Robert McCarl, a professor in the Department of Sociology, is one of four people across the nation to be awarded the 2010-2011 Archie Green Fellowships from the American Folklife Center (AFC) at the Library of Congress.

McCarl has been documenting and studying occupational folklife since his work as a graduate student in the 1970s. His doctoral dissertation, and much of his later work, focused on the folklife of firefighters, and he continues to work with firefighting communities today. McCarl will study the environmental ethics of different occupational groups in Idaho’s Silver Valley, where he plans to interview and document three broad categories of workers: ecologically-focused occupations such as plant biologists, geologists and water-quality specialists; current-use occupations such as miners, loggers, and fishermen; and future-oriented occupations, such as preservationists, developers, clergy and Coeur d’Alene tribal leaders. His analysis, videos, photographs, notes and maps will be given to the American Folklife Center and shared with the local community.

The Archie Green Fellowship Program was created in 2009 to honor the memory of Archie Green (1917-2009), the pioneering folklorist who championed the establishment of the AFC. Green was a scholar and advocate for the documentation and analysis of the culture and traditions of American workers. The fellowships are intended to support new, original, independent field research into the culture and traditions of American workers and/or occupational groups. Successful projects also must create significant digital archival materials (such as audio recordings, photographs, motion pictures and field notes) that will be preserved in the center’s archive and made available to researchers and the public.

For more information about the American Folklife Center, visit www.loc.gov/folklife