Center for Documentary Studies Director Tom Rankin Named Chair of National Folklife Board
The center preserves and presents American folklife through programs of research, documentation, archival presentation, reference service, live performance, exhibition, public programs and training
Monday, May 10, 2004
DURHAM, N.C. -- Tom Rankin, director of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, has been named chair of the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center in Washington, D.C.
Created by Congress in 1976, the American Folklife Center was placed at the Library of Congress to "preserve and present American folklife" through programs of research, documentation, archival presentation, reference service, live performance, exhibition, public programs, and training." The center includes the Archive of Folk Culture, which was established in the Library of Congress in 1928 and is now one of the largest collections of ethnographic material from the United States and around the world.
Rankin, associate professor of the practice of art at Duke, has been director of the Center for Documentary Studies since 1998. He has served on the American Folklife Center Board of Trustees for 5Â years, and will serve a two-year term as chair.
A photographer, filmmaker, and folklorist, Rankin has been photographing and interpreting the American cultural landscape for more than 20 years. A native of Kentucky, his books include "Sacred Space: Photographs from the Mississippi Delta" (1993), which received the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Photography; "'Deaf Maggie Lee Sayre': Photographs of a River Life" (1995); "Faulkner's World: The Photographs of Martin J. Dain" (1997); and "Local Heroes Changing America: Indivisible" (2000).
Rankin co-directed and co-produced the documentary film "Powerhouse for God" and is a frequent writer and lecturer on Southern art, culture and the documentary tradition.
The collections of the American Folklife Center include Native American song and dance; ancient English ballads; the stories of ex-slaves; documentation from the lives of cowboys, farmers, fishermen, coal miners, shop keepers, factory workers, quilt makers, professional and amateur musicians and housewives from throughout the United States; first-hand accounts of community events from every state; and international collections from every region of the world.
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For more information about the Center for Documentary Studies, check the Web site at http://cds.aas.duke.edu. The American Folklife Center Web site is at http://www.loc.gov/folklife/.