FOLK STUDIES 585: Public Folklore Policy and Practice in Washington DC Syllabus & Itinerary Winter 2015, January 9-23 Brent Bjorkman (
[email protected]) For years, folklorists have made it their lives’ work to help document, present and conserve the traditional arts and cultural heritage of our nation. Even from the earliest days of these passionate pursuits, key figures like Benjamin Botkin, chairman of the Federal Writer’s Project, helped to shape the importance and understanding of these vernacular expressions of culture and “insisted that democracy is strengthened by the valuing of myriad cultural voices” of Americans, not only those of a chosen few. Folklorists have recognized the need to create mechanisms at the national level to foster the growth of their efforts nationwide and to ensure that traditional arts and culture are a national priority. After the turn of the last half of the 20th century these notions to preserve and promote the traditional arts and culture of the country were furthered by the creation of folklife programs within federal cultural entities like the National Endowment for the Arts, the Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian Institution. In this course, we will travel to the nation’s capital to explore the diverse range of work being done in the area of cultural policy as it relates to public folklore documentation, presentation and conservation by the folklife agencies based there. Over this five-day period the class will meet with a variety of cultural policy specialists from The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Park Service, among others.