MACS Faculty Member Selina Morales Selected to Participate in American Folklore Society’s Summer Folklore Institute

M.A. in Cultural Sustainability (MACS) faculty member Selina Morales has been selected to participate in the American Folklore Society’s 2018 China-Japan-U.S. Summer Folklore Institute, which will take place at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe in June.

Morales will be one of three faculty members (one from each country) working alongside six participants (two from each country)—the participants are graduate students or early-career folklorists in the first five or six years after their schooling. The topic of the institute, on which both faculty and participants will make presentations based on their own work, is “How Communities Present Themselves to Others.” The institute is a partnership between the American Folklore Society, the China Folklore Society and the Folklore Society of Japan.

The institute is intended to provide classroom and field learning experiences on the topic; to educate early-career folklore studies professionals about folklore and intangible cultural heritage scholarship and public practice as it is carried out in China, Japan, and the U.S.; and to build relationships and networks among folklorists in those three countries.

The institute will focus on case studies of the ways in which communities create, negotiate, shape, censor, change, and evaluate the presentations of themselves and their cultural expressions that they make to others. Participants and faculty will divide their time among presentations, field visits, and ample time for informal discussions. Morales will present on public folklore ethics, theories and practice providing a case study from the Philadelphia Folklore Project, where she serves as Director. Her participation will also include a screening of the Philadelphia Folklore Project’s new film  Because of the War, which was screened at Goucher as part of the Masters in Cultural Sustainability program in January 2018. The film features the stories of four Liberian women who use their traditional music to combat injustices in their communities.

At Goucher College, Selina Morales teaches a course on Cultural Partnerships with Lisa Rathje and mentors students as part of the MACS program.