From the Editor

This issue of JAF presents several different views and considerations of the concept of “creolization.” The coeditors, Robert Baron and Ana Cara, as well as the other authors in this special issue, have stretched the utility of this term/concept to reach far beyond its usually narrow confines, especially as it has been recognized in the American south. The concept, as examined in these pages, has the potential for folklore studies and cultures in a postmodern global perspective. The JAF editor and staff are excited to present this special issue. To give credit where it is due, this issue of JAF was first solicited by Jack Santino while he was still general editor; the current staff is pleased to report that this is the last of several special issues that were initiated by Jack and his staff before the journal came to Missouri.

As Robert and Ana explain in their introduction, this issue has been several years in the making. The papers stem from a panel entitled “Metaphors and Models of/for Creolization,” organized by the coeditors at the 1995 American Folklore Society meeting in Lafayette, Louisiana, and from Nicholas R. Spitzer’s plenary address at the same meeting. Earlier versions of the articles by John F. Szwed, Robert Baron, and Ana C. Cara were presented at this panel. Daniel J. Crowley, Baron, Cara, Szwed and Roger D. Abrahams were also among the participants in previous AFS panels on creolization, dating back to the 1976, 1980, and 1991 annual meetings. This special issue, then, offers nearly two decades of thinking and writing about this concept and how it might affect the work that folklorists do where cultures meet, mix, and create new forms.

As the coeditors also note in their introduction, this issue was to have included an article written by Daniel J. Crowley. Unfortunately, Professor Crowley died before his article could be finished. We join with the coeditors and the authors of this special issue in dedicating this issue to the memory of Dan Crowley.