UNC Folklore Prgoram, Department of American Studies

 
   

Cotton Boll

Program Information
Weaver's Hands People
Face Jugs Resources
and
Facilities
Brownie McGhee Southern
Folklife
Collection
Burlon Craig's Kiln Home
UNC-CH Old Well UNC Home

Photo Facts

 

NEWS AND EVENTS:

Colloquium with Guha Shankar, Folklife Specialiast at the American Folklife Center: "Work of Native Knowledge in the Age of Digital Reproduction"

The Folklore Program is proud to host a presentation by Folklife Specialist at the American Folklife Center, Guha Shankar on Thursday, March 19, at 3:30 p.m. in Toy Lounge, on the fourth floor of UNC's Dey Hall.

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Watch Folklore Graduate Student Anoop Desai compete in American Idol!

Graduate student and 2008 American Studies alum Anoop Desai will be competing in American Idol this Wednesday February 4, 2009. Be sure to tune in, and you can support him by joining his facebook group.

Click here for more details.

Colloquium with Michelle Lanier "Home Going: An Exploration in Spirit-Centered Ethnography"

February 5 at 3:30pm in Donovan Lounge in Greenlaw Hall.

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Colloquium with Chris Nelson

The Folklore Program is proud to host a presentation by Assistant Professor in Anthropology, Christoper Nelson, on Thursday, November 6, at 3:00 p.m. in Donovan Lounge, on the 2nd Floor of Greenlaw Hall at UNC.

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“Who’s Your Mama Now?: Mother Corn Shares Her Recipes for Living in Hominy in the New South”

The Center for Documentary Studies is proud to host the Lehman Brady lecture “Who’s Your Mama Now?: Mother Corn Shares Her Recipes for Living in Hominy in the New South” by Rayna Green on Thursday, October 27, at 7:30 p.m. in Sonja Haynes Stone Center Auditorium, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill

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The Southern Folklife Collection hosts reception in honor of Dan Patterson, Professor Emeritus in English and founder of the Folklore Program at UNC

On Oct. 3, the Library will celebrate Patterson's 80th birthday with an evening of music and reminiscences about the Kenan Professor Emeritus of English and former chair of the Folklore Program. The evening will also commemorate the opening of the SFC in 1989.

Click here for more details

Colloquium with Robert Cantwell

The Folklore Program is proud to host a presentation by Townsend Ludington Professor of American Studies at UNC, Robert Cantwell, on Thursday, September 25, at 3:30 p.m. in Donovan Lounge, on the 2nd Floor of Greenlaw Hall at UNC.

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Reception for Rayna Green, Lehman Brady Scholar

Rayna Green is the Lehman Brady Chair for the Fall 2008 semester. She is teaching a course, Native American Food, that explores land, people, and native food, especially the expropriation and rejection of natives themselves, as well as the unique role native food has played in the construction of American identity. The course, which examines the material culture of native food, tradition, and change, covers Native American food from pre-contact to the “First Thanksgiving” to current environmental and health crises. Bridging the fields of Native American and American studies, food studies, environmental studies, anthropology, history, and folklore, the course includes lectures (not many), class discussions, field documentation (interview, video, photographic, etc.), and library research, along with local documentation (cooks, farmers, grocery stores, restaurants, farmer's markets, etc.) and gathering, cooking, and consumption of native food.

See the Center for Documentary Studies for more details

Colloquium with Anthropologist David Samuels

The Folklore Program is proud to host a presentation by anthropologist David Samuels on
Monday, March 31, at 3:00 p.m. in Toy Lounge, on the fourth floor of UNC's Dey Hall.

Click here for more details

Colloquium with Filmmaker Tom Davenport

The Folklore Program's New Directions Colloquium Series presents Filmmaker Tom Davenport-- longtime independent filmmaker and founder of Folkstreams.net-- on Tuesday, March. 25, at 3:00 p.m. in Toy Lounge, on the fourth floor of UNC’s Dey Hall.

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Conversation with Theresa Gloster: Self-taught Art and the Testimonies of Memory

Ms. Gloster is a “memory painter,” a self-taught artist who paints remembered scenes from her life in an African American community in the North Carolina mountains. She will be bringing a selection of her exuberant and thought-provoking paintings to accompany her presentation, as she discusses the ways that memory presses itself into painted testimony. Please join us as we consider how history, inspiration, and aesthetics intersect in the world of vernacular art.

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Colloquium with Dr. Marcie Cohen Ferris

The Folklore Program's New Directions Colloquium Series continues with Dr. Marcie Cohen Ferris, who will speak at the Love House, Monday, February 25, at 3 pm. Please join us as we consider what's on the Southern table.

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Colloquium with Distinguished Professor Jim Peacock

On Tuesday, February 19th, Professor Jim Peacock will present a colloquium entitled, "Impact of Global Forces on the U.S. South, especially from a Cultural Viewpoint." The event will begin at 4:00 p.m. in Donovan Lounge, Greenlaw Hall.

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“Carolina Breakdown” Celebrates an Evening of Grassroots Music of N.C.

Featuring the progressive bluegrass of the Tony Williamson Band, the sacred steel sounds of The Allen Boys, the old-time singing of Laurelyn Dossett, and the soul-stirring gospel of the Branchettes.

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"Did you hear about the Gaelic-speaking Indian?": Gàidhlig Memorates about Race in North America

When Scottish Highlanders journeyed to these shores in the late 19th century, they didn’t expect to find African Americans and Native Americans who spoke fluent Gaelic.  Yet this is precisely  what they found and in numbers large enough to give rise  to an entire body of stories recounting this rather surprising experience.  Dr. Michael Newton unpacks these stories, and in so doing offers a challenging meditation on the definition of identity and its relation to language, race, and place of origin.

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"Gracious Fanatics: The Passion for Pottery in North Carolina"

In this provocative documentary film, folklorist Tom Mould explores the phenomenon of the kiln opening, when potters sell to collectors the products of a recently fired kiln. Join in a screening and discussion with the filmmaker on Thursday, Novemeber 30th, 2006 at 3:30pm in Dey Hall, Room 305.

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African American Southern Art

A conversation with social historians/visionaries Bill and Paul Arnett and the celebrated African American artist Lonnie Holley November 8th, 2006.

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Concerts on the Terrace Fall '06

The UNC Folklore Program is co-sponsoring an incredible concert series this fall, featuring a hip-hop artist from the Mississippi Delta, a sacred steel player, and an indie rock group.

Click here for the current schedule.

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MEDIA MENTIONS:

Ferris Films Honored in Prague
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Ferris: Another UNC Coup in Study of the South
by Daniel Thigpen | Carolina Alumni Review | July/August 2002

As a child growing up on a farm in Vicksburg, Miss., William Ferris from time to time would attend the local African-American churches. The visits left a lasting impression.
Inside, he encountered spiritually united congregations, all sharing experiences like no other. "There were no hymnals, and everyone was singing from memory -- that was very important to me," Ferris said.
. .

Click here for the entire article.

Glenn Hinson Goes Where the Community Speaks for Itself
by Elizabeth Spainhour | Carolina Alumni Review | May/June 2002

We tend to think of classrooms, libraries and labs as the sanctuaries of scholarly pursuit. Glenn Hinson would have us step out of the box, out into the open air -- way out.
The chair of Carolina's Folklore Program follows the trail of artists and their stories wherever it may lead him -- anywhere from churches to restaurants to appliance repair shops. . .

Click here for the entire article.

"As I Was Talking, Fresh Ideas Came to Mind of Things that I Could Do": New Immigrants in Northeast Central Durham
by Jill Hemming | Newsletter of the NC Humanities Council | Spring 2002

Last week I ate Miss Lucy's macaroni salad and fried chicken. Miss Lucy always brings boatloads of food in her beat-up, rust-colored Buick and people fill up several plates to bring home with them from Northeast Central Durham's PAC (Partners Against Crime) meeting. . .

Click here for the entire article.

Learning to Music
by Janet Wagner | Endeavors | Winter 2002

Two local musicians—Mel Jones (harmonica) and Randy Gardner (guitar)—perform for an assembly of fourth graders at New Hope Elementary in Orange County. Later, spending time with each class, they’re showered with questions. "What’s the history of your instrument?" "Do you ever have stage fright?" Jones explains how songs evolve over time, and Gardner recounts childhood memories of gathering outside tobacco barns to hear old-time music played as men tending the fires necessary for curing the tobacco whiled away the night. Students take careful notes so they can write newsletter articles, journal entries, or reviews of the performance. . .

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