The 2012 AWSF meeting is scheduled for April 15-18 in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Planning is just getting underway, but there will be a one-day professional development workshop, two days of discussions, and a field trip to Laramie. We will be staying at the historic Plains Hotel in downtown Cheyenne (www.theplainshotel.com), right across the street from the Union Pacific Depot pictured here. Stay tuned for more details.

Andrea

The annual meeting of the Association of Western States Folklorists (AWSF) is scheduled for April 10-14 in Virginia City, Nevada. See the attached PDF for all the pertinent information, including a registration form and a draft agenda. We are very excited that Betsy Peterson will be joining us to facilitate a day-long discussion on the present state and future possibilities of public folklore, thanks to a Best Practices Consultancy grant from the American Folklore Society.

AWSF 2011 Registration Information & Form

The AWSF is happy to invite applicants for the scholarship entitled The Bea Roeder Fund: For the Future of Public Folklore in the West.
This fund, named in honor of western folklorist Bea Roeder (pronounced ray-der), provides support for graduate and undergraduate students and community scholars with demonstrated interest in a career in public folklore, to attend the annual Association of Western States Folklorists (AWSF) meeting. AWSF has established this Fund as a way to celebrate Bea’s life and work and to create opportunities for networking and professional development for a new generation of public folklorists and cultural workers. The fund is administered by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) on behalf of AWSF. The Bea Roeder Fund will be awarded to graduate and undergraduate students or community scholars who show a demonstrated interest in public sector folklore. The fund will provide the recipient(s) up to $400 to be used to attend the annual Association of Western States’ Folklorists meeting, to be held in Virginia City, Nevada, from April 10-14, 2011.

To apply, download this Word document or this PDF file and return to the address listed by February 18, 2011.

For more information please contact Nelda Ault at neldarenae@gmail.com or 435-245-6050.

To make a contribution to the Bea Roeder Fund, you many contact Amy Kitchener at 559-237-9813 or akitch@actaonline.org.

Nelda Ault is the education director at the American West Heritage Center in northern Utah, and was one of the Bea Roeder Fund awardees in 2007. She writes, “The AWSF meeting is one of the best conferences you’ll ever attend, in or out of the field of folklore. While other conferences are built on paper presentations, this one focuses on guest speakers, roundtable presentations, field trips, and discussions about things that public folklorists need and want to know. Everybody goes home with new ideas, new opportunities for collaboration, and a stronger sense of the network of folklorists that are out there, fighting the good fight (oh, and an appreciation for regional food, thanks to The Graze). Even if you’re a student who’s not quite sure where your course of folklore study will take you, I’d suggest getting to know the AWSF. When I turned up at my first conference in Rapid City, South Dakota, it didn’t take me long to feel a little bit at home with the members of this group (despite my initial hesitations when I realized that I was rubbing shoulders with Great Folklorists known only to me by their publications that I studied and their contributions to PUBLORE).

“Mid-April is sometimes a rough time in the semester to talk yourself into going off to Nevada for a few days, but it’ll be worth it. Apply for the Bea Roeder Fund scholarship and get yourself to Virginia City in a few months!”

AWSF members in South Dakota, 2007. Nelda's standing behind Annie Hatch (in green) and Darcy Minter (in stripes). She's so excited to be there that her eyes are closed.

Contribute to the conversation via Twitter, Thursday and Friday, November 18 and 19, 2010:

Hashtag: #ofn2010

We want to congratulate our winner of the 2010 Bea Roeder Fund Scholarship, University of Oregon graduate student Al Bersch.  In lieu of this year’s meeting, Mr. Bersch will be invited to use the scholarship to attend the 2011 AWSF meeting.  A bit about Al:

Al is a graduate student in folklore at the University of Oregon. His
ethnography work with commercial fishers will culminate in an exhibit
this spring at the Maritime Museum in Newport, Oregon. Al has also
worked on a photography project with loggers and foresters in
southeastern British Colombia. He is interested in how logging and
fishing are important to the social identity of many communities in
the Pacific Northwest and how resource extraction industries are
connected with such issues as environmental change, political policy,
and economic decline.

Also….

AWSF invites applicants for its scholarship titled “The Bea Roeder Fund: For the Future of Public Folklore in the West.”

This fund, named in honor of western folklorist Bea Roeder, provides support for graduate and undergraduate students and community scholars with demonstrated interest in a career in public folklore, to attend the annual Association of Western States Folklorists (AWSF) meeting. AWSF has established this Fund as a way to celebrate Bea’s life and work and to create opportunities for networking and professional development for a new generation of public folklorists and cultural workers. The fund is administered by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) on behalf of AWSF. The Bea Roeder Fund will be awarded to graduate and undergraduate students or community scholars who show a demonstrated interest in public sector folklore. The fund will provide the recipient(s) up to $400 to be used to attend the annual Association of Western States’ Folklorists meeting, to be held in Virginia City, Nevada, from April 11-15, 2010.

To apply, download this Word document or this PDF file and return to the address listed by February 12, 2010.

For more information please contact Georgia Wier at georgiawier@gmail.com or 970-590-3933 (cell).

To make a contribution to the Bea Roeder Fund, you many contact Amy Kitchener at 559-237-9813 or akitch@actaonline.org.

Here is one more place to reference the AWSF Annual Meeting agenda for 2009 in Port Townsend.

Cheers!

- Ross Fuqua

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: James Frey, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, (702) 595-9409
Email: frey@unlv.nevada.edu
Website: http://www.nevadahumanities.org

CHRISTINA BARR APPOINTED EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF NEVADA HUMANITIES

Reno, Nev., Jan. 8, 2009 – Christina Barr, program outreach coordinator at the Western Folklife Center in Elko, Nev., has been named executive director of Nevada Humanities. Barr previously served as folklife program associate for the Nevada Arts Council in Las Vegas. She will assume her new duties Jan. 15, 2009, taking over from executive director, Judith Winzeler, who is retiring after 24 years at the helm of the organization.

“We are extraordinarily pleased that Christina will join us as executive director,” said Jim Frey, chair of the Nevada Humanities board of trustees. “She brings a strong record of leadership and demonstrates a particularly strong understanding of programming, fundraising and nonprofit administration. We had a very strong pool of candidates, but Christina stood out.”

The Nevada Humanities board of trustees will be honoring Winzeler’s impressive service by reinstituting an annual award and naming it the Winzeler Humanities Award, to be given each year to people and organizations making significant contributions to the support and understanding of the humanities in Nevada. “Judy is the person who has certainly done the most to meet the standards of excellence associated with the award,” said Frey.

“Nevada Humanities is positioned to move to the next level,” said Christina Barr. “I am impressed by the organization’s strategic plan and the new directions in which we are moving. The staff is outstanding. They are devoted to the cultural life of the state, and they want Nevada Humanities to have a positive impact on the lives of Nevadans.”

During her years at the Western Folklife Center, Barr undertook research projects around the West on topics ranging from contemporary Latino culture in Nevada and the Pacific Northwest, to creating social networks through community foodways. These projects encouraged thoughtful engagement of issues important to the region such as the use of natural resources, immigration, rapid change and sense of place. At the heart of Barr’s work has been a strong desire to bring people together to encourage creative expression, strengthen community and invigorate the region’s cultural wealth.

In addition to her work with the Western Folklife Center, Barr has regularly consulted with agencies and organizations around the country. “I have assisted on traditional arts programs, grant review panels and evaluations,” Barr said. “I am currently the chair of the Public Programs Section of the American Folklore Society representing colleagues around the world as we share ideas and research, and develop new initiatives.”

Christina Barr likes to quote author Wallace Stegner who wrote “no place is a place until it has had a poet.” She believes this is especially true of Nevada where poetry has articulated important shared truths and contributed to the state’s sense of identity. “This is the power of the humanities,” Barr said, “to embrace, interpret, reveal and preserve our important cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible. I have worked in Nevada’s cities and isolated rural counties, and I’ve met Nevadans from all walks of life, of diverse ethnicities and backgrounds, with different beliefs, hopes, and fears.”

Barr holds a master’s in folklore from Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. She has also worked as a folklorist for the Nevada Arts Council and the Vermont Folklife Center.

For more information about Nevada Humanities, call (775) 784-6587 or 1-800-382-5023 in northern Nevada; or (702) 895-1878 in southern Nevada. Visit http://www.nevadahumanities.org .