Américo Paredes distinguished himself as a journalist, novelist, short story writer, poet, folklorist, and as Professor of English and Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. Admired as one of the inspiring founders of Mexican American Studies in colleges and universities across the United States, Paredes’ life-long interest in Mexican-American history and culture motivated him during his early years to collect corridos from farmers and villagers living on the Lower Rio Grande, resulting in his pioneering book “With His Pistol in His Hand”: A Border Ballad and Its Hero (1958), and in other books on folklore, poetry, and narrative fiction. Border Folk Balladeers: Critical Studies on Américo Paredes is a book of significant value to scholars, teachers, students, and to the general reader interested in the history and culture of Mexicans and Mexican Americans born on both sides of the Mexico-US border. It contains a full-length introduction and eleven essays written exclusively for this volume by scholars in the fields of folklore, literary criticism, and critical race theory, and who are renowned authorities on the work of Américo Paredes. Grouped into three sections, this book includes studies on theories of the Texas Modern; the Latin American critical tradition; border writing in world literatures; ethnography in minority communities; an analysis of Texas-Mexican border jokelore; and, among other critical studies, a comprehensive probe into the international drug traffic in the Mexico-US border, with an emphasis on narcoballads and narconovels, the contemporary offshoots of the Texas-Mexican border corrido.

"Scots trappers dominated the fur trade, often proving more loyal to clan than to trading company or nation. Relying on centuries of experience raising livestock for British markets, Scottish investors and managers became highly visible in the post-Civil War western cattle industry with thriving outfits such as the Swan Land and Cattle Company in Wyoming. They introduced new breeds to western ranching, such as the Aberdeen Angus, that remain popular today. Similarly, Scots herders dominated the western sheep industry, running herds of over 100,000 animals. Andrew Little's sheep ranch in Idaho was so famous that a letter addressed simply "Andy Little, USA" found its intended recipient.

Educating Across Borders is an ethnography of the learning experiences of transfronterizxs, border-crossing students who live on the U.S.-Mexico border, their lives spanning two countries and two languages. Authors María Teresa de la Piedra, Blanca Araujo, and Alberto Esquinca examine language practices and funds of knowledge these students use as learning resources to navigate through their binational, dual language school experiences. The authors, who themselves live and work on the border, question artificially created cultural and linguistic borders. To explore this issue, they employed participant-observation, focus groups, and individual interviews with teachers, administrators, and staff members to construct rich understandings of the experiences of transfronterizx students. These ethnographic accounts of their daily lives counter entrenched deficit perspectives about transnational learners. Drawing on border theory, immigration and border studies, funds of knowledge, and multimodal literacies, Educating Across Borders is a critical contribution toward the formation of a theory of physical and metaphorical border crossings that ethnic minoritized students in U.S. schools must make as they traverse the educational system.

From the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, a steady stream of Scots migrated to Ulster and eventually onward across the Atlantic to resettle in the United States. Many of these Scots-Irish immigrants made their way into the mountains of the southern Appalachian region. They brought with them a wealth of traditional ballads and tunes from the British Isles and Ireland, a carrying stream that merged with sounds and songs of English, German, Welsh, African American, French, and Cherokee origin. Their enduring legacy of music flows today from Appalachia back to Ireland and Scotland and around the globe. Ritchie and Orr guide readers on a musical voyage across oceans, linking people and songs through centuries of adaptation and change.

The story of Ireland—its graces and shortcomings, triumphs and sorrows—is told by ballads, dirges, and humorous songs of its common people. Music is a direct and powerful expression of Irish folk culture and an aspect of Irish life beloved throughout the rest of the world. Incredibly, the largest single gathering of Irish folk songs had been almost inaccessible because, originally newspaper based, it was available in only three libraries, in Belfast, Dublin, and Washington D.C. Sam Henry's “Songs of the People” makes the music available to a wider audience than the collector ever imagined. Comprising nearly 690 selections, this thoroughly annotated and indexed collection is a treasure for anyone who performs, composes, studies, collects, or simply enjoys folk music. It is valuable as an outstanding record of Irish folk songs before World War II, demonstrating the historical ties between Irish and Southern folk culture and the tremendous Irish influence on American folk music. In addition to the songs themselves and their original commentary, Sam Henry's “Songs of the People” includes a glossary, bibliography, discography, index of titles and first lines, melodic index, index of the original sources of the songs and information about them, geographical index of sources, and three appendixes related to the original song series in the Northern Constitution.

Country music in the Carolinas and the southern Appalachian Mountains owes a tremendous debt to freedom-loving Scotch-Irish pioneers who settled the southern backcountry during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These hardy Protestant settlers brought with them from Lowland Scotland, Northern England and the Ulster Province of Ireland music that created the essential framework for "old-time string band music." From the cabins of the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains to the textile mills and urban centers of the Carolina foothills, this colorful, passionate, heartfelt music transformed the culture of America and the world and laid the foundation for western swing, bluegrass, rockabilly and modern country music. Author Michael Scoggins takes a trip to the roots of country music in the Carolinas.

Reference guide to poetry anthologies with descriptions and evaluations of each anthology.