TAI Receives Indiana State Honor

BLOOMINGTON, Indiana. April 6, 2007 -- Traditional Arts Indiana (TAI), a partnership between Indiana University's Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology and the Indiana Arts Commission, on Monday (April 2) was honored with a resolution passed by the Indiana General Assembly. The resolution was sponsored by Rep. Eric Koch (R-Dist. 65), Rep. Peggy Welch (D-Dist. 60), Rep. Matt Pierce (D-Dist. 61), Rep. Cleo Duncan (R-Dist. 67) and Rep. Sheila Klinker (R-Dist. 27) in the House and by Sen. Vi Simpson (D-Dist. 40) and Sen. Teresa Lubbers (R-Dist. 30) in the Senate.

TAI's ongoing programs include a master artist apprenticeship program, which encourages the passing of traditional arts from one generation to the next; several activities at the Indiana State Fair, including annual fiddling contest; and traveling exhibits in libraries and museums. It also has developed radio programs about music originating from within Indiana.
It also goes into communities to conduct surveys of local and ethnic traditions and then provides them with technical resources to continue those heritage arts. It was established in 1998.
Koch presented the resolution, noting that "the overall goal of Traditional Arts Indiana is to integrate and connect cultural heritage to educational activities, cultural conservation, arts and community development at the local, state and national level and ... attempts to bring this art to the forefront and to archive and preserve it for future generations of Hoosiers."
Jon Kay, TAI's director, thanked the legislators for their support. "With this new affirmation, Traditional Arts Indiana will continue to identify and promote Indiana's living cultural heritage," he said.

Richard Bauman receives Sapir Prize

January 2007: Richard Bauman, distinguished professor of folklore and chair of the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University Bloomington, has been awarded the 2006 Edward Sapir Book Prize for his co-authored work Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality.

The Sapir Prize is awarded in alternate years by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology to a recent book that makes the most significant contribution to scholarly understanding of language in society. Bauman and his longtime research collaborator Charles Briggs received the award during the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association. Briggs is the Alan Dundes distinguished professor of folklore and head of the folklore program at the University of California, Berkeley.

Museum studies journal at IU

Museum studies journal, Museum Anthropology, is to be housed in IU's Dept. of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. Jason Baird Jackson, assistant professor of folklore and adjunct assistant professor of anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington, has been appointed as the next editor for Museum Anthropology, the journal of the Council for Museum Anthropology. More...

David Shorter receives NSF grant

IU Folklore faculty member David Delgado Shorter has recently received a research grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences.  This funding, from the directorate’s High Risk Research in Anthropology program, will enable Shorter to return to the Yoeme Pueblo of Potam in Sonora Mexico this winter to film a family ceremony called the lutu pahko or sorrow ritual. 

Washington Folklorist Honored with National Award

Jens Lund, folklorist based in Olympia, Washington, has been awarded the 2004 Benjamin A. Botkin Prize by the American Folklore Society, at their recent annual meeting in Salt Lake City. The Botkin Prize is awarded yearly to an individual for "outstanding achievement in public folklore." More...

New NEH Grants to Support Humanities Preservation Efforts: 127 U.S. Institutions Awarded $5.5 Million

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) today announced that 127 U.S. cultural institutions in 36 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico will receive $5.4 million for cultural history projects. More...

Laura Boulton Professor Announced

Ruth M. Stone of the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology has been named the first Laura Boulton Professor by Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Kumble Subbaswamy. This professorship, established by an endowment from the Laura Boulton Foundation, honors Laura Boulton (1899-1980), a scholar who recorded and annotated a notable collection of music recordings and musical instruments, many of which are housed at the Archives of Traditional Music and the Mathers Museum of World Cultures. Other recordings are held by Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Library of Congress. More...

Daniel Reed Receives Award

Daniel Reed, folklore and ethnomusicology, has been awarded the Amaury Talbot Prize for African Anthropology from the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI). The award is for the book, Dan Ge Performance Masks and Music in Contemporary Côte d’Ivoire. The RAI is the world’s oldest scholarly association dedicated to anthropology.

Bauman Awarded in China

Richard Bauman, Distinguished Professor and Director of the IU Folklore Institute, was given a Distinguished Folklore Achievement Award by the China Folklore Society at the International Conference on Calendars of Nation States, held in Beijing, February 14-15, 2005. In addition to his participation in the conference, Professor Bauman delivered lectures at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Peking University, and Beijing Normal University.

Museum Anthropology is the leading journal concerned with the study of museums and material culture. Jackson will assume his role in December, and the first issue of the journal under his editorship will be published next year. The Council for Museum Anthropology is a section of the American Anthropological Association. Its members include art historians, folklorists, archaeologists, cultural anthropologists and others concerned with the study of the material world, with professional practice in museums, and with the role of museums in societies around the world. The journal is published in cooperation with the University of California Press.

"The Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology has worked hard in recent years to develop museum studies as an area of scholarly training and research," said Richard Bauman, Distinguished Professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology and the department's chair. "To have our colleague Jason Jackson serve as editor of Museum Anthropology and to house the editorial office of the journal in our department will make evident to scholars and practitioners throughout the world our commitment to this burgeoning field."

"Our excellent faculty here in the College of Arts and Sciences on the Bloomington campus are often called on to serve as editors for prestigious journals like Museum Anthropology, and we are pleased that Professor Jackson will be editing the journal here," added Joseph E. Steinmetz, executive associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. "It is a sign of recognition for Professor Jackson by his peers. His editorship of this journal enhances the reputation of the institution and also enhances existing resources for museum studies in the College of Arts and Sciences on the IU Bloomington campus."

In the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, hosting the journal will advance its "public arts and culture" emphasis, which prepares students at the undergraduate and graduate levels for careers in museums, archives, arts agencies and other organizations concerned with the documentation, preservation and presentation of traditional arts and cultural heritage.

Each year, an IU folklore and ethnomusicology graduate student pursuing museum studies will serve as an editorial assistant for the journal.

Jackson came to IU Bloomington in 2004, after most recently serving in a joint position as assistant curator of ethnology at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History and an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. His research centers on the traditional arts of Native American peoples in Oklahoma, as well as on issues such as intellectual and cultural property policy.

He has organized 17 exhibitions and is the author of numerous works. Between 1998 and 2004, he served as an associate editor for the prestigious Handbook of North American Indians, published by the Smithsonian Institution. He teaches courses in a range of fields including museum methods, cultural theory, material culture studies and the intersection of intellectual property law and traditional cultures.

Lund was awarded this prize "for his legacy of positively affecting the lives of thousands of everyday people through his work in documenting community tradition-bearers across our nation." His colleagues have identified him as "a model for the essential work of the profession." During Lund’s thirty-year career in public folklore he has worked with the Library of Congress (most recently its Veterans History Project), the Smithsonian Institution, the Pew Charitable Trusts and numerous universities, museums, and state agencies, including the Washington State Arts Commission. He was director of the Washington State Folklife Council from 1984 through 1990. Lund has conducted field research in twenty-three states and in Canada. In 1988-89, he organized the statewide folk art exhibition for the Washington State Centennial. Lund has helped initiate many ongoing public folklore programs, including the National Cowboy Gathering in Elko, Nevada.

Lund has taught at six universities and is the author of over fifty publications, including the books, Flatheads and Spooneys and Folk Arts of Washington State. He received his Ph.D. in folklore and American Studies from Indiana University in 1983 and came to Washington State in 1984.

Folklore is at the heart of all cultures, including our own. It is the body of traditional belief, custom, and expression of what we do, know, make, and say. It is handed down largely by word of mouth and maintained without formal instruction or institutional direction. A folklorist is a scholar who researches and collects folklore, teaches about it, and presents it through publications and other media, such as exhibitions, films, and public events. Lund is currently the program manager of the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission’s Folk and Traditional Arts In the Parks Program.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) today announced that 127 U.S. cultural institutions in 36 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico will receive $5.4 million for projects that will take steps to preserve significant books, newspapers, films, audio recordings, papers, and other important records of cultural history. NEH Chairman Bruce Cole announced the awards today at Indiana University in Bloomington, which received two of the new grants. Several of the projects also have received offers of federal matching funds totaling $310,000; institutions receiving such offers must generate equivalent support from individual, foundation, and corporate donors. The new NEH grants include five for projects in research and development, three that will advance the Endowment’s program for the preservation of U.S. newspapers, five in education and training, and 114 “Preservation Assistance Grants” for projects in museums, libraries, and archives across the country.  [NEH has awarded a humanities preservation grant to one or more institutions in your state; please see the attached list.  For a complete list of new humanities preservation and access grants, please visit www.NEH.gov.]

“Throughout the United States, many collections of written materials, films, audio and video recordings, and material artifacts are threatened with physical deterioration as they age in our libraries, museums, and archives,” said NEH Chairman Bruce Cole.  “These new NEH grants will help the nation’s cultural institutions protect and preserve significant materials for study by future generations.”

Five grants will support research and development to advance the nation’s capacity to preserve and provide access to humanities resources.  Indiana University (Bloomington) will develop and test best practices for preserving analog sound recordings by converting them into digital form.  The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, Calif.) will construct and test a non-invasive, state-of-the-art optical scanning system that will recover recorded sound from a variety of mechanical formats, including 78 rpm, shellac, acetate, wax, and discs.  The University of California, Berkeley, will develop new standards for incorporating 14 historical and minority language scripts into the Unicode standard.  The University of Missouri, Kansas City, will develop tools that will facilitate the process of digitizing and encoding Latin books printed  prior to 1501.  Heritage Preservation (Washington, D.C.) will prepare and disseminate a “Field Guide to Emergency Readiness and Response,” which will provide step-by-step advice on how to salvage humanities collections immediately after a disaster. 

The Endowment’s U.S. Newspaper Program (USNP) is a cooperative national effort to locate, catalog, preserve on microfilm, and make available to researchers newspapers published in the United States from the 18th century to the present.  With technical support provided by the Library of Congress, NEH supports statewide projects conducted in accordance with national standards and best practices.  Three USNP projects will receive new grants and matching funds totaling more than $1.8 million to continue ongoing projects in California (University of California, Riverside), Illinois (University of Illinois, Urbana), and Virginia (Library of Virginia, Richmond). 

Five of the grants announced today will support education and training, which is an important component of the Endowment’s national preservation effort.  The Campbell Center for Historic Preservation Studies (Mt. Carroll, Ill.) will offer courses for mid-career practicing professionals in collections care.  George Washington University (Washington, D.C.) will develop a course and offer a long-distance learning curriculum in collections care and management.  Cornell University (Ithaca, N.Y.) will offer six one-week workshops on the preservation of digital resources for staffs in cultural organizations across the country.  Grants to the Balboa Art Conservation Center (San Diego, Calif.) and AMIGOS Library Services, Inc. (Dallas, Texas) will support regional preservation field service programs that provide surveys, workshops and seminars, disaster assistance, and information services to the staff of museums, historical organizations, libraries, and archives in the West and Southwest, respectively.

In Fiscal Year 2000 NEH launched “Preservation Assistance Grants,” a new grant category to enhance the capacity of institutions to preserve their humanities collections and to reach libraries, archives, museums, and historical organizations that do not normally compete for NEH funding through its other preservation categories.  With awards of up to $5,000, recipients may use these grants to support ·         preservation assessments of their collections (e.g., University of New Mexico, Albuquerque; the Northwest Railway Museum, Snoqualmie, Wash.; and the Mark Twain House, Hartford, Conn.);

·    consultations with preservation professionals (e.g., the MacGregor Charitable Trust, Estes Park, Colo.; the Geneva Public Library, Geneva, Ind.; and Friends of Hildene, Inc., in Manchester, Vt.);

·    attendance at preservation training events (e.g., Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; New England Quilt Museum, Lowell, Mass.; and the Ramsey County Historical Society, St. Paul, Minn.); and

·     the purchase of preservation supplies and equipment (e.g., 99s Museum of Women Pilots, Oklahoma City, Okla.; the Passaic County Historical Society, Paterson, N.J.; and Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Mich.).

NEH grants are awarded on a competitive basis.  Throughout the year, humanities experts outside of the Endowment and members of the National Council on the Humanities consider all applications and advise NEH on the quality and significance of each proposed project.

Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available on the Internet at www.NEH.gov.

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency,  the National Endowment for the Humanities supports learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities.  NEH grants enrich classroom learning, create and preserve knowledge, and bring ideas to life through public television, radio, new technologies, museum exhibitions, and programs in libraries and other community places.