In addition to fieldwork and research collections, the American Folklife Center (AFC) regularly produces concerts, lectures, symposia, podcasts, blog posts and special events featuring occupational folklife, occupational folklore, workers and work-related culture. These AFC events, podcasts and posts are documented and made available online without charge. See below for selected examples.    

Podcasts on Occupational Folklore

The American Folklife Center produces two work-related podcasts: Folklife Today and America Works, both of which are available on the Library of Congress podcast website, as downloadable MP3's, and through other podcast distributors such as Apple, Amazon Music, and Audible.

Selected America Works episodes:

• Emily Daniels, Agricultural Pilot. South Hampton, New Jersey. One of a small but growing number of female agricultural pilots–or, as they are often referred to, “crop dusters” – talks with documentarian Ellen Kendricks about learning to fly planes as a teenager, career challenges, and managing a small family-owned crop spraying business that services farms from New Jersey to Maryland and Texas to Kansas.
• Thomas Sink, Circus Worker, Professional Clown. Mead, Oklahoma. Known to his many fans as “Popcorn the Circus Comic,” Sink is interviewed by oral historians Tanya Finchum and Juliana Nykolaiszyn as part of their AFC-sponsored Archie Green Fellowship to document traveling circus workers who for decades have “wintered over” and settled in and around the small town of Hugo, Oklahoma. 
• Jeff Hafler, Hair Stylist. Wonder Valley, California. Jeff Hafler, hair stylist and owner of The Beauty Bubble Hair Salon and Museum in Wonder Valley, California talks to interviewer Candacy Taylor about why he loves his job, how beauty salons function as impromptu community centers, and why customers confide in their stylists. He talks about his pride in working in the service industry and explains why having a vocation is often a better guarantee of employment than a college degree.

Benjamin A. Botkin Lectures on Occupations, Occupational Folklife and Work

Through the Benjamin A. Botkin Folklife Lecture Series, the American Folklife Center (AFC) presents distinguished scholars and experts speaking to public audiences about their research, current issues and best practices in folklore, folklife, ethnomusicology, oral history and related fields. Lectures are recorded and posted on the Library's website. The series honors Benjamin A. Botkin (1901-1975), a pioneering folklorist who headed the Library's Archive of American Folksong from 1942-1945. A mainstay of AFC public programming since 2004, the series usually features 4-6 events annually. Selected examples of Botkin Lectures on occupation folklore and folklife include: 

Documentarian Candacy Taylor discusses hairdressers and beauty shop culture. Although the practice of styling hair may appear to be based in vanity, hairdressing traditions and styling practices reflect our belief systems about race, class and cultural production. From the hills of San Francisco to the hills of the Appalachian Mountains, from the tip of Provincetown, Massachusetts to the tip of the South Carolina's Gullah Geechee Islands, and from the Lumbees, who were here before there was an America, to Pakistanis who just arrived in Queens, New York, this multimedia presentation gives unprecedented access into the intimate space of the salon.

The dangers and difficulties of certain challenging occupations are sometimes expressed in the tradition of composing and reciting poems, often in the traditional ballad form of rhymed couplets. This tradition, best-known in the cowboy poetry of the American West, also occurs among other occupational groups and is still found among workers in the Pacific Northwest such as loggers, commercial fishers, and miners. Folklorist Jens Lund introduces the fisher and logger poetry genres and discusses their content, style and context.

In this talk about her research as a Fulbright Fellow in Sonora, Mexico, folklorist and anthropologist Maribel Alvarez explores the role of wheat - a grain introduced by the Spanish to Mexico in the 16th century - as a central element in the construction of a distinct regional identity that prides itself on a simultaneous, and often contradictory, association with tradition AND modernity. As an alternative to the corn-based cultures of Mesoamerica and the ancient Southwest, Alvarez's work interrogates the role of social memory, desire, and nostalgia in relationship to the invention of patrimony. Her research on wheat embraces a multidisciplinary approach that illuminates in both scholarly and popular ways the existence of a "wheat-based worldview" in Sonora expressed through what Sonorans eat, how they talk, how they labor, and what they deem to be the greatest contribution of Sonoran farmers to humanity.

Access the following links for more Botkin Lectures related to occupational folklife:

American Folklife Center Symposia on Occupational Folklore, Folklife and Work

The American Folklife Center has an extensive history of presenting public symposia on topics related to folklore and folklife. Several of these symposia have featured scholars, experts, union representatives, workers, and researchers involved in documenting and discussing occupational folklore, occupational folklife, and the history and culture of work and workers. Video documentation of these AFC work-related symposia are available online. Below, find a selection of relevant symposia.

Work and Transformation: Documenting Working Americans Symposium (December 6-7, 2010) was a two-day public event organized and presented at the Library of Congress by the American Folklife Center. Recorded in three (3) sections, the event began with presentations by recipients of AFC's 2010 Archie Green Fellowships on their fieldwork documenting the culture and traditions of contemporary workers in New York, Idaho, and Louisiana. Subsequent panels featured representatives of community-based projects supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) highlighting the role of America's libraries and museums as vibrant centers for the documentation of local oral history and the development of 21st century skills. Symposia speakers also included social and economic policymakers, economists, and historians who explored the value of using personal narratives about work and working to address broader social issues.

This video includes Work and Transformation's Panel 1, featuring three 2010 Archie Green Fellows; Panel 2, titled "Documenting a Transformative Moment: Stories and Statistics about Work"; and the symposium's keynote presentation by Steven Greenhouse, Labor and Workplace Reporter for the New York Times.

Panels 3-7 of the Work and Transformation symposium can be found at the following links:

Laborlore Conversations IV: Documenting Occupational Folklore Then and Now is a symposium on work and laborlore organized by the American Folklife Center in 2007. The symposium was the final in a series of meetings organized by folklorists to discuss "laborlore," an approach to the study and documentation of occupational folklife inspired by the work of pioneering folklorist Archie Green (1917-2009). An initial "Lessons of Work" conference took place at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1995. Subsequent "Laborlore Conversations" were held in Oakland, California (2004), and again in Chapel Hill (2005). This fourth and final conversation was hosted by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress on August 16, 2007. Recordings of the proceeding are available online in four (4) sections: a keynote address and 3 panels. 

Folklorist Nick Spitzer presents his Keynote address at the Laborlore Conversations IV symposium, a talk titled "In Katrina's Wake: The Building Trades in New Orleans." This presentation focuses on the historical and contemporary relationships of skilled building trades workers in New Orleans to the musical and visual culture of their city. Interviews with veteran workers in the local music and work communities reflect the resilience and creative spirit of New Orleans communities as they struggle to rebuild after the devastation caused by the recent flooding of their city.

Video recordings of the three (3) subsequent panels of the Laborlore Conversations IV symposium are available at the following links:

Homegrown Concerts and Conversations 

The American Folklife Center's Homegrown Concert Series presents prerecorded online and live in-person concerts featuring traditional musicians and musical ensembles from around the world. All Homegrown Concerts are recorded and posted to the LOC website, where they are often supplemented by a Conversation with AFC staff about the performers' music, traditions and careers. Homegrown Concerts featuring occupational and work-related performances include:

A singer, farmer, musician, and administrator from midcoastal Main and Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island, New York--(where parts of his family have lived since 1652) --Bennett Konesni performs work songs, including some from the American Folklife Center's Maine collections. Konesni has been singing work songs since he began working on schooners in Maine's Penobscot Bay as a teenager. As a follow up to his performance, he discusses his lifelong engagement with work songs in Conversation with AFC Staff Folklorist Stephen Winick. To read more, see the Folklife Today Blogpost on Bennett's performance from the blog's Homegrown Plus series.

Legendary performer, song writer and activist Si Kahn talks about his life and music with AFC folklorist Stephen Winick. Kahn has worked for more than 45 years as a musician as well as a civil rights, labor and community organizer. (This is Part 1 of 3. For more, listen to Part 2 and Part 3 of the Conversation, and to a virtual Labor Day performance by this legendary singer, civil rights activist, and community organizer.

Additional Homegrown Concerts and Conversations on work and work songs include: