Report from the Association for Western State Folklorists Annual Meeting

Abstract

This report summarizes my experiences at the annual Association for Western State Folklorists (AWSF) meetings held in Eugene, OR, April 19-22, 2017. As a public folklorist new to Washington State—I moved from Maryland in 2016—I was anxious to attend this regionally focused meeting, to interact with my new peers and develop some insight into the world of public folklore in the Western U.S., and particularly the Northwest. The meetings took place less than two months after I stepped into the position of Director of the Center for Washington Cultural Traditions (CWCT), Washington’s new folklife and traditional arts program. Though I met a few of the AWSF meeting participants during contracted fieldwork I conducted leading to my new position, I was anxious to interact more with them and meet others. Additionally, though I became Washington’s new state folklorist after working as a public folklorist in Maryland, my academic training is in applied and cultural anthropology, so I was also interested in getting a better understanding of the ways in which folkloristics are put into practice generally, and especially in this geographic region.