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The Center for Folklore and
Ethnography
| From 1999 until 2008,
the Center for
Folklore and Ethnography had a three-fold
mission to: |
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foster an exchange of ideas among
scholars, students and the general public concerning the perspectives
that folklore and ethnography provide on the making of social life in
the past and present. Emphasizing such topics as the formation of
vernacular culture, symbolic communication and exchange, and the making
of the self, the Center engages the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of
lived cultures in the region. |
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initiate and coordinate practical
programs on both the graduate and undergraduate levels, both designing
and implementing ethnographic fieldwork. These programs draw on
community and cultural resources already in existence, by meeting with
and entering into formal research partnerships or co-sponsorship of
exhibitions, concerts, colloquia, publications and publicity with
cognate organizations in the Delaware Valley and through the
mid-Atlantic region. |
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initiate conferences and seminars
for the University community, the greater Delaware valley, and the
mid-Atlantic region. It may also host international symposia on larger
themes of tradition, ethnicity, heritage, and the cultural consequences
of global developments. |
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The Center's research
and teaching program met the needs of faculty and students across
disciplines in the School of Arts and Sciences, including folklore,
English, anthropology, environmental studies, comparative literature,
and religious studies, as well as the schools of Medicine, Nursing, and
Planning and Design. |
| Photographers
Lyntha Scott Eiler (center) and Martha Cooper (lower right) evaluate
the work of student participants in an Ethnographic Photography
workshop held in 2003. |
The Center for Folklore and Ethnography grounded
graduate education in the living, ethnically diverse culture of the
region. Coordinating regional projects in folklore fieldwork for both
graduate and undergraduate students. Field materials, housed in the
Folklore Archive, contribute to the goal of
preservation of regional cultural resources.
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| Leah Lowthorpe,
folklore graduate student, with Washington Bai and Robert Flahn, elders
from West Philadelphia's Agape African Senior Citizen Center, during a
2006 visit to the University Museum, where the seniors spoke to
students and
the collection curator about artifacts collected from Liberia during
the 19th century. The visit was arranged as part of a service learning
course, "Exploring Memory and Tradition in Philadelphia Communities."
Photo by Rebecca Sherman '06. |
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