Potter Lanier Meaders of Georgia. Meaders has received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Photograph by John Burrison, courtesy of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution. From the Masters of Traditional Arts DVD-ROM, produced by Alan Govenar and published by ABC-CLIO.
 

Journal of American Folklore

The Journal of American Folklore, the quarterly journal of the American Folklore Society since the Society's founding in 1888, publishes scholarly articles, essays, notes, and commentaries directed to a wide audience, as well as separate sections devoted to reviews of books, exhibitions and events, sound recordings, film and videotapes, and exhibitions and events. Its contents are not restricted to folklore in the United States; in fact, the Journal publishes materials on folklore anywhere in the world.

The contents of the Journal reflect a wide range of professional concerns and points of view. Articles present significant research findings and theoretical analyses from folklore and related fields. Essays are interpretive, speculative, or polemic. Notes are narrower in scope and focus on a single, often provocative, issue of definition, interpretation, or amplification. Commentaries briefly address topics raised in earlier articles.

Members of the American Folklore Society receive four issues of the Journal each year as one of their member benefits. For information on becoming a member of the AFS, click here.

The Journal is published for the Society by the University of Illinois Press. It is also produced with the generous assistance of the following units at Texas A&M University: the Department of English, the Department of Performance Studies, the Glasscock Center for Humanities Research, and the Women's and Gender Equity Resource Center.

This web site now publishes online versions of reviews of books, sound recordings, films and videotapes, and exhibition and events before they appear in print in the Journal. Though access to online reviews is a benefit of AFS membership, you can see a list of books and other works whose reviews are on the site, as well as a sample review.

If you are interested in writing reviews for the Journal, please check the list of current items for review.

View the tables of contents of recent issues of the Journal

Journal of American Folklore Contact Information

The editors of the Journal, who will serve through 2010, are Harris M. Berger and Giovanna P. Del Negro of Texas A&M University. To contact them by e-mail, please click here. Their mailing address is Harris M. Berger and Giovanna P. Del Negro, Editors, Journal of American Folklore, Department of Performance Studies, Mail Stop 4240, Texas A&M University, College Station TX 77843-4240.

To contact the Book Review Editor of the Journal, Carolyn Ware of Louisiana State University, please click here.

To contact the Exhibit Review Editor of the Journal, Tina Bucuvalas of the Florida Folklife Program, please click here.

To contact the Film and Video Review Editor of the Journal, D. Todd Lawrence of the University of St. Thomas, please click here.

To contact the Sound Review Editor of the Journal, C. Kati Szego of the Memorial University of Newfoundland, please click here.

If you are interested in submitting a manuscript to the Journal, please click here.

To request permission to use Journal materials published from 1888 through 2002, please contact AFS Executive Director Timothy Lloyd. To request permission to use Journal materials published since 2003, please contact Heather Munson of the University of Illinois Press.

For information about, or claims related to, institutional subscriptions to the Journal, please contact Cheryl Jestis of the University of Illinois Press.

For information on Journal advertising rates, click here.

Online Access to the Journal of American Folklore

The full text of issues of the Journal from Volume 114 (2001) to the present is available online through Project MUSE. AFS members receive complimentary access to the issues of the Journal available through Project MUSE as a benefit of membership.

Those with access to a university library should have access to the full text of back issues of the Journal from 1888 to five years behind the present through JSTOR. Those without such access can receive individual access to these materials for a year by paying an additional $15 at the time of their AFS membership renewal. This program also provides access to back issues of these other journals in our field:

Folklore
Journal of Folklore Research and its predecessor the Journal of the Folklore Institute
Western Folklore and its predecessor the California Folklore Quarterly

The JSTOR Arts and Sciences II Collection (which contains the Journal) and Project MUSE are not available at all colleges and universities, and just a handful of public libraries in the United States subscribe to these databases. However, full text from recent Journal issues is also available in thirteen other databases to which many public libraries subscribe. A few of these libraries allow cardholders to access some of these databases over the Internet as well as on site. Databases that include full-text coverage of recent Journal issues are listed below. Please note that the exact coverage years vary for each database.

OCLC First Search
Electronic Collections Online (ECO)
Wilson Select Plus
Periodical Abstracts (this database offers access to JAF issues included in ECO and Wilson Select Plus at libraries subscribing to these databases)

ProQuest
ProQuest Research Library

ProQuest/Chadwyck-Healey
Literature Online
Literature Online Reference Edition
International Index to Music Periodicals Full Text
International Index to the Performing Arts Full Text

Questia (primarily by individual subscription)
Journal Collection

H.W. Wilson
Humanities Index/Abstracts/Full Text
OmniFile Full Text Mega
OmniFile Full Text Select
OmniFile V Full Text