Where did August go?!

Dear Friends,

It feels like I blinked and the month went by, but what a month it was!

We started out with some exciting news and spent the rest of the month coming down from that high while exploring random bits of folklore. We discovered:

• The naughty bits in the Latin notes of old ethnographic and anthropological texts

• African-style literary folk horror in Sony Labou Tansi’s Life and a Half

• More about the connection between folklore and geography

We also got the next installation of the MA Quarterly essay series, exploring neck rings in African ornamental culture, with a focus on the Odigba of the Edo (Nigeria).

Away from the screen, MA interns finished up their 5-week program. It was such a pleasure to work with these ladies and with long time MA supporter Laura Gibbs! You can read about each intern’s work and learn more about their independent research projects (which I’m looking forward to sharing with you all when they are ready) on the MA Intern page.

Shout out to Cohort 1 of the MA Internship Program!

I hope to run this internship again next year so if you’re interested, reach out to get on the list!

What To Expect from MA in September?

1. More awkward, but hopefully quirky and funny, appeals for you to preorder “The Watkins Book of African Folklore”. (←Definitely this)

2. More about what to expect from the book itself, which I’ll have to figure out how to do without telling you everything that’s in the book…

3. More folklore from modern African literature, this time with Ousmane Sembene’s novel, “God’s Bits of Wood”, or his short story collection “Tribal Scars and Other Stories”.

   

   

   Ousmane Sembene in Toghu, the traditional garb of Cameroon’s Grassfields people

In meantime, be well, friends.

Helen