New York Folklore Society Newsletter

"I’ve studied many different types of folklore, but the questions that have intrigued me the most have always been "people" questions about motivation and identity. And I have yet to find another profession where you can meet such a wide variety of people and talk with them so quickly about things they are passionate about." —Kathleen Condon

NOTE: The New York Folklore Society Newsletter and New York Folklore Journal were replaced by Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore which debuted December, 2000.

New York Folklore Society
P.O. Box 764
Schenectady, NY 12301
518/346-7008
Fax 518/346-6617
nyfs@nyfolklore.org

Fall/Winter 1998

FALL/WINTER 1998 NEWSLETTER MAIN PAGE

Meet the NYFS Board: Kathleen Condon
Joined in 1997

I decided to pursue a career as a folklorist when I was just eighteen years old and have worked with traditional and community cultures for over twenty years now. Actually, I’m a "second-generation" folklorist. One of my mother’s many vocations was performing folk music; she also wrote her thesis for a 1953 master’s degree in education on "The Uses of Folklore in Education." I grew up in Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, where I got an early taste of cultural journalism by editing my high school’s oral history magazine. My siblings and I were raised to appreciate our predominantly Irish heritage; I now regret that I turned down an early opportunity to study Irish dancing because at seven years old I was frightened of the nuns who were then the only teachers in the St. Louis area! Interest in other cultures was second nature in my family, where weekend activities might include attendance at multiethnic performances, country auctions, or coon-dog trials.

My decision to be a folklorist was precipitated by a lecture given in St. Louis in 1976 by Joe Hickerson, then the head of the Archive of Folk Song at the Library of Congress. From Joe I learned an amazing piece of information—people might actually PAY you a FULL-TIME SALARY to be a folklorist! A year later I came to Washington to intern at the Archive, and was lucky to arrive in DC at a time when the field of public sector folklore was burgeoning. Initially it was the "stuff" of folklore—the songs, the stories, the crafts—that drew me to the field, and I had little patience for academic approaches. Gradually I have learned that theory can truly enhance and deepen one’s understanding of folklore material and its place in society, particularly when looking outside one’s own culture. Yet in the end, it is not really the "stuff" or the theories, but rather the people who have kept me in folklore all these years. I"ve worked with colleagues in many different professions—academics, educators, museum professionals, and arts administrators—and I’ve found that the way my folklore colleagues see the world is usually the most interesting to me. I’ve studied many different types of folklore, but the questions that have intrigued me the most have always been "people" questions about motivation and identity. And I have yet to find another profession where you can meet such a wide variety of people and talk with them so quickly about things they are passionate about.

I moved to New York City in 1986 after attending graduate school at the curriculum in folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My undergraduate degree, in American studies and American literature, was from George Washington University in Washington, DC. My professional experience in public folklore is broad; duties in various positions over the years have included fieldwork, writing, editing, administration, program production, marketing and publicity, curating and developing exhibitions, archiving, fundraising, and elementary school teaching. As a consultant in community cultural programming, I have specialized in designing and publicizing programs for underserved and community audiences, directing and coordinating numerous folklore and community cultural projects in a variety of rural and urban settings. My first staff position in New York City was as staff folklorist for the Brooklyn Arts Council. In recent years I have worked primarily in museums, as curator of folklife and community outreach and as adult program coordinator at the South Street Seaport Museum and most recently as community project coordinator/senior developer at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. I am currently employed as a folklore and museum consultant and am developing a consulting specialty in niche marketing and audience diversification for cultural and nonprofit institutions.

I live in Brooklyn, New York, with my husband, Rick Luftglass, and "Babka," our dog. I came to New York specifically because I had heard about all the wonderful things going on in the folklore field here, and I have not been disappointed. I joined the New York Folklore Society board because I am a great fan of the organization’s work, in particular the society’s networking and coalition-building across cultures and disciplines and the society’s services to traditional artists and grassroots communities. As a board member, I hope to help the society’s programs reach even larger and more diverse audiences, and to help shape the programs and publications that will continue our present growth.

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