TITLE: Work & Transformation: Panels 5, 6 & 7
SPEAKER: Nancy Groce, Stephen Winick, Robert McCarl, Steven Zeitlin, Jennifer Correa, Donna S. Rothstein, Mark Popovich, C. Kurt Dewhurst, Joyce Ray, Michael Taft, Mary L. Chute, Christina L. Barr
EVENT DATE: 12/07/2010
FORMAT: Video + Captions
RUNNING TIME: 188 minutes
TRANSCRIPT: View Transcript (link will open in a new window)
DESCRIPTION:
This symposium featured presentations by the 2010 recipients of the American Folklife Center's Archie Green Fellowships on their research and documentation of the culture and traditions of American workers in New York, Idaho, and Louisiana. Panels also included representatives of community-based documentation projects supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services concerning the role of America's libraries and museums as vibrant centers for the documentation of oral history and the development of 21st century skills. Speakers also included social and economic policymakers, who explored the value of using personal narratives about work to address broader social issues.
Speaker Biography: A folklife specialist at the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center, Nancy Groce is trained as a folklorist and ethnomusicologist and has extensive experience in cultural programming. Prior to her work at the Library, she served as a curator at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (2000-2007), where she was in charge of major Smithsonian Folklife Festival programs on Northern Ireland (2007), Alberta (2006), Scotland (2003), and New York City (2001). After previous positions include as senior program officer for the New York Council for the Humanities (1986-1995), borough folklorist for Brooklyn (1995-1997) and Staten Island, New York (1983-1986), and fellowships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. She received a Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan (1982) and also holds an M.M. in Ethnomusicology/ American Music and an M.A. in American Culture. Author of numerous books and articles, she has been involved with a wide variety of scholarly projects, exhibitions, concerts, symposia, conferences, lecture series, media projects, and public presentations. On-going responsibilities at the Library of Congress include the Benjamin Botkin Lecture Series, a monthly Treasures from the American Folklife Center radio program on XM Sirius Radio, the 2009 Inauguration Sermons & Oration Project, and serving as the staff liaison with StoryCorps.
Speaker Biography: Stephen Winick is the writer and editor for the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. He has a master's degree and a Ph.D. in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught folklore courses at the University of Pennsylvania and George Mason University, and has published widely on folklore and folk music in both academic and popular publications. His academic publications include articles on British folksongs and ballads, American proverbs, and medieval English literature. He is the editor, with Kimberly Lau and Peter Tokofsky, of "What Goes Around Comes Around: The Circulation of Proverbs in Everyday Life." He has also been a music journalist for many years, covering folk and traditional music and song of Britain, Ireland, Europe and North America, for such publications as Dirty Linen magazine and The All Music Guide.
Speaker Biography: Robert McCarl is a 2010 Archie Green Fellowship recipient and professor in the Sociology Department at Boise State University. He has published widely on work culture, focusing on the variety of ways internal diversity and external social and economic pressures result in change. His published works include analyses of both urban and wildland fire fighting, sheet-metal work, hard-rock mining, and a variety of other occupations. In addition to studying the changing cultures of work, McCarl has also examined the intersection of work and ethnicity, region and gender, particularly within Latino and Native American communities. Recently, McCarl has been doing fieldwork in Idaho's Silver Valley, where he was interviewed miners, loggers, millworkers, bike shop owners, water engineers, environmentalist, and others valley residents about the conflicts and shared common challenges of living in one of the largest superfund sites in the United States.
Speaker Biography: Steven Zeitlin a 2010 Archie Green Fellowship recipient, received his Ph.D. in Folklore from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.A. in Literature from Bucknell University. He is the director and co-founder of City Lore, an organization dedicated to the preservation of New York City's and America's living cultural heritage. Prior to arriving in New York, he served as a folklorist at the Smithsonian Institution for eight years. He has taught at George Washington University, American University, NYU, and Cooper Union; served as a regular commentator for the nationally syndicated radio shows, Crossroads and Artbeat; and currently develops segments on "The Poetry of Everyday Life" for NPR's The Next Big Thing. His commentaries have appeared on the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times and Newsday, and he also co-produces the storytelling series "American Talkers" for NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday and Morning Edition. Zeitlin is the author and co-author of five award-winning books including "The Grand Generation: Memory Mastery and Legacy" (l987); "Because God Loves Stories: An Anthology of Jewish Storytelling" (1997); and "Giving a Voice to Sorrow: Personal Responses to Death and Mourning" (2001), as well as three children's books and, most recently, a volume of poetry, "I Hear America Singing in the Rain" (2003).
Speaker Biography: Jennifer Correa is manager of the Science Career Ladder Program at the New York Hall of Science, in Queens, New York. She oversees all aspects of the program which constitutes 150 active participants and more than 1,000 alumni, and leads key efforts for the NSF-funded CLUSTER project designed to support pre-service teachers who work as Explainers, and at the IMLS-funded SCL Dissemination program. Correa initially joined the Science Career Ladder program as a summer intern from a local high school for pregnant and parenting teens. Over the last 12 years, Correa has climbed through the Science Career Ladder program while earning her B.A. in media studies from Queens College and M.A. in Public Administration from Baruch College.
Speaker Biography: Donna S. Rothstein is a research economist with the National Longitudinal Surveys Program at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. She has published articles on education, youth employment, and gender and supervision. Current research projects include examining the effect of breastfeeding on children's early cognitive outcomes, and how neighborhood quality and youths' cognitive test scores interact in predicting subsequent educational attainment. Donna received her A.B. in economics and English from Bryn Mawr College in 1990, and her Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University in 1995.
Speaker Biography: Mark Popovich is a senior program officer at the Hitachi Foundation and is responsible for its Business and Communities Grants Program. This program supports corporate social responsibility. It also makes investments aimed at improving prospects for lower wealth people through skills training and career development. Popovich has helped shape the biannual State of Corporate Citizenship Surveys with Boston College and has contributed to the development of two national multi-foundation initiatives, the Jobs to Career Initiative and the National Fund for Workforce Solutions.
Speaker Biography: Kurt Dewhurst is the director of Arts and Cultural Initiatives and senior fellow of University Outreach and Engagement, curator of Folklife and Cultural Heritage, MSU Museum, and professor of English at Michigan State University. Previously, he served as the director of the Michigan State University Museum and director of the Center for Great Lakes Culture. A founder of the Folk Arts Division at the museum, he coordinates a variety of folklife research, collection development, and outreach programs. He currently serves as the chair of the Board of Directors for the American Folklife Center and president of the American Folklore Society. He has served as chair of the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs, vice chair of the Michigan Council for the Humanities, president of the Michigan Museum Association, chair of the Advisory Committee of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, and chair of Board of the Fund for Folk Culture. He is the author or co-author of many publications focusing on folk and traditional arts, South African arts and culture, and museum and cultural heritage practice and policy. He has currently involved in international partnerships in South Africa and China.
Speaker Biography: Joyce Ray is the IMLS's associate deputy director for Library Services and has directed its Discretionary Library Programs since 1997. An archivist by training, Ray also has responsibility for agency-wide digital initiatives. Prior to joining IMLS, she held positions as assistant program director for Technological Evaluation and acting program director, National Historical Publications and Records Commission; special assistant to the archivist, National Archives and Records Administration; and head of Special Collections at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. She is a member of the program committee of the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, is the U.S. organizer of the International Digital Cultural Content Forum, and is the principal organizer of the annual IMLS Web-Wise Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital World. She holds a MLS degree from the University of Texas at Austin, a Ph.D. in American history, with a specialty in the social history of women and medicine in the U.S., and has taught women's history at Georgetown University.
Speaker Biography: Michael Taft is head of the archive of the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. He holds a Ph.D. in Folklore from Memorial University of Newfoundland and an MLIS from the University of Alberta. While he has spent the last fifteen years as an ethnographic archivist, with previous positions as curator of the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina and archivist at the Vermont Folklife Center, he spent twenty-five years as a folklore professor, fieldworker and researcher. Among his work on occupational traditions, he studied professional musicians in Newfoundland, dance teachers in Saskatchewan, movie theater employees in Saskatoon, university professors at the University of Saskatchewan, librarians in Edmonton, and archaeologists in Nova Scotia.
Speaker Biography: Mary Chute has served as IMLS deputy director for libraries since April 2002. She also served as the agency's acting director from June 2005 to March 2006. She holds master's degrees in art history (Boston University) and library science (Simmons College). Before joining IMLS, Chute held positions in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Delaware, where she was state librarian. Throughout her career in public libraries, Chute has been engaged in staff development and customer satisfaction, promoting library services through outreach and resource sharing. In her current position, she is responsible for developing programs and partnerships that build institutional capacity and foster leadership and innovation for libraries, museums, and archives. Chute oversees all library programs at IMLS, including the Grants to States Program, the National Leadership Grants Program, the Librarians for the 21st Century Program, the Native American Library Services Program, and the Native Hawaiian Library Services Program.
Speaker Biography: Christina Barr has served as the executive director of Nevada Humanities, Nevada's nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, since 2009. Previously she worked as program outreach coordinator for the Western Folklife Center, folklife program associate for the Nevada Arts Council, and as archivist/folklorist for the Vermont Folklife Center. In 2006 she joined with folklorist Craig Miller to found the Salt Lake City based nonprofit Culture Conservation Corps. She holds an M.A. in folklore from Memorial University of Newfoundland and a B.A. in Slavic cultural studies from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Barr has documented traditional art forms, communities, and cultural issues around North America and abroad, and has shared this work through the production of public programs, festivals, exhibitions, presentations, scholarly projects, conferences, media projects, and community based cultural work. In 2007 she received an Electronic Media Award for Best Documentary by Las Vegas Women in Communications for The 24 Hour Show radio series, which shares the lives and experiences of Las Vegas' casino and entertainment industry workers. She is an active participant in national and regional cultural organizations, and has served as a panelist and consultant for numerous organizations and agencies around the country.
