Trevor J. Blank gives a presentation at Fife Folklore Conference, June 2018
Trevor J. Blank presents "Celebrity Urban Legends, Humor, and Vernacular Expression Online" in June 2018

Fife Folklore Conference Collection

The Fife Folklore Conference, named for Western folklorists Austin and Alta Fife, began the summer of 1977 at Utah State University (USU). From 1977 to 2007, the weeklong summer (June) conference boasted a “who’s who” of American folklorists as visiting faculty. Conference directors have included (in order of service) William A. “Bert” Wilson, Barbara Lloyd, Barre Toelken, Randy Williams, Star Coulbrooke, and Jeannie Thomas. Most years the conference boasted 80 students, including USU folklore graduate students, undergraduates, local teachers, and community members.

Due to the economic downturn of 2008, the event shifted to a workshop for USU students, taught by USU folklore faculty, including Lynne McNeill, Jan Roush, Steve Siporin, and Jeannie Thomas, with occasional visiting faculty. Student numbers ranged from 15 to 30. This format continued until 2014. In May 2015 and August 2017, the workshop was presented as a Library of Congress (LOC) Field School for Cultural Documentation, with Lisa Gabbert and Randy Williams as instructors, with Margaret Kruesi and Guha Shankar form the LOC. The course required students to also create a digital collection from fieldwork materials (interview audio, transcripts, and images). In 2018, Lynne McNeill taught the event as a workshop again. Graduate intern Jessica Cushenberry gathered images and documents from the conference, presented here as a digital collection. From 1977 to 2007, the Fife Folklore Honor Lecture was presented during the Fife Folklore Conference.

In more recent years, the lecture is hosted in October. A List of all Fife Honor lecturers is found here.

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