In this symposium, Richard Firth Green, guests, and students take the pulse of ballad scholarship. They consider changes in the understanding of Anglophone balladry as old songs are revived, remediated, and repurposed for new audiences, giving us new perspectives on texts and tunes. Coming from folklore, literary studies, medieval studies, and ethnomusicology, they also explore disciplinary and generational shifts of interest and avenues of inquiry into a much-studied but still elusive genre.

Keynote speaker: Todd Harvey

(Curator of the Alan Lomax Collection of the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress)

“Captain Wedderburn’s Courtship”: Reimagining ballad scholarship at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

The American Folklife Center archive holds significant collections of song, making it a valuable resource for ballad scholarship. Ethnographic field recordings comprise the majority of early 20th century holdings in the archive. These recordings make possible exploration of ballads in their cultural context to an extent that text-only sources do not. A gulf exists, however, between knowledge that holdings exist and access to these materials in a manner increasingly expected by contemporary scholars. A central matter in archival discourse today, ‘meeting the needs of users’ depends on numerous factors including the Center’s willingness to embrace ideas from outside disciplines and disparate user groups.