May 27, 2014 American Folklife Center Announces Recipients of Archie Green Fellowships

Contact: Erin Allen (202) 707-7302

The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress (AFC) has presented the 2014 Archie Green Fellowships to four teams of researchers, to document occupational culture in contemporary America.

  • Bob Bussel, associate professor of history and director of the Labor Education and Research Center at the University of Oregon, will head a research team documenting the occupational culture of workers who provide home-based health care for the elderly and the disabled throughout Oregon. The project, “‘Taking Care’: Documenting the Occupational Culture of Home Care Workers,” will be conducted with the support of the Service Employees International Union Local 503, which represents over 11,000 Oregon home care workers. Staff of the project will interview workers over the next year.
  • The husband-and-wife research team of Dale and Darcy Cahill from Bakersfield, Vt., will conduct oral history interviews for their project “Tobacco Workers in Connecticut River Valley.” The Connecticut River Valley has been an important tobacco-producing area since Colonial times. The Cahills, who are already noted for their research and publications on the distinctive tobacco barns of this region, will use the fellowship to interview the tobacco workers and farm owners who continue this deeply-rooted New England tradition.
  • Andy Kolovos and his colleagues at the Vermont Folklife Center received funding for their project “The Grass-Roots Food Movement in Vermont: Documenting New Models of Locally Focused Agriculture.” Over the next year, experienced folklorists will conduct in-depth interviews with contemporary farmers, growers, local-specialty food producers, and food marketers in the state of Vermont. This study will update and supplement the Vermont Folklife Center’s significant oral-history archive on historic farming and enrich the American Folklife Center archive’s collection of material on small-scale farming and agriculture-related occupations in New England.
  • Maida Owens, director of the Louisiana Folklife Program, will head a project titled “Baton Rouge Small Businesses and Trades.” The Louisiana Folklore Society and Louisiana Folklife Program will work together to interview workers and shop and business owners in multigenerational small businesses and trades in the greater Baton Rouge area. The resulting interviews will enrich both local archives, which have limited documentation on small businesses in Louisiana’s capital city, and the American Folklife Center. AFC looks forward to acquiring more occupational interviews and related material from the urban South.

The Archie Green Fellowship Program was created in 2009 to honor the memory of Archie Green (1917-2009), the pioneering folklorist who championed the establishment of the American Folklife Center (AFC) at the Library. Green was a scholar and advocate for the documentation and analysis of the culture and traditions of American workers. The fellowships are intended to support new, original, independent field research into the culture and traditions of American workers and/or occupational groups. Successful projects must also create significant digital archival materials (such as audio recordings, photographs, motion pictures and field notes) that will be preserved in the center's archive and made available to researchers and the public.

The American Folklife Center was created by Congress in 1976 and placed at the Library of Congress to "preserve and present American Folklife" through programs of research, documentation, archival preservation, reference service, live performance, exhibition, public programs and training. The center includes the American Folklife Center Archive of folk culture, which was established in 1928 and is now one of the largest collections of ethnographic material from the United States and around the world. For more information, visit www.loc.gov/folklife/.

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution. The Library seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs, publications and exhibitions. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its website at www.loc.gov.

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PR 14-092
2014-05-27
ISSN 0731-3527