Library’s Endurance Series continues with Afghanistan studies

||| FROM CAROL DAPOGNY for ORCAS ISLAND LIBRARY |||

Join us for Episode 3 of the Endurance Series with Margaret Mills this Thursday at 4 p.m. at the library or by Zoom meeting.

Margaret Mills has been engaged in Afghanistan studies – folklore, oral history  and cultural anthropology – since 1969.  She will offer a short overview of Afghanistan’s history, current state and possible futures to invite audience  discussion. For comments, contact mills.186@osu.edu

Margaret Mills

Margaret Mills, a resident of Crane Island with a family home there since the 1970s,  graduated from Mercer Island High School in 1964 and Radcliffe College/ Harvard University in 1968.  1968-69 took her to Iran for archeological fieldwork and teaching in an English language high school in Tehran. Spring vacation from teaching gave her the chance to visit Herat, western Afghanistan, in peaceful pre-revolutionary times, and motivated her switch in fields to study the folklore and cultural anthropology of Afghanistan.

She returned to Herat and Kabul in 1974-1976 for field research for a PhD dissertation on oral narrative (Harvard 1978). Her recordings 1974-2005 in Dari Persian language are now archived in the US Library of Congress and in the Afghanistan Center at Kabul University. Her research continued, at first focusing on folktales, then oral history over decades with two families. She made repeated visits as political circumstances permitted, first to Afghan refugees from the Soviet war in Peshawar, Pakistan in the 1980s and then back to Herat and Kabul, Afghanistan. Her most recent visit to Herat and Kabul was in 2019.

Having known and lived in Afghanistan in peacetime sets her apart from 70% or more of the present Afghan population. About 50% of Afghans are now under age 25. What does a long view tell us about Afghan resilience and change? And now, urgently, what are we to think of possible futures? A short introduction to Afghanistan’s past and futures will provide a launching point for Q&A and audience observations.

Mills book publications:

• 2018 Tales of Two Heroes of Justice (Persian title: Afsaneh-e Du Qahraman-e Adel). With Faridon Sorush. Oral folktales from Afghanistan in Dari Persian/English and Pashto/English bilingual editions, Kabul:  ACKU ABLE. 
• 2003 South Asian Folklore:  An Encyclopedia, co-edited with Peter Claus and Sarah Diamond,  New York: Routledge Publishers / Taylor and Francis.
• 2000  Conversations with Davlat Khalav: Oral Narratives from Tajikistan, with Ravshan Rahmoni. Moscow: Humanitary Press (Academy of Humanitarian Research / Institute of Asian and African Studies   Printing Office).122 pp., Tajik/English bilingual narrative texts + commentary.
• 1991a Rhetorics and Politics in Afghan Traditional Storytelling. University of Pennsylvania Press. Winner, 1993 Chicago Folklore Prize for best academic book in folklore.
• 1991b Gender, Genre and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions. Co-edited with Arjun Appadurai and Frank J. Korom.  University of Pennsylvania Press.
• 1990 (1978) Oral Narrative in Afghanistan:  The Individual in Tradition. Garland Publishers Harvard Folklore Dissertation Series.