The Folklorist Next Door is Back on June 17
The Folklorist Next Door is Back on June 17
By Jeannelle Ramirez, Ph.D., Program Director
Over the past six months, a cohort of community scholars in our Community Folklife Fellowship (CFF) program has been working on research traditions in their communities. This June, we will release their podcast episodes as Season 3 of The Folklorist Next Door.
This is the third iteration of the CFF and The Folklorist Next Door; a program and podcast that I had the privilege of launching in 2022. When I started The Folklorist Next Door podcast, the goal was to disseminate the work of community scholars in our programs at a broader scale. This podcast is a digital humanities project that brings visibility to the work of documenting. As of today, we have reached 3,344 listeners and look forward to reaching many more this season.
For many of this year’s fellows, this project marked their first time working with audio editing, recording interviews, or producing an audio story. It was rewarding to see each of them find their voice through these projects and to learn more about the ways they are using the CFF as a launching pad to continue their work as folklorists.
Topics explored in this season’s podcasts include dance objects in San Antonio, transnational plants in Houston, Puerto Rican plena in diaspora, paper flower-making in South Texas, Jewish storytelling over generations, curanderas in South Texas, vinyl record collections in the RGV, indigenous foodways in West Texas, South Asian music communities in Houston, and indigenous dance communities in Central Texas.
This program would not be possible without our instructors. A special thanks to Rachel Gonzalez Martin, Rachel Hopkin, Maggie Rivas, and Lamont Jack Pearly. These folklorists worked with fellows over the past few months to introduce fellows to foundational folklore concepts, oral history interview techniques, audio storytelling approaches, and the expansive possibilities of digital humanities projects. Lamont Jack Pearly also supported fellows as a technical producer for the podcast.
You can listen to the podcast via Buzzprout, Spotify, and all major platforms. New episodes are released each Wednesday all summer.
Alongside each episode’s release, there will be an accompanying blog post, which will be accessible on our website. In these short articles, fellows share behind-the-scenes insights on their research process, reflections on their experiences, photos, videos, and additional resources.
Release Schedule
June 17 – “The Sound of Community: Puerto Rican Plena in Texas” by Adam RosarioJune 24 – “Our Transnational Plant Lives” by Alba SerenoJul 1 – “Archiving the Ephemeral: The Art of Preserving Dance” by Amber OrtegaJul 8 – “Flor y Palma: Symbols of la primavera in South Tejas” by Beto de LeonJul 15 – “When Story Becomes Performance: Existence is Resistance” by Samantha GoldbergJul 22 – “Las Limpias” by Oddett GarzaJul 29 – “Songs That Made Texas Home for South Asians” by Sonny MehtaAug 5 – “Pitaya Harvest: An Ancient Tradition” by Koyana FlotteAug 12 – “ATLACHINOLLI: Keepers of the Fire & Water” by Laura Rios-RamirezAug 19 – “The Jukebox as Archive: Informal Memory Practices in the Rio Grande Valley” by Genesis Moreno
