Project MUSE®: Journal of American Folklore - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Journal of American Folklore.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 114, no. 451 (2001) through current issueLatest Articles: Journal of American FolkloreTWOProject MUSE®Journal of American Folklore1535-18820021-8715Latest articles in Journal of American Folklore. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Folk Song and the Voice: Toward an Ethnography of Singing
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990494
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it is a stormy thursday night in bloomington, indiana, and I am listening to the same 1962 song recording of late-Appalachian traditional musician Frank Proffitt (1913–1965) for what must be at least the fortieth time. The song is “Shull’s Mills,” a local logging camp song Proffitt first learned in his northwestern North Carolina home in the early 1920s.2 Though Proffitt was often presented as the epitome of the white mountaineer musician, his voice in this recording drips with the sounds of the blues—pitch bends, flattened “blue notes,” shifts between speech and song, anthropomorphizing of sounds from the surrounding environment. In listening to his singing, I hear clear African American influences. Proffitt’s
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallFolk Song and the Voice: Toward an Ethnography of Singing2026-05-16text/htmlen-USFolk Song and the Voice: Toward an Ethnography of Singing2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®1257952026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Analytical and Generic Classification of Persian Folk Poetry
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990495
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in his influential article “analytical categories and ethnic genres,” Dan Ben-Amos (1976:225) questions the utility of universal classification systems and distinguishes between analytical and ethnic taxonomies. He contrasts ethnic genres derived from ethnic classifications with “analytical and theoretical categories” created by experts, emphasizing the importance of classification based on emic criteria. He states that cultural differences among various societies are important, arguing that scholars who create classifications must consider this issue and that universal classifications cannot be prescribed for all societies without regard to cultural differences. Consequently, creating independent emic typologies
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallAnalytical and Generic Classification of Persian Folk Poetry2026-05-16text/htmlen-USAnalytical and Generic Classification of Persian Folk Poetry2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®1114752026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Introduction: Crisis and Action II
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990496
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in the early months of 2025, as our editorial collective took the helm of JAF: A Global Quarterly, our discipline was awakening to the hard realities brought about by newly elected political leadership in the United States that was predictably but rapidly becoming hostile to universities, to cultural institutions, to our disciplines, and to the communities many of us are part of and work within. These challenges remain, as of this writing, vast and intersecting, and their impact expands far beyond the political boundaries of the United States. In the spring of 2025, we issued a call for Perspectives essays that spoke to the theme of “Crisis and Action,” and in the Winter 2026 issue (vol. 139, no. 551), JAF
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallIntroduction: Crisis and Action II2026-05-16text/htmlen-USIntroduction: Crisis and Action II2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®28742026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Folklore and Politics in, and of, General Education Requirements at Universities in the United States
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990497
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setting a precedent for other states, and the educational policy of the second Trump administration (inaugurated in 2025), the Florida state legislature in 2023 passed Senate Bill (SB) 266, which goes beyond the targeting of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) courses for elimination within general education requirements (GER) by establishing governmental controls on the very process by which the curriculum is managed by universities.1 Section 1007.25.3.c of the bill prohibits any courses or programs that teach “identity politics . . . or [are] based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallFolklore and Politics in, and of, General Education Requirements at Universities in the United States2026-05-16text/htmlen-USFolklore and Politics in, and of, General Education Requirements at Universities in the United States2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®696392026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Folklore Without Borders Remains Our Aim
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990498
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in the united kingdom (uk), as elsewhere, the gains made for equality and diversity are coming under increasing attack from a right wing informed—even inspired—by the success of Donald Trump’s Republican Party in the United States. The attacks are politically spearheaded by Reform UK (founded as the Brexit Party), led by Nigel Farage, and sections of the Conservative Party. The Trumpian inspiration is evident in Farage’s regular use of “DEI,” an acronym not found officially in the UK, where equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) is used instead. Local councils led by Reform UK have targeted diversity training, and tailing campaigns by Turning Point UK are aping US attempts to remove particularly LGBTQ+ books from
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallFolklore Without Borders Remains Our Aim2026-05-16text/htmlen-USFolklore Without Borders Remains Our Aim2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®149862026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Disease, Conspiracy Theory, and Ableism in the Current Political Landscape
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990499
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perhaps one of the most difficult challenges for any folklorist to face is the tension between personal belief and the beliefs and practices of our participants, especially when they contain misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. In my experience, many folklorists are adept at practicing thoughtful ethnographic empathy, and discussions about how to conduct ethical fieldwork not only inform our field but also draw people to it. I hope my desire to respect and highlight the real concerns of my participants has been evident in my previous work; however, we must also acknowledge when the information our participants share with us is not only incorrect, but dangerous to both them and others. I do not mean
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallDisease, Conspiracy Theory, and Ableism in the Current Political Landscape2026-05-16text/htmlen-USDisease, Conspiracy Theory, and Ableism in the Current Political Landscape2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®339332026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Fires that Light the Way: On Witnessing Occupied Palestine—and Beyond
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990500
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You are constantly reevaluating this landscape emotionally—you don’t trust it. But you can write about what has been erased from this landscape—those trees don’t disappear from the language, and that way, they almost exist.before framing the perspective of this paper with the structures of scholarly discourse, let me begin with a short anecdote. The day I finished and submitted the first draft of this essay—May 15, 2025, symbolically coinciding with Nakba Day—the University Network for Human Rights published a report detailing the crimes of apartheid in the state of Israel (University Network for Human Rights 2025; see also University Network for Human Rights 2024). I suspected, then, with an almost weary
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallFires that Light the Way: On Witnessing Occupied Palestine—and Beyond2026-05-16text/htmlen-USFires that Light the Way: On Witnessing Occupied Palestine—and Beyond2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®462462026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16How and Why DEI Matters in Ethnology and Folklore
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990501
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For the first time in over 20 years, the world has fewer democracies than autocracies, according to the “Democracy Report” published annually by the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. A “global wave of autocratization” with worrying losses in freedom of expression had caused a decrease in components of democracy in 44 countries by 2024 (Nord et al. 2025:6). With autocratic rule and new strands of illiberalism on the rise, academic freedom is increasingly challenged: Scholars in many countries face the dismantling of diversity programs and the deligitimization of vast areas of research related to ethnology, folklore, and anthropology. Along similar lines, research keywords are banned, and research funding on
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallHow and Why DEI Matters in Ethnology and Folklore2026-05-16text/htmlen-USHow and Why DEI Matters in Ethnology and Folklore2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®303572026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16The Kids Are All Right
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990502
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on february 5, 2025, it looked like the resistance to the second Donald Trump administration was beginning to find footing. The 16 days that had passed since the inauguration had felt like an eternity, each day bringing radical aberrations from accepted procedure and violations of human decency. The Executive Branch was ascendant: Trump had signed 53 Executive Orders by February 5. A rogue Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was taking apart long-standing, essential federal agencies. Project 2025, a political blueprint published by the conservative Heritage Foundation, was being operationalized and its architects installed in positions of power. Republicans in Congress were tacitly rubber-stamping the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallThe Kids Are All Right2026-05-16text/htmlen-USThe Kids Are All Right2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®285892026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Maria Carmen Gambliel (1946–2025)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990503
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Maria Carmen Gambliel, a devoted artist, print-maker, and folklorist, passed away on May 24, 2025, at the age of 79. Born on June 11, 1946, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, she began her artistic journey in Belo Horizonte, where she cofounded the Casa Litográfica and taught at the esteemed Escola Guignard.Maria Carmen moved to the United States in 1981 after receiving a scholarship to the University of New Mexico, where she earned her MA and MFA in printmaking and met her future husband, biochemist Hervé Gambliel. After a time in New Mexico and Dallas, Texas—where she championed cultural initiatives—Maria Carmen settled in Boise, Idaho. Two years later, in 1997, she became director of the Folk and Traditional
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallMaria Carmen Gambliel (1946–2025)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USMaria Carmen Gambliel (1946–2025)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®61992026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Kristin Kuutma (1959–2025)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990504
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Insightful, industrious, intelligent, and internationally renowned, Kristin Kuutma completed her life’s journey on May 16, 2025, at the young age of 66. Born into a stifling Soviet-occupied Estonia in 1959, Kristin often told tales of learning to fire a rifle in the basement of her Tallinn elementary school as part of the Soviet Union’s regular compulsory education in national defense.Kristin discovered folklore studies as a practitioner in the “experimental folkloristics” ensembles Hellero and Leegajus. Singing alongside Estonia’s greatest Seto singers, among them her lifelong friend Õie Sarv, Kristin herself emerged as a master of the art. “When I start to sing a song,” she canted the traditional boast, “village
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallKristin Kuutma (1959–2025)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USKristin Kuutma (1959–2025)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®78582026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Worth W. Long (1936–2025)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990505
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Folklorist and civil rights worker Worth W. Long died on May 8, 2025, in Atlanta, Georgia, at the age of 89. His lifelong dedication to community-centered research and support of musicians, artists, and activists throughout the US South, combined with his documentation of traditions of community organizing, offer vital keys to our understanding of movements for social justice rooted in African American history and culture.From his birth in Durham, North Carolina, in 1936, Worth’s life and work were centered in Southern culture. Before studying at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, he served in the US Air Force in Korea and Japan, where he first became aware of the field of folklore. To broaden his
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallWorth W. Long (1936–2025)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USWorth W. Long (1936–2025)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®54682026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Vilmos Voigt (1940–2025)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990506
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It is with deep sorrow and profound gratitude that I write these lines in memory of my teacher, Professor Vilmos Voigt. To capture his presence in words feels almost impossible. He was at once a towering intellectual figure and an endlessly approachable mentor. His loss leaves not only a silence in Hungarian and European folklore studies but also a personal void for those of us who had the privilege to learn under his guidance.Vilmos Voigt’s scholarly productivity alone seems almost mythical: nearly 2,500 publications in some 20 languages, including 38 monographs. He worked across disciplines with a fluency and natural authority that few people have achieved. His areas of study included folklore studies, literary
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallVilmos Voigt (1940–2025)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USVilmos Voigt (1940–2025)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®62812026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Folklore and Ethnology in the Soviet Western Borderlands: Socialist in Form, National in Content ed. by Toms Ķencis, Simon J. Bronner, and Elo-Hanna Seljamaa (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990507
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Following World War II, the Soviet occupation and ensuing colonial governance influenced the subsequent evolution of numerous Central and Eastern European nations, integrating them into a framework of center-periphery relationships with Moscow. It constituted a shift from the worldwide trajectory of Western cultural and scientific advancement to Marxist-Leninist ideology and cultural practices. The official doctrine of historical materialism, grounded in the interpretation of Marxism in the Soviet Union (USSR), together with the approach of socialist realism supplanted a variety of methodologies, for instance, the historical-geographic method or so-called Finnish school, or the diffusion-ist approach. The USSR’s
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallFolklore and Ethnology in the Soviet Western Borderlands: Socialist in Form, National in Content ed. by Toms Ķencis, Simon J. Bronner, and Elo-Hanna Seljamaa (review)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USFolklore and Ethnology in the Soviet Western Borderlands: Socialist in Form, National in Content ed. by Toms Ķencis, Simon J. Bronner, and Elo-Hanna Seljamaa (review)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®98402026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Weathered Words: Formulaic Language and Verbal Art ed. by Frog and William Lamb (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990508
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Pablo Picasso’s Violin and Grapes—coincidentally produced the same year as Albert Lord’s birth in 1912—serves as the cover image of the eclectic and innovative collection, Weathered Words, the most recent volume in the Publications of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature series. The oil on canvas portrays a single violin seemingly sliced and abstracted into several fluctuating layers, the familiar instrument deconstructed so as to present multiple vantage points. The volume more than delivers on the cover’s promise, opening not with a conventional introduction but rather with a lovely “Prelude” by editors Frog and Lamb: “A Picasso of Perspectives on Formulaic Language.” This choice serves as far more than
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallWeathered Words: Formulaic Language and Verbal Art ed. by Frog and William Lamb (review)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USWeathered Words: Formulaic Language and Verbal Art ed. by Frog and William Lamb (review)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®88682026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Singular Spaces II: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments by Jo Farb Hernández (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990509
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When I first read Jo Farb Hernández’ 2013 publication Singular Spaces (now Singular Spaces I, Raw Vision), I thought she had literally and metaphorically written the book on art environments. That initial volume remains a tour de force in studies of material culture and is well worth reading in connection with her new publication. In the 11 years since Singular Spaces I, Hernández continued to complete research and documentation throughout Spain. Singular Spaces II adds, in a two-volume set, to her incredible and extensive documentation, making the three volumes a required trilogy for anyone interested in art environments, vernacular architecture, folk art, and occupational folklife. Her own engagement with her
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallSingular Spaces II: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments by Jo Farb Hernández (review)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USSingular Spaces II: From the Eccentric to the Extraordinary in Spanish Art Environments by Jo Farb Hernández (review)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®94862026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16The Medical Carnivalesque: Folklore Among Physicians by Lisa Gabbert (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990510
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The Medical Carnivalesque: Folklore Among Physicians is based on the concept of the carnivalesque, introduced by literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin to describe the comic writings of French Renaissance author François Rabelais. Carnivalesque, known as grotesque realism, symbolically and temporarily subverts official forms of power associated with the body. This concept serves as an interpretative approach to humor-based physician folklore. In the introduction, Lisa Gabbert strongly establishes the research approach and theoretical framework, arguing that “medicine is a fertile arena for the comic because medicine grapples with life, death, suffering, and the body” (p. 2). She asserts that medical humor goes deeper
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallThe Medical Carnivalesque: Folklore Among Physicians by Lisa Gabbert (review)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USThe Medical Carnivalesque: Folklore Among Physicians by Lisa Gabbert (review)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®93672026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Catholicism and Native Americans in Early North America: Parish, Church, and Mission ed. by Kathleen Deagan (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990511
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Kathleen Deagan’s edited collection, Catholicism and Native Americans in Early North America, offers readings that engage with issues of the frontier and borderlands within a diverse historiography that dates not only to some of the earliest of prominent American historians— such as Francis Parkman, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Herbert Bolton—but also to more recent analyses from Bonnie McEwan and Amy Bushnell. The book’s subtitle, Parish, Church, and Mission, concentrates the investigations on issues of faith, practice, and conversion, with special attention to the life and work of Michael Gannon, a leading historian of the Spanish frontier and La Florida to whom the book is dedicated. Gannon’s The Cross in the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallCatholicism and Native Americans in Early North America: Parish, Church, and Mission ed. by Kathleen Deagan (review)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USCatholicism and Native Americans in Early North America: Parish, Church, and Mission ed. by Kathleen Deagan (review)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®91622026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16The Consolations of Humor and Other Folklore Essays by Elliott Oring (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990512
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Elliott Oring has earned a reputation for nuanced critical thinking as both a folklorist and a humor scholar. His latest compilation of essays, all but two of which are reprints or revisions of previously published articles, advances his standing in both fields while also pointing out problem areas in both. In the first half of the book (chapters 1 through 5), Oring continues his critical approach to the study of jokes. In the second half (chapters 6 through 9), he pursues critical appraisals of key concepts in folkloristics. As the book title suggests, he approaches humor using the ethnographic methods of a folklorist, but he is also rigorously critical of any received truths, whether in humor studies or in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallThe Consolations of Humor and Other Folklore Essays by Elliott Oring (review)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USThe Consolations of Humor and Other Folklore Essays by Elliott Oring (review)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®86322026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Holy Wells of Ireland: Sacred Realms and Popular Domains ed. by Celeste Ray and Finbar McCormick (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990513
<p></p>
Celeste Ray has done it again: another tour de force on Ireland’s storied and memorable holy wells. In this multidisciplinary approach, Ray, Chair of Anthropology and Director of the Environmental Arts and Humanities Program at Sewanee, and McCormick, retired senior lecturer from the School of Natural and Built Environment at Queen’s University Belfast, have assembled impressive cross-disciplinary articles from archaeology, hydrology, and biomedicine, as well as from history, folklore, art, anthropology, and history.There are sacred springs on all continents and in all faith traditions. Charlemagne destroyed many wells on the European continent because of their pagan past, but early Irish Christianity tolerated
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallHoly Wells of Ireland: Sacred Realms and Popular Domains ed. by Celeste Ray and Finbar McCormick (review)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USHoly Wells of Ireland: Sacred Realms and Popular Domains ed. by Celeste Ray and Finbar McCormick (review)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®92752026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Rugs, Guitars, and Fiddling: Intensification and the Rich Modern Lives of Traditional Arts by Chris Goertzen (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990514
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Chris Goertzen’s Rugs, Guitars, and Fiddling represents decades of dedicated fieldwork with traditional craftspeople and performers around the globe. Consistent with other seminal folkloristics studies, this expansive project constitutes the synthesis of Goertzen’s numerous past academic endeavors, drawing on his lasting study of Mexican handicraft and fiddling practices in both Norway and the United States, and welcoming a novel interest in American luthiery. This book is relevant not just to scholars of traditional craft and musical performance, but also to those interested broadly in the study of material culture and cultural sustainability. Likewise, this text sits at the nexus of folklore studies
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallRugs, Guitars, and Fiddling: Intensification and the Rich Modern Lives of Traditional Arts by Chris Goertzen (review)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USRugs, Guitars, and Fiddling: Intensification and the Rich Modern Lives of Traditional Arts by Chris Goertzen (review)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®89352026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Clitso Dedman, Navajo Carver: His Art and His World by Rebecca M. Valette (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990515
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Clitso Dedman, Navajo Carver: His Art and His World recounts the exceptional life and legacy of Diné (Navajo) businessman and artist Clitso Dedman (1867–1953). Remarkably, this project began by chance after Rebecca Valette stumbled upon a set of carvings by Dedman on display at Adobe Gallery in Albuquerque. For the next 25 years, Valette embarked on an ambitious journey to recover the scattered pieces of archival material and oral histories of Dedman’s life and art.This project is ambitious for three reasons. First, one of the primary goals for Valette was to create a full-length biography about Dedman in order to put his artistic trajectory into perspective and to remediate the resounding phrase, often used to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallClitso Dedman, Navajo Carver: His Art and His World by Rebecca M. Valette (review)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USClitso Dedman, Navajo Carver: His Art and His World by Rebecca M. Valette (review)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®86072026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Voodoo: An African American Religion by Jeffrey Anderson (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990516
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In Voodoo: An African American Religion, Jeffrey Anderson attempts to collect and catalog the spirits, rituals, and practitioners of Voodoo in the Mississippi River Valley to serve two main arguments. First is that Voodoo, as practiced in this region, is an African American faith connected to other religions in the African diaspora like Haitian Vodou and those of West African nations like Benin. Anderson concedes that the Voodoo practitioners who are the book’s subjects were “drawn from all segments of society,” but he contends that Voodoo is an African American tradition because, by the nineteenth century, white participants were “always described as being in the minority” (p. 6). Second, and most controversially
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallVoodoo: An African American Religion by Jeffrey Anderson (review)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USVoodoo: An African American Religion by Jeffrey Anderson (review)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®81922026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Monsters and Saints: LatIndigenous Landscapes and Spectral Storytelling ed. by Shantel Martinez and Kelly Medina-López (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990517
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Monsters and Saints: LatIndigenous Landscapes and Spectral Storytelling, edited by Shantel Martinez and Kelly Medina-López, offers a critical, creative, and multimodal anthology rooted in the hauntings of belonging in liminal spaces of Turtle Island, extending from former New Spain through South America, with great attention focused on the US-Mexico borderlands. Unlike Frederick Turner’s Frontier Thesis, which projected the Western United States as an area of uninhabited land known as the frontier, Monsters and Saints challenges notions of imperialist settler colonialism that view the borderlands as a space “devoid of human life” through the logic of Border Indigeneity (p. 7). This Border Indigenous logic of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallMonsters and Saints: LatIndigenous Landscapes and Spectral Storytelling ed. by Shantel Martinez and Kelly Medina-López (review)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USMonsters and Saints: LatIndigenous Landscapes and Spectral Storytelling ed. by Shantel Martinez and Kelly Medina-López (review)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®104862026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16The Folklore of Devon by Mark Norman (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990518
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Sixty years ago, Theo Brown, the great folklorist of Devon, wrote:Devon, like Cornwall, suffers from its popularity. Everyone knows something about its folklore—pixies, Widecombe Fair, Drake’s Drum, the Great Devon Mystery of 1855, the White Bird of the Oxenhams, even the fictitious Hound of the Baskervilles. Such romantic items—even when misunderstood or even invented—are sufficient for most people, and the more important—and more interesting— things are overlooked.Devon is an area where popular works on folklore abound, as Devon’s folklore is celebrated in film, literary fiction, and as a central theme of local tourism. I recall reading The Hound of the Baskervilles with great interest in my youth, as well as
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallThe Folklore of Devon by Mark Norman (review)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USThe Folklore of Devon by Mark Norman (review)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®96382026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Escaramuza, the Poetics of Home (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990519
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Escaramuza, the Poetics of Home is a stunning exhibition of photographs by award-winning photographer Constance Jaeggi featuring escaramuza riders in several communities around the United States. Included with the photographs are poems based on Jaeggi’s interviews with riders written by Mexican American poets Angelina Sáenz and ire’ne lara silva. The opening of the exhibition at Chicago’s Poetry Foundation began with an artist’s talk featuring Jaeggi’s discussion of the project, poetry readings by Sáenza and lara silva, and brief introductions to several local riders who were wearing their escaramuza dresses. One rider from Indiana told us that escaramuza has been a long tradition in her family; she started at age
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallEscaramuza, the Poetics of Home (review)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USEscaramuza, the Poetics of Home (review)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®138652026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16The Complete Friends of Old Time Music Concert: Bessie Jones, John Davis & the Georgia Sea Island Singers with Mississippi Fred McDowell and Ed Young (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990520
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By the early 1960s, the American folk music revival was at its zenith. Clean-cut, college-educated groups such as The Kingston Trio, The Brothers Four, and The Limeliters wailed their way to stardom by covering such folk standards as “Tom Dooley,” “This Train,” and “The Midnight Special.” Fans of this type of music could also get grittier sounding fare through the work of Bob Dylan, Odetta, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. But even these offerings were by people striving to approximate various folk traditions rather than expressing those of their own upbringing, their own direct cultural inheritance.The Friends of Old Time Music (FOTM) worked to change this situation. The directors of this organization included Jean
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallThe Complete Friends of Old Time Music Concert: Bessie Jones, John Davis & the Georgia Sea Island Singers with Mississippi Fred McDowell and Ed Young (review)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USThe Complete Friends of Old Time Music Concert: Bessie Jones, John Davis & the Georgia Sea Island Singers with Mississippi Fred McDowell and Ed Young (review)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®79732026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Things Done Changed by Jerron Paxton (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990521
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The seed of Black folk music have sprouted some original compositions that I have managed to sneak in on audiences without them necessarily knowing they weren’t composed by one of my forebears. I would like to think that these modern observations are just a small contribution to the tapestry of Black Folk Music.As someone who lives, performs, conserves, and preserves the traditions of Black American folk music, I recognize Things Done Changed as more than an album—it’s a living archive, an aural ethnography of Black traditional expression. Jerron Paxton isn’t just playing old songs or mimicking styles; he’s embodying, breathing, and disseminating a deep cultural inheritance. With this Smithsonian Folkways release
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallThings Done Changed by Jerron Paxton (review)2026-05-16text/htmlen-USThings Done Changed by Jerron Paxton (review)2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®88792026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16Information about Contributors
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990522
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Marzie Azimi is a PhD candidate in Education at the Australian Catholic University (ACU), focusing on children’s literature. Her doctoral studies build on earlier academic research in folk literature and folklore, which has resulted in several publications on argot (secret language), Salavat-khani and quatrain as independent genres in Persian folk literature, and work song and fairy tales.Čarna Brković is Professor of Cultural Studies and European Ethnology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. She has been a board member of International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF) (2021–2025), a member of the SIEF DEI task force, and has served as President of SIEF since June 2025. Her research focuses on
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/87/image/coversmallInformation about Contributors2026-05-16text/htmlen-USInformation about Contributors2026-05-162026TWOProject MUSE®84702026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-05-16