On Monday, April 18, 12-1:30, in the Lorenzo West Graduate Lounge PLC 461, the Oregon Folklife Network is hosting a Brown Bag lunch presentation titled “Public Folklore Work: Independent Contract Folklife Survey in Eastern Oregon” by Douglas Manger and Joseph O’Connell.

During April and May, 2016, folklorists Douglas Manger and Joseph O’Connell will be working in eastern Oregon to identify folk and traditional artists. Both will be documenting regional, ethnic, and occupational folklore of European, Asian, and Latino groups as well as such occupations as ranching, logging, mining, hunting, railroad and orchard working, farming, fishing, and other waterways traditions along with foodways, music, quilting, rodeo-related activities, cowboy poetry, and others we have yet to discover.

Douglas Manger has been working as a folklorist for twenty years. Early in his career, Manger served as director of the Northern Tier Cultural Alliance in Pennsylvania, where he documented folk artists and curated exhibits and other programs. Manger later managed the folk and traditional arts program at the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation in Baltimore overseeing initiatives across nine states and jurisdictions. At Mid Atlantic, Manger project managed the award-winning publication, From Bridge to Boardwalk: An Audio Journey Across Maryland’s Eastern Shore. In 2007, Manger returned to his home state of Texas and founded HeritageWorks, which has been responsible for multi-year regional folklife field surveys in South and East Texas for the Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio, in Baton Rouge and vicinity for the Louisiana Folklife Program, and in Eastern Oregon (Malheur and Harney counties in 2014; Deschutes, Crook, Baker, and Union counties upcoming in 2016) for the Oregon Folklife Network.

OFN is pleased to welcome O’Connell back to Oregon, where he’ll be documenting folk artists in Wallowa, Grant, and Wheeler counties in April and May, 2016. O’Connell, who received an MA in Folklore from the University of Oregon in 2009, works in public folklore, public media, and independent music. After leaving Oregon, he joined the staff of Traditional Arts Indiana (TAI) as the program’s primary fieldworker.  O’Connell led several region- and topic-driven survey projects at TAI, including the first extensive cultural documentation of Indiana’s architectural stone industry.  Now living in Raleigh, North Carolina, O’Connell contributes to projects of the North Carolina Folklife Institute, local NPR affiliate WUNC-FM, and the folk-rock band Elephant Micah.