David Charles Sloane, “Is the Cemetery Dead?” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
It is certain that we all will experience death in our life. What is less certain is how and where our bodies will be disposed of. In Is…
It is certain that we all will experience death in our life. What is less certain is how and where our bodies will be disposed of. In Is…
Americans gathering for Thanksgiving this week may assume they are continuing an unbroken chain of tradition that traces directly back to Massachusetts settlers in 1620. In fact, many…
Although bluegrass music is typically associated with the bluegrass state of Kentucky and Appalachia, the genre is actually played in many pockets all around the world. In Czech…
Kate Parker Horigan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology at Western Kentucky University, and a co-editor of the Journal of American Folklore.…
Most people have heard of the Masters of Fine Arts–“MFA”–degree, but few know about the grueling process one must undergo to complete one. In Talking Art: The Culture of…
In his new book, Ark Encounter: The Making of a Creationist Theme Park (NYU Press, 2018), James Bielo, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Miami University, goes behind the…
In The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music (Oxford University Press, 2018), editors Robert Fink, Melinda Latour, and Zachary Wallmark curate a wide-ranging collection of essays about…
Richard Baxstrom and Todd Meyers are anthropologists who have an interest in studying film for its value in a way to view the world. In Violence’s Fabled Experiment…
Bill Ivey’s Rebuilding an Enlightened World: Folklorizing America (Indiana University Press, 2018) advances the idea that we are entering a post-enlightenment world increasingly characterized by alter… Visit New…
Religious music can be a source of comfort and release, but also a remembrance of sadness and loss. In Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant in Aleppo (Oxford University Press,…
The North American Free Trade Agreement—or NAFTA, as we Americans call it—is very much in the news of late, primarily because President Trump has decided to make good…
Laura Neitzel’s The Life We Longed for: Danchi Housing and the Middle Class Dream in Postwar Japan (MerwinAsia, 2016) is a chronicle of the large, government-sponsored housing projects called…
We are arguably living in the midst of a form of economy where attention has become a key resource and value, labor, class, and currency are being reconfigured…
Humor and its varied manifestations—jesting joking around, goofing, lampooning, and so on—pervade the human experience and are plausibly regarded as necessary features of interpersonal interactions. … Visit New…
Water politics have long figured prominently in Mexico, and scholars have addressed such critical topics as irrigation, dam and canal building, and resource management, but few have examined…
Gaming has increasingly become part of mainstream culture, from the continued rise of console and PC gaming to the emergence of eSports. Gaming culture has also come under…
How can art change the world? In Performance Action: The Politics of Art Activism (Routledge, 2018), Paula Serafini, a Research Associate at the University of Leicester’s CAMEo Research Institut……
Ann K. Ferrell is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Folk Studies program at Western Kentucky University, and also Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of American Folklore.…
The Lòlop’ò of Southwest China’s Yunnan Province have a folktale in which they, Han Chinese, and Tibetans were given the technology of writing. The Han man was wealthy,…
Today we are joined by Gregory Snyder, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY), and author of Skateboarding LA: Inside Professional…
Folklore scholar Joseph Sciorra is the Director for Academic and Cultural Programs at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute in Queens College which is part of the…
How did Nepal become synonymous, in the minds of many Westerners, with the idea of a mystical paradise and a place to find enlightenment? How did Kathmandu become…
In his book, Flavor and Soul: Italian America and Its African American Edge (University of Chicago Press, 2017), scholar John Gennari examines the intersectionalities between African American and Ital… Visit…
The relationship between humans and apes has been discussed for centuries. That discussion took a new turn with the publication and reception of Darwin’s On the Origin of…