More than 650 books, journals and videos on folklore and folk arts-related topics have
been donated to the Department of Anthropology in
Syracuse University's Maxwell
School by research professor and folklorist Felicia "Faye" McMahon, who began the
collection in 1987 while working on her Ph.D. in folklore and folk life at the
University of Pennsylvania.
The collection is intended for community members to assist them in documenting
their own cultures, thereby ensuring the preservation of regional and transnational
cultural resources. The collection will provide a community-based resource for use by
the members of each cultural group. McMahon believes that a specialized folk arts
library is a useful tool to assist community organizers in their efforts to communicate
to the public an understanding of the primacy of culture in building civic capacity.
Now permanently housed in Room 206A in Maxwell Hall, the collection will serve as
the core of a lending library for members of the Central New York community.
The idea for a folk arts library accessible to community scholars evolved from the
Department of Anthropology's Folk Arts Initiative, begun in 2005 and supported by
a variety of external sponsors as well as the Office of the Chancellor. Christopher
DeCorse, professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology, and McMahon
consider the department to be in a unique position to provide both support for and
acknowledgement of the cultural contributions of community members in Central
New York. "These same community members have in turn provided invaluable
experiences for our students," says McMahon.
For example, with her extensive 15-year community arts fieldwork, McMahon has
introduced interested students to diverse local communities with whom she has
worked. The students have interviewed traditional artists for several folk arts
programs hosted by the Department of Anthropology, the Hildegarde and J. Myer
Schine Student Center, the Community Folk Art Center, The Warehouse and the
Mayfest Folk Arts Tent.
About her fieldwork experience, undergraduate Honors student Alena Johnson wrote,
"Spending time with the DiDinga [community] and being welcomed into their
homes was a very special experience. This project will be something I always
remember."
Added her fieldwork partner, Kristen Cuomo: "Even if I won't be able to see the
group again as much as I would like to, what I have learned from them will stay with
me for the rest of my life."
After learning the DiDinga were trying to raise funds to build a school in their village
in Sudan, Johnson applied for a U.Encounter grant to support a dance performance
by the DiDinga at SU. On April 21, 2009, the performance will be videotaped and the
DVD included in a separate collection of photographs, CDs and videos from
McMahon's own fieldwork to be donated to the DiDinga for their school library.
In return for the gift of their time and knowledge, McMahon views these efforts as
gestures of gratitude to community artists. "The Folk Arts Community Lending
Library will be useful for all students of folklore in the identification and the
exploration of the significant formative cultural fermentation going on right now in
our regional landscape," she says. "Many, many times I received requests for books
from traditional artists and musicians, and I would loan the books from my personal
library in my home in Tully."
One of the books in the collection is "Voices of the Homeland" by Vietnamese
calligrapher and traditional poet Vinh Dang (pictured, left, with anthropology student Hong Anh Vu)
, who lives in Syracuse. The
establishment of the Folk Arts Community Lending Library in the Department of
Anthropology makes such books more visible and extends opportunities to more
community members for their use. A lending library also enables the department to
serve as an interdisciplinary node supporting the research and service of folk artists
and traditional musicians who are scholars in their own right. "I can't think of a
better use for these books than tools to help communities self-document their own
cultures," says McMahon.
University and community members wishing to browse the collection should call the
Folk Arts Initiative at 443-6231, ext. 1.
