Benjamin A. Botkin, former head of the Archive of American Folk Song, Library of Congress. 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 series invites professionals from academia and the public sector to present findings from their research. The lectures are free and open to the public. In addition, each lecture is recorded for permanent deposit in the Archive of Folk Culture, where researchers can access them.

Benjamin A. Botkin (1901-1975) was a pioneering folklorist who believed that people continually create folklore out of their collective experiences. He 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. The American Folklife Center is 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. Select this link for a biographical sketch, " Benjamin Botkin's Legacy-in-the-Making," by Jerrold Hirsch.

2009 BOTKIN LECTURES

Request ADA accommodations five days in advance at 202-707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov

August 13, 2009, 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm
Mary Pickford Theater, 3rd Floor, James Madison Building

Carl Lindhal

Documenting Katrina and Rita in Houston, presented by Carl Lindahl,University of Houston and Pat Jasper, Austin, Texas.

Surviving Katrina and Rita in Houston is the first large-scale project, anywhere, in which the survivors of a major disaster have taken the lead in documenting it. The project's goal is to voice, as intimately as possible, the experiences and reflections of those displaced to Houston by the two major hurricanes that pounded the Gulf Coast in August and September of 2005. The heart of the project is stories: stories told by survivors, to survivors, on the survivors' own terms. Project co-directors Carl Lindahl and Pat Jasper hear in these narratives the seeds of recovery: it is the conviction of the project and its many participants that to survive is not merely to secure food, clothing, and the essentials of daily life, but also to help shape one's future by taking control of one's own story. While media treatments of the survivors have too often depicted criminals or, at best, victims, the voices of the survivors themselves have portrayed selfless friends, compassionate strangers, loving neighbors, and, above all, heroes. Carl Lindahl and Pat Jasper will describe the genesis of the project and the field school that they developed in conjunction with the American Folklife Center to train survivors. They will discuss current research on the 432 interviews conducted to date, and describe public programming that has brought the survivors into contact with their new neighbors in Houston through panel discussions, radio broadcasts, museum installations, and musical events. Go to the Surviving Katrina and Rita in Houston web site to read more about this project.

September 23, 2009, 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm
Mary Pickford Theater, 3rd Floor, James Madison Building

Joseph Sciorra

Built with Faith: Place Making and the Religious Imagination in Italian New York, presented by Joseph Sciorra, Queens University, City University of New York.

Built with Faith: Place Making and the Religious Imagination in Italian New York Joseph Sciorra, Folklorist, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College, City University of New York. This presentation examines how Italian Americans create and use vernacular architecture, material culture, and ceremonial display to inscribe meaning on New York City's religious and cultural landscapes. Yard shrines, sidewalk altars, Christmas displays, and other creative productions transform everyday urban space into unique, communal sites of religiosity. Sciorra is especially interested in how people remember, imagine, and interpret the city, as well as people's relationships to the divine at these sites during times of changing, global forces such as de/post-industrialization, suburbanization, migration, and gentrification.

Joseph Sciorra is the associate director at Queens College's John D. Calandra Italian American Institute. As a folklorist he has published extensively on religious practices and vernacular spaces in New York City. He is co-editor of the late Sicilian-American poet Vincenzo Ancona's bilingual anthology Malidittu la lingua/Damned Language (Legas, 1990), and the author of R.I.P.: Memorial Wall Art (Thames & Hudson, 1994, 2002) ,a collection of photographs documenting memorial graffiti. In 2003, Dr. Sciorra curated the exhibitions "Sacred Emblems, Community Signs: Historic Flags and Religious Banners from Italian Williamsburg, Brooklyn" and "'Evviva La Madonna Nera!': Italian-American Devotion to the Black Madonna." He successfully nominated the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Grotto on Staten Island and the Lisanti Chapel in the Bronx to the National and New York State Registers of Historical Places.

October 14, 2009, 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm
Mary Pickford Theater, 3rd Floor, James Madison Building

Henry Sapoznik

The Stations of the Nation: Yiddish-American Radio 1925-1955, presented by Henry Sapoznik, University of Wisconsin.

While all other aspects of Yiddish culture existed wherever Ashkenazic Jews lived, it was only in America that radio realized its greatest and most fulfilling use by and for Jews. Yiddish scholar Henry Sapoznik discusses and shares some of the most memorable and powerful moments in this nearly lost world of ethnic American broadcasting. By exploring amazingly broad category of Yiddish radio shows — from rabbinical advice programs to live Yiddish theater acts, from man-on-the-street interviews to the news of the day in verse -- we encounter a vibrant and vital Jewish-American popular culture at its creative apex and on the eve of its terrible devastation.

Henry Sapoznik is a record producer with four Grammy nominations, a radio documentarian, an author, and a performer of traditional Yiddish and American music. He received a 2002 Peabody award for his ten-week National Public Radio series on the history of Jewish broadcasting, The Yiddish Radio Project, the 2000 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Music Scholarship for his book Klezmer! Jewish Music from Old World to Our World, and an Emmy nomination for his score to the documentary film, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg. He founded the Max and Frieda Weinstein Archives of Recorded Sound at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, as well as Living Traditions' annual KlezKamp: The Yiddish Folk Arts Program.

Past lectures of the 2009 season:

"The High Lonesome Sound Revisited: Documenting Traditional Culture in America," presented by filmmaker John Cohen. (Webcast currently unavailable)

"The Sound of Islamic Music: Women's Voices and the Indonesian Religious Soundscape," presented by Anne K. Rasmussen, Associate Professor of Music and Ethnomusicology, College of William and Mary. (Webcast currently unavailable)

"We Had Sneakers, They Had Guns: The Kids Who Fought for Civil Rights in Mississippi," presented by illustrator and journalist Tracy Sugarman.

"Warning of Global Warming? Shamanic Tradition, Politics and Ecological Change in Siberia," presented by Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, Georgetown University. (Webcast currently unavailable)

"Living and Building between Tradition and Change: Vernacular Architecture in Northern Sweden," Mats Widbom, Cultural Counselor, Embassy of Sweden.

"Revolutionaries, Nursery Rhymes, and Edison Wax Cylinders: The Remarkable Tale of the Earliest Korean Sound Recordings," presented by Robert Provine, University of Maryland.

Botkin Lecture Series Online Archive

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

2009 Lecture Series

2008 Lecture Series

2007 Lecture Series

2006 Lecture Series

2005 Lecture Series

2004 Lecture Series