffeehouses, shops, and galleries. The Boise Greenbelt, a 25-mile-long bicycle, running, and walking path just a few minutes from our hotel, links over 850 acres of parks and natural areas along the Boise River. The block of Grove Street next to our host hotel, and to the Boise convention center where we will meet, is the hub of Boise's sizeable Basque community, with a social hall, an historic house and museum, a pelota fronton (a court for playing Basque-style handball and racquetball), a bar and restaurant, and a specialty-food store. Boise and southwestern Idaho are home to significant Latino and Native American communities. The city's art museum, and the state's history and African American history museums, are two blocks from our hotel. Boise is served by a dozen US airlines--the largest of which is Delta/Northwest--and can be reached by direct or non-stop flights from Los Angeles, Denver, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Minneapolis, San Diego, Portland, Seattle, Spokane, Oakland, Sacramento, Reno, and Ontario. See a Google Earth map of downtown Boise. (image will open in new window) DeadlineThe deadline for submission of all proposals for the meeting program has passed. If you plan to attend the annual meeting without making a presentation, you may register any time between now and the pre-registration deadline of August 31, 2009, or you can register on site at higher fees.) Financial SupportThe Society is offering several forms of financial support to those planning on participating in the AFS 2009 annual meeting. Boise Annual Meeting Travel Stipends for Public FolkloristsThe AFS has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that will enable us to offer a limited number of travel stipends for this October’s Boise annual meeting to folklorists working in the public sector, either at government agencies or non-profit organizations, or in private consulting practice. (NEA guidelines for this program limit our funding to public folklorists only.) These travel funds will help to offset some of the impact of the present economic downturn on public folklorists by making it possible for recipients to attend and participate in our meeting (including a number of meeting sessions focused on public folklore practice, as well as many professional networking opportunities). AFS will provide up to 25 stipends of $800 each to cover 4 nights of hotel, including tax, at the Grove Hotel, our host hotel ($520); meeting registration fees ($125); and $155 toward the cost of travel, meals, and incidentals. We will give priority in awarding funds to those who meet at least one of the following criteria: 1. They are unemployed, or less employed (as a % of FTE) than they were a year ago, at the time of application2. Their agency or organization has reduced or eliminated its budget for out-of-state travel, or for all travel 3. They have not yet registered for the meeting because of economic concerns (If you have already registered for the meeting, you still are eligible if you meet at least one of the other criteria.) We will also take geographic representation, minority representation, and gender representation into account. Recipients may not receive any other form of annual meeting financial support from AFS, or from Local Learning (see below). Our funds will most likely not be sufficient to meet the need for this support across the field, so if your need for these funds is not critical, please do not apply. Finally, we are willing to be flexible in the allocation of the $800 in each stipend in response to individual circumstances. To apply, please e-mail a letter in PDF format describing the ways in which you meet the criteria above to AFS Executive Director Tim Lloyd. We must receive your letter by July 8. Use the same e-mail address for questions before the deadline. We plan to announce funding decisions by July 22. AFS Student Travel StipendsAFS will provide stipends of $300 each to selected students whose presentations are accepted for the annual meeting program. There are no additional application requirements for these stipends; your presentation proposal, if accepted, will serve as your stipend application. Decisions will be made on the basis of the quality of the proposal and geographical representation among students’ institutions. Previous recipients of these stipends are not eligible. We will notify recipients in July. Archie Green Student Travel AwardsThe AFS Public Programs Section will provide up to three awards of up to $500 each, named for folklorist and activist Archie Green of San Francisco, for students to defray costs for traveling to the meeting. The Section is interested in supporting graduate and undergraduate students who have an interest in working as public folklorists, or who have chosen an area of public folklore as a primary topic of research. Application materials will consist of: (1) a two-page letter written by the applicant, (2) a letter of support written by a faculty member or public folklorist that describes the student’s interest in public folklore and supports the student’s plan for using the AFS meeting to further her or his interests in public folklore, and (3) a budget outlining anticipated expenses. The applicant’s letter should address her/his interest in public folklore, goals for attending the meeting, and plans for using the resources of the meeting to further her/his academic and/or professional development. Previous recipients of student travel awards are not eligible to apply. The deadline for receipt of applications is July 1, 2009. Awards will be announced by August 1. To apply, send three copies of all materials to review committee chair Tamara Kubacki, Western Folklife Center, 501 Railroad Street, Elko NV 89801; tkubacki@westernfolklife.org.
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