Related Online Resources

Through blog posts, podcasts and videos presentations of public programs and concerts, you can learn more about the American Folklife Center's collections directly from folklorists, specialists, and performers.

Folklife Today Blog

Folklife Today is a blog for people interested in folklore, folklife, and oral history. The blog features brief articles on folklife topics, highlighting the unparalleled collections of the Library of Congress, especially the American Folklife Center and the Veterans History Project.

View ALL Folklife Today Blog Posts

Highlighted Blog Posts

The highlighted blog posts below focus on the topic of foodways, and offer entry points into food-related materials in the American Folklife Center collections.

Agnes Vanderburg’s Outdoor School for Traditional Indian Ways
Folklorist Stephanie Hall highlights the legacy of Agnes Vanderburg. Vanderburg was a Salish educator who established the now named Agnes Vanderburg Cultural Camp in Montana to pass Salish Indian traditions to younger generations. (Folklife Today bog: November 22, 2016)
Teaching the Japanese Tea Ceremony: Mine Somi Kubose
Stephanie Hall discusses the teaching of the Japanese tea ceremony with a focus on the tea room and teachings of Mine Somi Kubose, who was documented by folklorists in 1977, as part of the AFC's Chicago Ethnic Arts Project Collection. (Folklife Today blog: May 10, 2017)
Summer Festivals and Celebrations
Stephanie Hall discusses food traditions and celebrations during the summer season. (Folklife Today blog: August 23, 2021)
A Possum Crisp and Brown: The Opossum and American Foodways
Folklorist Stephen Winick takes a look at the traditions of hunting, cooking, and eating the only marsupial native to the United States-- the opossum! (Folklife Today blog: August 15, 2019)

American Folklife Center Podcasts

Discover the treasures of the Library through its experts and special guests. Find full podcast series produced by the American Folklife Center by following the links below.

Folklife Today Podcast Series
Folklife Today tells stories about the cultural traditions and folklore of diverse communities, combining brand-new interviews and narration with songs, stories, music, and oral history from the collections of the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center.
America Works Podcast Series
America Works, an ongoing podcast series from the Library of Congress, features the voices of contemporary workers from throughout the United States talking about their lives, their workplaces, and their on-the-job experiences. Drawn from hundreds of longer oral history interviews collected by fieldworkers for the American Folklife Center’s Occupational Folklife Project (OFP), America Works is a testament to the wisdom, wit, knowledge, and dedication of today’s working Americans. These engaging oral histories, which have are preserved in the American Folklife Center’s archive, are enriching and expanding America’s historical record.

Highlighted Podcasts

Below is a selection of Folklife Today podcast episodes featuring food-related traditions and practices, as documented in the American Folklife Center collections.

Agnes Vanderburg's Outdoor School for Traditional Indian Ways (Folklife Today series)
Hosts John Fenn and Stephen Winick Discuss the work of Agnes Vanderburg, a Salish elder from Montana who began an outdoor school to teach traditional native American ways, including Salish language, food preparation, crafting with porcupine quills, making tipis, and traditional medicine.
Festive Foods and Menus (Folklife Today series)
This episode explores festive food traditions, including Thanksgiving and other holiday meals. Stephen Winick reveals what the Pilgrims really ate at the 1621 event many Americans call “The First Thanksgiving.” Megan Harris of the Veterans History Project shares interviews with wartime veterans about festive holiday meals in the military. And former AFC intern Mackenzie Kwok discusses interviews from Center collections about ramps, a stinky wild onion that’s at the center of its own festivals in some Appalachian communities.
Bernardo “Bernie” Piña, Fresh Produce Salesman. Nogales, Arizona (America Works series)
This episode highlights Arizonian Bernardo “Bernie” Piña, the sales manager at Ciruli Brothers, a family-owned fresh produce import company in Nogales, Arizona. For generations, the city of Nogales, which is located directly on the US-Mexican border, has been a major port-of-entry for the buying, selling, and shipping of fresh fruits and vegetables imported into the US and Canada from growers throughout Mexico and Latin America. Mr. Pina, a third-generation produce worker, tells folklorist Nic Hartmann what it’s like to be a salesman in Nogales’ vibrant and close-knit produce industry.

Public Programs

Since its inception in 1976, the American Folklife Center has routinely hosted public programs at the Library of Congress in the form of concerts, lectures, panels, and symposia. From 2006 on, most of these public programs have been video recorded and made available online.

Playlists and Series

There are a number of playlists available on the YouTube page that gather videos from certain seasons of our Homegrown Concert series External or pull together various lectures as a sampler External of the types of topics covered. You can also simply search "folklife" on the YouTube page External to pull up hundreds of videos.

It is also possible to view entire series of American Folklife Center videos on the Library's website. Those links are provided below. Many (if not all) of the same videos can be found on the Library's YouTube channel.

Homegrown Concerts and artist oral histories
Over 200 videos of Homegrown concerts and oral history interviews with artists, dating back to 2005. The concerts take place in the Library's Coolidge Auditorium, Whittall Pavilion, Madison Hall, or a setting of the artists' choosing (largely from 2020 through 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic).
Benjamin Botkin lecture series
Videos from lectures, panels, and symposia that AFC has hosted over the years. The earliest videos are from 2005, and go on up through the most recent events.

Highlighted Public Programs

The below film, "Fermentation with Marlyn McClendon," is part of the American Folklife Center's 2021 Homegrown Foodways in West Virginia film series. Co-produced with the former West Virginia State Folklorist, Emily Hilliard, and Mike Costello and Amy Dawson of West Virginia's Lost Creek Farm, filmmakers Costello and Dawson join Marlyn McClendon (Lobelia, WV) as she explores both her Korean and Appalachian heritage at the dinner table, often preparing traditional Korean foods with ingredients grown or foraged nearby. In the film, Marlyn and her mother, Yong, prepare traditional kimchi and a variety of other Korean dishes for a meal shared with friends and neighbors. (Event date: September 1, 2021)

Also part of the Center's Homegrown Foodways in West Virginia film series is the film, "Foraging and Relations with Jonathan Hall," where filmmakers Costello and Dawson are joined by fellow hunter and forager Dr. Jonathan Hall as they sustainably harvest and preserve ramps. Jonathan reflects on the experience of being a Black outdoorsman hunting and foraging in virtually all-white spaces in rural West Virginia, discussing how racism has created unique barriers to entry to the practice of outdoor foodways traditions in Appalachia. As a teacher to his friends, to his children, and professionally, as a professor, Dr. Hall uses wild food to educate about the conservation of the resources that sustain us, informed by the ethos of "relations" that has guided Indigenous communities for thousands of years before white settlers arrived in Appalachia. (Event date: August 18, 2021)

Foodways: Resources in the American Folklife Center

American Folklife Center: Ask a Librarian