WiseFolk Productions

It’s Here! Becoming Folkwise is now available!

Hello Folkwise Fam! We are excited to announce that our collaboratively written article on the making of Folkwise, our ethic, and our future goals and practice as an organization is now available for you to read! Thank you Cultural Analysis for taking on and publishing our article, along with the others that will make up a special Pandemic Series for the coming months.

Check it our by following the link below:

Becoming Folkwise: Sustaining Digital Community While Socially Distant

Dom Tartaglia
State of Florida Division of Arts & Culture
Tallahassee, FL

Christine J. Widmayer
Wisconsin Humanities
Madison, WI

Daisy Ahlstone
The Ohio State University
Columbus, OH

Kaitlyn L. Kinney
Independent
Winchester, VA

Annamarie Morel
Treasure Island Museum
Oakland, CA

Jared L. Schmidt
Tillamook Bay Community College
Tillamook, OR
& Southwestern Oregon Community College
Coos Bay, OR

Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic reconnected a group of early-career folklorists leading to the launch of WiseFolk Productions, LLC. The organization uses digital platforms to share folkloric research interests with new communities, build the field’s visibility, and present alternative venues for intellectual discussion while physically distancing. This reflection explores social media’s potentiality for enhancing the reach of folkloristics and inspiring broader participation in discussions of everyday life. This essay is organized around the four core values of the group’s primary project, Folkwise, and offers a transparent example of what they define as Public Digital Humanities.

Keywords: public humanities, folklore, livestream, accessibility, digital media, collaboration

Andrea Kitta, Ian Brodie, and Lynne McNeill walk into a bar….

Folkwise ran a special live episode live from the 2022 American Folklore Society Annual Meeting in Tulsa, OK. We interviewed more folklorists than ever before! However, one interview (group interview) was just too…. special not to make a Patreon exclusive!

Folkwise Chat Commands (Twitch Channel Folklore)

On our primary platform Twitch, we have an automod called NightBot to help us filter through Spam and Trolls while we are streaming. Nightbot also helps chatters and moderators more easily share links to social media and other functions for community engagement. NightBot has found a new and much more important service – the facilitation of chatlore. Through the custom command function, we have been able to turn jokes and memorable moments from the show into commands that prompt text. The Folkwise “Achatemy” (the community of people who participate in the livestream chat each week) have expanded the possibilities for our community engagement by just adding a chat command essentially any time it is requested… check out a list of our current commands here! – Daisy

Folk Cited Recap: Vampire Birthday and Carmilla

Black background with hovering batwings and red line in the image. Text reads "Folkwise Live Folk Cited: Vampire Birthday a lesson on Carmilla"

It’s never a bad time to talk about vampires (especially during the sunniest parts of the year)! For the August Folk Cited episode, as part of a tongue-in-cheek nod to Dr. Jared’s birthday and his vampiric-scholarship, we discuss the incredibly influential 19th c. Gothic novella, “Carmilla,” written by Sheridan Le Fanu, in the August edition of Folk Cited.

Folk Cited Recap: Horse Girls, 4H, & Misty of Chincoteague

We returned to our #HorseGirl roots and read Margarite Henry’s “Misty of Chincoteague” and the legacy of horses in young adult fiction for the July episode of Folk Cited. Kaitlyn, Caroline, and our guest Gin Seigel, all former and current Horse Girls, celebrated their younger awkward years together, inviting the audience in to the experience of pre-teen Horse Girl life and culture.

Folk Cited Recap: Zora Neale Hurston, Fieldwork, and Florida Folklore

Black and white image taken from a film by Zora Neale Hurston of African American children playing games and dancing. Text on the image reads "Folkwise Live. Folk Cited: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston." There are also small symbols in just black of pears, a mule, and an old fashioned audio tape player.

It’s the middle of summer; what season could be better to read folklorist Zora Neale Hurston’s renowned Their Eyes Were Watching God? The heat, ethnography, and Dr. Dom’s position as the current State Folklorist of Florida inspired us to explore the history of folklore in this Southern state through the legacy of Hurston for this month’s episode of Folk Cited.

Folk Cited Recap: Queer Mycology and Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

An image of a stack of books with two 3D printed slugs on top. There are also plants and a sign in the background that reads “Folkwise is Alive @ Twitch.tv/Folkwise. Worm theory.” The texts included are: “Mushroom at the End of the World” by Anna Tsing; “Entangled Life” by Merlín Sheldrake; “The Multispecies Salon” ed. by Eben Kirksey; “Performing Environmentalisms” ed. by McDowell, Borland, Dirksen, and Tuohy; “Finding the Mother Forest” by Suzanne Simard; “Radical Mycology” by Peter McCoy.

Mycology is the study of fungi, which includes mushrooms and yeasts. This is an interdisciplinary field most notably carried out in hard sciences and biological fields, but has branched out into other disciplines and collaborations, including grassroots and community movements. These groups work together with fungi to help us better understand the influence of fungus on our collective worlds. Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake is this episode’s catalyst for questions and discussions related to the wonderful worlds of mycology and folklore, and was an opportunity for our community of viewers to share emerging ideas about what these two areas can say about each other.

Frantic Fanfic: Co-narration and Chaos!

Last week on Folkwise Live (02/15/22) we got a few members of the team together to play a group game of Frantic Fanfic (and it’s free and uses a web browser to play!). This creative writing game gives players an opportunity to author parts of a fanfiction narrative based on somewhat randomized pairs of characters. Fanfiction is typically considered pieces of ammeter-styled writing based on existing characters and works of fiction. This folkloric writing genre has taken off online, and has been a source of joy for our team, especially Shirley, Chrissy, Kaitlyn, and Dom. It was fun to have an opportunity to co-narrate some silliness together!

Below are the verbatim fanfics resulting from our gameplay. Please enjoy this absolute silliness! Folkwise Live streams on Twitch every Tuesday night from 7PM to 11PM.

Folkwise will be at the American Folklore Society’s Annual Conference!

Find us talking folklore throughout the event!

This year’s AFS Annual Meeting (October 18th-23rd, 2021) has given the Folkwise team a unique opportunity to assist with hybridization this year. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic lingering far longer than any of us had hoped, AFS has chosen to hold a part-virtual (hosted through an online portal) and part in-person (Harrisburg, PA) annual meeting. In an effort to help this conference feel less like two different experiences and more like one unique event, Folkwise has been hired to assist in making the experience feel more hybridized for conference attendants. Members of our team will be hosting virtual events and experience live on Twitch as well as in-person for audiences at home who could not attend the in-person Harrisburg portion. We will also be hosting live-streams of the plenary addresses and large lectures so the audience watching from home can feel as much a part of the experience as possible throughout the event. Find us online or at Harrisburg in a few weeks away!

***To view events not streamed Live on Twitch, you must register to attend the American Folklore Society Conference. Registration information linked here!