From the Editor

In the heat of a Missouri summer, in 2000, I began the work of editing the Journal of American Folklore. Reinhold Hill, the first graduate student assistant to work on JAF with me, moved a small computer into my office in Tate Hall on the University of Missouri campus. Aware since those early days of the tremendous responsibility of editing this journal, I have had the opportunity to work with several amazing people who have helped to edit this journal over the past five years: Reinhold Hill, Jackie McGrath, David Todd Lawrence, David Allred, LuAnne Roth, Lisa Rathje, Shelley Ingram, Willow Mullins, and Brandy Taylor. I thank them for their meticulous work, dedication to the journal and the discipline, and unflagging sense of humor, even on the darkest of days in some pretty bleak office spaces. Their hard work made it possible for the journal to be sent to the press on time, be as free of errors as was humanly possible, and proudly stand as the signature journal of the American Folklore Society.

Over the years, I have also turned to Shalom Staub and Tim Lloyd, who have both served as executive director of AFS during my tenure as JAF editor; their consistent support, encouragement, and understanding was invaluable when things got hectic or rocky. I thank the various review editors who have served JAF during the past five years: Moira Smith, Peter Narváez, Betty Belanus, Daniel Wojcik, Sharon Sherman, Patricia Sawin, and Pravina Shukla; the members of the JAF editorial board: Diane Goldstein, Barbro Klein, Debora Kodish, Sw. Anand Prahlad, Jeff Todd Titon, and Patricia Turner; the authors of articles, notes, and dialogues; the anonymous reviewers of articles; all the reviewers of books, sound recordings, films, and exhibits; and the various editors at the American Anthropological Association and the University of Illinois Press who have guided the journal from our hands through the editorial and production stages—Julie Peluso, Joyanna Wilson, and Elizabeth Graves (AAA), and Clyde Wantland and Heather Munson (UIP). Without the unique expertise and contribution of each of these individuals, we would surely have despaired. I also want to congratulate the members of the AFS executive board for their continued support and recognition of the importance of the Journal of American Folklore. At the University of Missouri, I need to thank the dean of arts and science, the English department chair and secretaries, and the arts and sciences computer staff for their kind assistance on matters as mundane as mailing codes and as huge as space, computers, and printers that work.

We have all learned a great deal during our time with JAF—about the field and about our colleagues who work as folklorists in many diverse situations. Looking back over five years' worth of journal issues—which total twenty-one in all, including this extra one that we have produced in order to showcase folklorists working in the public/applied sphere—I am pleased to see what we have accomplished. Proudly, we have entered the world of online prepublication of book, sound, film, and exhibit reviews and made back issues of the Journal of American Folklore available via JSTOR and Project MUSE. We have published articles by some of the best-known scholars in our field, as well as articles by new scholars and budding graduate students, folks new to the field in various capacities, and folklorists employed outside the academy. We have offered our readers special issues covering a range of areas: southwestern Louisiana Mardi Gras traditions, folklore in Canada, the Ossian Epic debate, revisiting Bauman's Verbal Art in Performance, creolization, creative ethnography, legends, Africana folklore, and this issue on folklore and the public sphere. We are grateful to the tireless special editors who worked with us to see that these special issues made it to the press.

For this special issue devoted to the work of public folklorists, I cannot thank Patricia Atkinson Wells enough for stepping up to the plate and helping to solicit articles when I was unable to get those submissions myself. We were pleased to receive so many good contributions, and we especially thank those who worked...