Encyclopedia of American Folklife
Folklore, Cultural Performances, and Popular Entertainments by
This collection of thirty-seven entries selected from the more than 550 that make up the International Encyclopedia of Communications focuses on expressive forms and practices that are popular and participatory in nature: folklore forms such as folktale and riddle; cultural performances suchas ritual and festival; and popular entertainments such as puppetry and mime. Cross-references within each individual entry facilitate exploration within the volume, while bibliographies appended to each entry direct the reader to related literature. Covering basic concepts, analyticalperspectives, communicative media, expressive genres, and complex performance events, this concise yet comprehensive book is a handy reference for those interested in folklore and its growing role in drama, anthropology, and cultural studies.
The Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Folklore and Folklife by
4v. v. 4 covers North and South America.
The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture by
Southern folklife is the heart of southern culture. Looking at traditional practices still carried on today as well as at aspects of folklife that are dynamic and emergent, contributors to this volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture examine a broad range of folk traditions. Moving beyond the traditional view of folklore that situates it in historical practice and narrowly defined genres, entries in this volume demonstrate how folklife remains a vital part of communities' self-definitions. Fifty thematic entries address subjects such as car culture, funerals, hip-hop, and powwows. In 56 topical entries, contributors focus on more specific elements of folklife, such as roadside memorials, collegiate stepping, quinceanera celebrations, New Orleans marching bands, and hunting dogs. Together, the entries demonstrate that southern folklife is dynamically alive and everywhere around us, giving meaning to the everyday unfolding of community life.
All That Is Native and Fine by
In the American imagination, the word Appalachia designates more than a geographical region. It evokes fiddle tunes, patchwork quilts, split-rail fences, and all the other artifacts that decorate a cherished romantic region of the American mind. David Whisnant challenges this view of Appalachia (and consequently this broader imaginitive tendency) by exploring connections between a comforting cultural myth and the troublesome complexities of cultural history. Looking at the work of some ballad hunters and collectors, handicraft revivalists, folk festival promoters, and other cultural missionaries, Whisnant discovers a process of intentional and systematic cultural intervention that had (and still has) far-reaching consequences. Why, Whisnant asks, did so many Bluegrass ladies and upper-class graduates of Seven Sisters colleges rush to erect cultural breakwaters around mountaineers? Why would a sophisticated New England woman build a Danish folk school in western North Carolina? Why did a classical musician from Richmond who hated blacks love southern mountain music? How did the notions and actions of all these cultural missionaries affect the lives of the mountaineers? And what do these episodes of intervention teach us about culture and cultural change--in Appalachia and elsewhere? Whisnant pursues these and other questions in closely documented case studies of the Hindman Settlement School in eastern Kentucky, the cultural work of Olive Dame Campbell throughout the mountains, and the White Top Folk Festival on the Virginia-North Carolina border. Moreover, he relates them to broader social and economic developments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the comingof the railroads and the opening of the mines, the Depression, the advent of TVA, and more diffuse processes such as urbanization, the decline of agriculture, the movement of radio and the commercial recording industry into the mountains, and the implicit restrictions Victorian America placed on the political perspectives and activities of socially conscious upper-class women. We must begin to understand the politics of culture, Whisnant writes, especially the role of formal institutions and foreceful individuals in defining and shaping perspectives, values, tastes and agendas for cultural change. All That Is Native and Fine opens the way not only to a reexamination of the history of a single region but also to a more sophisticated understanding of the dynamics of cultural continuity and change in other regions and in the nation as a whole.
American Folklore Scholarship by
American Folklore Scholarship is rich reading, outlining the intellectual genealogy of American folklore and delivering many interesting historical tidbits. Folklore teachers will want to use this book in their introductory theory classes, while doctoral students will want to memorize the book before their qualifying exams." --Folklore Forum ... a welcome overview of the discipline in North America and the practitioners who established it." --American Anthropologist In this classic text, Zumwalt examines the split between literary folklorists and anthropological folklorists. The former looked at literary forms for folklore; the latter looked at the life and unwritten culture of the people. This struggle shaped the study of folklore in the U.S.
American Folklore Studies by Folklore and Fakelore by Folklore and Folklife by
"This introduction to the study of folklore and folklife contains an inspiring and spirited mixture of essays, theoretical contributions, practical instructions, and pure encyclopedia articles. It is a very well put together book, written by eighteen researchers who have something to say. One can see here that it is competent educators who have come forward and are narrating. . . . All in all it is a very use-oriented handbook with attractive typography and layout."—Iorn Pio, Journal of American Folklore
Following Tradition by
Following Tradition is an expansive examination of the history oftradition--one of the most common as well as most contested terms inEnglish language usage--in Americans' thinking and discourse aboutculture. Tradition in use becomes problematic because of its multiplemeanings and its conceptual softness. As a term and a concept, it hasbeen important in the development of all scholarly fields that studyAmerican culture. Folklore, history, American studies, anthropology, cultural studies, and others assign different value and meaning totradition. It is a frequent point of reference in popular discourseconcerning everything from politics to lifestyles to sports andentertainment. Politicians and social advocates appeal to it as primafacie evidence of the worth of their causes. Entertainment and othermedia mass produce it, or at least a facsimile of it. In a society thatfrequently seeks to reinvent itself, tradition as a cultural anchor tobe reverenced or rejected is an essential, if elusive, concept. SimonBronner's wide net captures the historical, rhetorical, philosophical, and psychological dimensions of tradition. As he notes, he has written abook about an American tradition--arguing about it. His elucidation ofthose arguments makes fascinating and thoughtful reading. An essentialtext for folklorists, Following Tradition will be a valuablereference as well for historians and anthropologists; students ofAmerican studies, popular culture, and cultural studies; and anyoneinterested in the continuing place of tradition in American culture.
In Search of Authenticity by
Authenticity is a notion much debated, among discussants as diverse as cultural theorists and art dealers, music critics and tour operators. The desire to find and somehow capture or protect the authentic narrative, art object, or ceremonial dance is hardly new. In this masterful examination of German and American folklore studies from the eighteenth century to the present, Regina Bendix demonstrates that the longing for authenticity remains deeply implicated in scholarly approaches to cultural analysis. Searches for authenticity, Bendix contends, have been a constant companion to the feelings of loss inherent in modernization, forever upholding a belief in a pristine yet endangered cultural essence and fueling cultural nationalism worldwide. Beginning with precursors of Herder and Emerson and the discovery of the authentic in expressive culture and literature, she traces the different, albeit intertwined, histories of German Volkskunde and American folklore studies. A Swiss native educated in American folklore programs, Bendix moves effortlessly between the two traditions, demonstrating how the notion of authenticity was used not only to foster national causes, but also to lay the foundations for categories of documentation and analysis within the nascent field of folklore studies. Bendix shows that, in an increasingly transcultural world, where Zulu singers back up Paul Simon and where indigenous artists seek copyright for their traditional crafts, the politics of authenticity mingles with the forces of the market. Arguing against the dichotomies implied in the very idea of authenticity, she underscores the emptiness of efforts to distinguish between folklore and fakelore, between echt and ersatz."
A Spiral Way by
The invention of the cylinder phonograph at the end of the nineteenth century opened up a new world for cultural research. Indeed, Edison's talking machine became one of the basic tools of anthropology. It not only equipped researchers with the means of preserving folk songs but it also enabled them to investigate a wide spectrum of distinct vocal expressions in the emerging fields of anthropology and folklore. Ethnographers grasped its huge potential and fanned out through regional America to record rituals, stories, word lists, and songs in isolated cultures. From the outset the federal government helped fuel the momentum to record cultures that were at risk of being lost. Through the Bureau of American Ethnology, the Smithsonian Institution took an active role in preserving native heritage. It supported projects to make phonographic documentation of American Indian language, music, and rituals before developing technologies and national expansion might futher undermine them. This study of the early phonograph's impact shows traditional ethnography being transformed, for attitudes of both ethnographers and performers were reshaped by this exciting technology. In the presence of the phonograph both fieldwork and the materials collected were revolutionized. By radically altering the old research modes, the phonograph brought the disciplines of anthropology and folklore into the modern era. At first the instrument was as strange and new to the fieldworkers as it was to their subjects. To some the first encounter with the phonograph was a deeply unsettling experience. When it was demonstrated in 1878 before members of the National Academy of Sciences, several members of the audience fainted. Even its inventor was astonished. Of his first successful test of his tinfoil phonograph, Thomas A. Edison said, "I was never taken so aback in my life." The cylinders that have survived from these times offer an unrivaled resource not only for contemporary scholarship but also for a grassroots renaissance of cultural and religious values. In tracing the historical interplay of the talking machine with field research, A Spiral Way underscores the natural adaptablity of cultural study to this new technology.
The Dynamics of Folklore by
One of the most comprehensive and widely praised introductions to folklore ever written. Toelken's discussion of the history and meaning of folklore is delivered in straightforward language, easily understood definitions, and a wealth of insightful and entertaining examples. Toelken emphasizes dynamism and variety in the vast array of folk expressions he examines, from "the biology of folklore," to occupational and ethnic lore, food ways, holidays, personal experience narratives, ballads, myths, proverbs, jokes, crafts, and others. Chapters are followed by bibliographical essays, and over 100 photographs illustrate the text. This new edition is accessible to all levels of folklore study and an essential text for classroom instruction.
Eight Words for the Study of Expressive Culture by
Group. Art. Text. Genre. Performance. Context. Tradition. Identity. No matter where we are--in academic institutions, in cultural agencies, at home, or in a casual conversation--these are words we use when we talk about creative expression in its cultural contexts. Eight Words for the Study of Expressive Culture is a thoughtful, interdisciplinary examination of the keywords that are integral to the formulation of ideas about the diversity of human creativity, presented as a set of essays by leading folklorists. Many of us use these eight words every day. We think with them. We teach with them. Much of contemporary scholarship rests on their meanings and implications. They form a significant part of a set of conversations extending through centuries of thought about creativity, meaning, beauty, local knowledge, values, and community. Their natural habitats range across scholarly disciplines from anthropology and folklore to literary and cultural studies and provide the framework for other fields of practice and performance as well.Eight Words for the Study of Expressive Culture is a much-needed study of keywords that are frequently used but not easily explained. Anchored by Burt Feintuch's cogent introduction, the book features essays by Dorothy Noyes, Gerald L. Pocius, Jeff Todd Titon, Trudier Harris, Deborah A. Kapchan, Mary Hufford, Henry Glassie, and Roger D. Abrahams.
Explaining Traditions by
Why do humans hold onto traditions? Many pundits predicted that modernization and the rise of a mass culture would displace traditions, especially in America, but cultural practices still bear out the importance of rituals and customs in the development of identity, heritage, and community. In Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture, Simon J. Bronner discusses the underlying reasons for the continuing significance of traditions, delving into their social and psychological roles in everyday life, from old-time crafts to folk creativity on the Internet. Challenging prevailing notions of tradition as a relic of the past, Explaining Traditions provides deep insight into the nuances and purposes of living traditions in relation to modernity. Bronner's work forces readers to examine their own traditions and imparts a better understanding of raging controversies over the sustainability of traditions in the modern world.
Folk Groups and Folklore Genres by
Oring's introductory folklore text consists of a series of essays by leading scholars that give the student a solid sense of major folklore topics and interpretive techniques. Since 1986, when it was first published, this book has met the need for good instructional material at a time of tremendous growth in folklore programs and introductory courses in colleges and universities around the world.
Folklore Matters by The Grand Generation by 
Humble Theory by
Celebrated folklorist, Dorothy Noyes, offers an unforgettable glimpse of her craft and the many ways it matters. Folklore is the dirty linen of modernity, carrying the traces of working bodies and the worlds they live in. It is necessary but embarrassing, not easily blanched and made respectable for public view, although sometimes this display is deemed useful. The place of folklore studies among modern academic disciplines has accordingly been marginal and precarious, yet folklore studies are foundational and persistent. Long engaged with all that escapes the gaze of grand theory and grand narratives, folklorists have followed the lead of the people whose practices they study. They attend to local economies of meaning; they examine the challenge of making room for maneuver within circumstances one does not control. Incisive and wide ranging, the fifteen essays in this book chronicle the "humble theory" of both folk and folklorist as interacting perspectives on social life in the modern Western world.
The Individual and Tradition by
Profiles of artists and performers from around the world form the basis of this innovative volume that explores the many ways individuals engage with, carry on, revive, and create tradition. Leading scholars in folklore studies consider how the field has addressed the connections between performer and tradition and examine theoretical issues involved in fieldwork and the analysis and dissemination of scholarship in the context of relationships with the performers. Honoring Henry Glassie and his remarkable contributions to the field of folklore, these vivid case studies exemplify the best of performer-centered ethnography.
Interpreting Folklore by
"... Dundes has produced a work which will be useful to both students and teachers who wish to broaden their understanding of modern folklore." --Center for Southern Folklore Magazine "It is impossible ever to remain unimpressed with [Dundes'] excursuses, however much one may be in disagreement (or not) with his conclusions." --Forum for Modern Language Studies Often controversial, Alan Dundes's scholarship is always provocative, perceptive, and intelligent. His concern here is to assess the material folklorists have so painstakingly amassed and classified, to interpret folklore, and to use folklore to increase our understanding of human nature and culture.
The Practice of Folklore by
Despite predictions that commercial mass culture would displace customs of the past, traditions firmly abound, often characterized as folklore. In The Practice of Folklore: Essays toward a Theory of Tradition, author Simon J. Bronner works with theories of cultural practice to explain the social and psychological need for tradition in everyday life. Bronner proposes a distinctive "praxic" perspective that will answer the pressing philosophical as well as psychological question of why people enjoy repeating themselves. The significance of the keyword practice, he asserts, is the embodiment of a tension between repetition and variation in human behavior. Thinking with practice, particularly in a digital world, forces redefinitions of folklore and a reorientation toward interpreting everyday life. More than performance or enactment in social theory, practice connects localized culture with the vernacular idea that "this is the way we do things around here." Practice refers to the way those things are analyzed as part of, rather than apart from, theory, thus inviting the study of studying. "The way we do things" invokes the social basis of "doing" in practice as cultural and instrumental. Building on previous studies of tradition in relation to creativity, Bronner presents an overview of practice theory and the ways it might be used in folklore and folklife studies. Demonstrating the application of this theory in folkloristic studies, Bronner offers four provocative case studies of psychocultural meanings that arise from traditional frames of action and address issues of our times: referring to the boogieman; connecting "wild child" beliefs to school shootings; deciphering the offensive chants of sports fans; and explicating male bravado in bawdy singing. Turning his analysis to the analysts of tradition, Bronner uses practice theory to evaluate the agenda of folklorists in shaping perceptions of tradition-centered "folk societies" such as the Amish. He further unpacks the culturally based rationale of public folklore programming. He interprets the evolving idea of folk museums in a digital world and assesses how the folklorists' terms and actions affect how people think about tradition.
Study of American Folklore by 
An Arkansas Folklore Sourcebook by The Charm Is Broken by On a Slow Train Through Arkansas by 
Ozark Country by
Ozark Country by W. K. McNeil A stimulating encounter with the vigorous mountain culture and enduring folklife of the Ozarks This study of folklife in the Ozarks surveys one of America's most fascinating regions and shows its distinctive cultural imprint. The living heritage of Ozark country is detailed here beside the history of its earliest settlements and its unique folkways. Although many who pioneered in the Ozarks migrated from southern Appalachia, Ozark is not "Appalachia West," for the flavor of Ozark culture is rare and particular. This book is an expression of that lasting distinctiveness. The folklife of the home (its foodways, crafts, and folkways), of the workplace (its architecture and its crafts), of Ozark leisure (music, dance, folksongs, ballads, games, and narratives) are given special attention here so that the singular nature of life in Ozark country can be revealed as an ongoing tradition rather than a static preservation. In the Ozark region, perhaps as in no other place in America, the essential character of the people is stamped with this combination of what is past and what is present. W. K. McNeil (deceased) was a folklorist at the Ozark Folk Center. He wrote and edited many books about folklore in the southern United States.
Ozark Mountain Humor by 
Southern Mountain Folksongs by 
Appalachian Images in Folk and Popular Culture by 
The Florida Folklife Reader by
Florida is blessed with a semitropical climate, beautiful inland areas, and over a thousand miles of warm seas and sandy beaches. And Floridians are every bit as colorful and diverse as the tropical foliage. The interaction between Florida's people and its environment has created distinctive mixes of traditional life unlike those anywhere else in America. Florida's cultural foundation includes Seminoles, Anglo-Celtic Crackers, African Americans, transplanted northerners, and ethnic communities, as well as cultural syntheses developed from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries in Key West, Tampa, St. Augustine, and Pensacola. In recent decades, the state's population has been strongly impacted by large-scale immigration from Cuba, South America, Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. South Florida leads other regions in the development of a contemporary cultural synthesis, but Orlando and Tampa are rapidly evolving. Even sleepy north Florida is experiencing a significant shift. Although several books detail the traditions of specific Florida regions or folk groups, this is the first to provide an overview of Florida folklife. The Florida Folklife Reader brings together essays written by folklorists, anthropologists, and ethnomusicologists on a wide array of topics. The authors examine topics as diverse as regional and ethnic folk groups, occupational folklife, the built environment, musical traditions, rituals, and celebrations.
Folklife in Louisiana Photography by
Published in connection with the touring exhibition of the same name, this volume's 166 b&w photographs are evocatively nostalgic, even for those who have never seen a palmetto house, smelled freshly-roasted French coffee, or heard the sound of a washboard-accordian duo. De Caro traces this photogra
Great Smoky Mountains Folklife by
The Great Smoky Mountains, at the border of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina, are among the highest peaks of the southern Appalachian chain. Although this area shares much with the cultural traditions of all southern Appalachia, the folklife here has been uniquely shaped by historical events, including the Cherokee Removal of the 1830s and the creation of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park a century later. This book surveying the rich folklife of this special place in the American South offers a view of the culture as it has been defined and changed by scholars, missionaries, the federal government, tourists, and people of the region themselves. Here is an overview of the history of a beautiful landscape, one that examines the character typified by its early settlers, by the displacement of the people, and by the manner in which the folklife was discovered and defined during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Here also is an examination of various folk traditions and a study of how they have changed and evolved.
New York State Folklife Reader by
New York and its folklore scholars hold an important place in the history of the discipline. In New York dialogue between folklore researchers in the academy and those working in the public arena has been highly productive. In this volume, the works of New York's academic and public folklorists are presented together. Unlike some folklore anthologies, New York State Folklife Reader does not follow an organizational plan based on regions or genres. Because the New York Folklore Society has always tried to "give folklore back to the people," the editors decided to divide the edited volume into sections about life processes that all New York state residents share. The book begins with five essays on various aspects of folk cultural memory: personal, family, community, and historical processes of remembrance expressed through narrative, ritual, and other forms of folklore. Following these essays, subsequent sections explore aspects of life in New York through the lens of Play, Work, Resistance, and Food. Both the New York Folklore Society and its journal were, as society cofounder Louis Jones explained, "intended to reach not just the professional folklorists but those of the general public who were interested in the oral traditions of the State." Written in an accessible and readable style, this volume offers a glimpse into New York State's rich cultural diversity.
Popularizing Pennsylvania by
Few regions have had as energetic and influential a promoter as Henry W. Shoemaker (1880-1958), who devoted his life's work to preserving Pennsylvania's cultural and natural heritage. His memory lives on in the legends he helped promote, such as that of the Indian princess "Nita-Nee," for whom Central Pennsylvania's Nittany Mountain is supposedly named. He was also instrumental in creating Pennsylvania's noted system of parks and forests and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. In his own day, Shoemaker was a controversial figure, talked about for his immense wealth, powerful connections, eccentric hobbies, and, above all, his consuming passion for conserving and promoting Pennsylvania's wildlife, mountains, and common folk. During the Progressive Era, he fell in with national leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, who encouraged Americans to commune with nature and to appreciate its history and legend. He espoused the Progressive belief that nature and folk cultures held vital, even spiritual, powers for a modern age, especially in America, where Shoemaker hoped to create a mythology supporting nationalism. Shoemaker hoped to "sell Pennsylvania to Pennsylvanians" and instill an appreciation for the state's wilderness, threatened by industrialization. He authored hundreds of pamphlets and books on nature, history, and folklore. He was publisher of several influential newspapers in Pennsylvania, including the Altoona Tribune and the Reading Eagle. He became the first state folklorist in America, one of the first chairs of the Pennsylvania Historical Commission, and an influential member of the State Forest Commission and the State Geographic Board. He is responsible for the network of historical markers that dot the byways of the Commonwealth. For this book, the first full-length biography of Shoemaker, Simon Bronner has located never-before-available private papers and interviewed many people who knew Shoemaker. Included are rare photographs and a sampler of Shoemaker stories.
Shared Space by
Where it divides Arizona and Sonora, the international boundary between Mexico and the United States is both a political reality, literally expressed by a fence, and, to a considerable degree, a cultural illusion. Mexican, Anglo, and Native American cultures straddle the fence; people of various ethnic backgrounds move back and forth across the artificial divide, despite increasing obstacles to free movement. On either side is found a complex cultural mix of ethnic, religious, and occupational groups. In A Shared Space James Griffith examines many of the distinctive folk expressions of this varied cultural region.
Shenandoah Valley Folklife by
Bordered by the Blue Ridge and the Allegheny Mountains, the Shenandoah Valley forms a natural corridor to the western parts of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Early American settlers followed the valley as one of the first routes westward. In Shenandoah Valley Folklife, Scott Hamilton Suter documents the many peoples who have left their marks on the folkways of the region--Native Americans, Germans, Swiss, Scots- Irish, and African Americans. His research reveals how the first settlers there built homes, how they worshiped, and how they passed on legends and musical traditions that continue to play a role in the community today. Throughout the book, Suter argues that the valley's past plays a definitive role in its present. He finds family traditions still thriving in crafts like white oak basket-making, as well as in cooking and architecture. To illuminate the change and continuity in religious life, he focuses on Old Order Mennonites, the Church of the Brethren, and Baptists in the region. Using both historical sources and his own field work, Suter shows how folklife remains a powerful, resonant force in the Shenandoah, and how new immigrants are adapting and adding their own traditions to long-standing customs.
Wisconsin Folklore by
Highly entertaining and richly informative, Wisconsin Folklore offers the first comprehensive collection of writings about the surprisingly varied folklore of Wisconsin. Beginning with a historical introduction to Wisconsin's folklore and concluding with an up-to-date bibliography, this anthology offers more than fifty annotated and illustrated entries in five sections: "Terms and Talk," "Storytelling," "Music, Song, and Dance," "Beliefs and Customs," and "Material Traditions and Folklife." The various contributors, from 1884 to 1997, are anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, historians, journalists, museologists, ordinary citizens reminiscing, sociologists, students, writers of fiction, practitioners of folklore, and folklorists. Their interests cover an enormous range of topics: from Woodland Indian place names and German dialect expressions to Welsh nicknames and the jargon of apple-pickers, brewers, and farmers; from Ho-Chunk and Ojibwa mythological tricksters and Paul Bunyan legends to stories of Polish strongmen and Ole and Lena jokes; from Menominee dances and Norwegian fiddling and polka music to African-American gospel groups and Hmong musicians; from faith healers and wedding and funeral customs to seasonal ethnic festivities and tavern amusements; and from spearing decoys and needlework to church dinners, sacred shrines, and the traditional work practices of commercial fishers, tobacco growers, and pickle packers. For general readers, teachers, librarians, and scholars alike, Wisconsin Folklore exemplifies and illuminates Wisconsin's cultural traditions, and establishes the state's significant but long neglected contributions to American folklore.
Doing Sensory Ethnography by
Doing Sensory Ethnography responds to a recent an explosion of interest in the senses across the social sciences. Sarah Pink suggests re-thinking the ethnographic process through reflexive attention to what she terms the ′sensoriality′ of the experience, practice and knowledge of both researchers and those who participate in their research. The book provides an accessible discussion and analysis of the theoretical, methodological and practical aspects of doing sensory ethnography, drawing on examples and case studies from the growing literature on sensory ethnographic studies, and from the author′s own work. Doing Sensory Ethnography is the first book to concentrate on outlining a sensory ethnographic methodology. It will be of great interest to researchers and students from all disciplines interested in enriching their ethnographic work through a focus on the senses.
FieldWorking by
FieldWorking is a fun and practical guide to research and writing. This acclaimed text incorporates examples by professional writers such as Peter Elbow, Joan Didion, Oliver Sacks, and Jamaica Kincaid, as well as student research projects on communities as diverse a truck stop, sports bar, homeless shelter, and horse sales barn, to help students identify and define their own subcultures and communities. In unique activities and comprehensive instruction, FieldWorking presents an ethnographic approach that empowers students to observe, listen, interpret, analyze, and write about the people and artifacts around them, while learning the essentials of college writing and research. FieldWorking is suitable for courses in English, anthropology, cultural studies, journalism -- or in any discipline where research is required.
Tales of the Field by
For more than twenty years, John Van Maanen's Tales of the Field has been a definitive reference and guide for students, scholars, and practitioners of ethnography and beyond. Originally published in 1988, it was the one of the first works to detail and critically analyze the various styles and narrative conventions associated with written representations of culture. This is a book about the deskwork of fieldwork and the various ways culture is put forth in print. The core of the work is an extended discussion and illustration of three forms or genres of cultural representation--realist tales, confessional tales, and impressionist tales. The novel issues raised in Tales concern authorial voice, style, truth, objectivity, and point-of-view. Over the years, the work has both reflected and shaped changes in the field of ethnography. In this second edition, Van Maanen's substantial new Epilogue charts and illuminates changes in the field since the book's first publication. Refreshingly humorous and accessible, Tales of the Field remains an invaluable introduction to novices learning the trade of fieldwork and a cornerstone of reference for veteran ethnographers.
The Tape-Recorded Interview by
Since 1980, The Tape-Recorded Interview has been an essential resource for folklorists and oral historians - indeed, for anyone who uses a tape recorder in field research. When this book was first published, the reel-to-reel recorder was the favored format for fieldwork. Because the cassette recorder has almost completely replaced it, Ives has revised the first chapter, How a Tape Recorder Works, accordingly and has included a useful discussion of the differences between analog and digital recording. He has also added a brief section on video, updated the bibliography, and reworked his original comments on tape cataloguing and transcription. As in the first edition, Ives's emphasis is on documenting the lives of common men and women. He offers a careful, step-by-step tour through the collection process - finding informants, making advance preparations, conducting the actual interview, obtaining a release - and then describes the procedures for processing the taped interview and archiving such materials for future use. He also gives special treatment to such topics as recording music, handling group interviews, and using photographs or other visual material during interviews.
People Studying People by
The authors of this book demonstrate that fieldwork is first and foremost a human pursuit. They draw upon published and unpublished accounts of fieldworkers' personal experiences to develop the thesis that an appreciation of fieldwork as a unique mode of inquiry depends upon an understanding of the role the human element plays in it. They analyze the processes involved when people study people firsthand, focusing upon the recurrent human problems that arise and must be solved. The human processes and problems, they argue, are common to all fieldwork, regardless of the disciplinary backgrounds or the specific interests of individual researchers.
A Spiral Way by
The invention of the cylinder phonograph at the end of the nineteenth century opened up a new world for cultural research. Indeed, Edison's talking machine became one of the basic tools of anthropology. It not only equipped researchers with the means of preserving folk songs but it also enabled them to investigate a wide spectrum of distinct vocal expressions in the emerging fields of anthropology and folklore. Ethnographers grasped its huge potential and fanned out through regional America to record rituals, stories, word lists, and songs in isolated cultures. From the outset the federal government helped fuel the momentum to record cultures that were at risk of being lost. Through the Bureau of American Ethnology, the Smithsonian Institution took an active role in preserving native heritage. It supported projects to make phonographic documentation of American Indian language, music, and rituals before developing technologies and national expansion might futher undermine them. This study of the early phonograph's impact shows traditional ethnography being transformed, for attitudes of both ethnographers and performers were reshaped by this exciting technology. In the presence of the phonograph both fieldwork and the materials collected were revolutionized. By radically altering the old research modes, the phonograph brought the disciplines of anthropology and folklore into the modern era. At first the instrument was as strange and new to the fieldworkers as it was to their subjects. To some the first encounter with the phonograph was a deeply unsettling experience. When it was demonstrated in 1878 before members of the National Academy of Sciences, several members of the audience fainted. Even its inventor was astonished. Of his first successful test of his tinfoil phonograph, Thomas A. Edison said, "I was never taken so aback in my life." The cylinders that have survived from these times offer an unrivaled resource not only for contemporary scholarship but also for a grassroots renaissance of cultural and religious values. In tracing the historical interplay of the talking machine with field research, A Spiral Way underscores the natural adaptablity of cultural study to this new technology.
Tales of the Field by
For more than twenty years, John Van Maanen's Tales of the Field has been a definitive reference and guide for students, scholars, and practitioners of ethnography and beyond. Originally published in 1988, it was the one of the first works to detail and critically analyze the various styles and narrative conventions associated with written representations of culture. This is a book about the deskwork of fieldwork and the various ways culture is put forth in print. The core of the work is an extended discussion and illustration of three forms or genres of cultural representation--realist tales, confessional tales, and impressionist tales. The novel issues raised in Tales concern authorial voice, style, truth, objectivity, and point-of-view. Over the years, the work has both reflected and shaped changes in the field of ethnography. In this second edition, Van Maanen's substantial new Epilogue charts and illuminates changes in the field since the book's first publication. Refreshingly humorous and accessible, Tales of the Field remains an invaluable introduction to novices learning the trade of fieldwork and a cornerstone of reference for veteran ethnographers.
The Written Suburb by
Chadds Ford, an upscale suburb in southeastern Pennsylvania, devotes a lot of energy to creating a historical identity. Numerous institutions participate in this task, including museums, a land conservancy dedicated to the preservation of its historical landscape, and the Historical Society, which is responsible for an annual community celebration. Larger institutions related to regional tourism and suburban development generate a steady flow of texts about Chadds Ford in the form of glossy travel magazines, pamphlets, brochures, and gallery displays.
Folk Art and Aging by
Growing old doesn't have to be seen as an eventual failure but rather as an important developmental stage of creativity. Offering an absorbing and fresh perspective on aging and crafts, Jon Kay explores how elders choose to tap into their creative and personal potential through making life-story objects. Carving, painting, and rug hooking not only help seniors to cope with the ailments of aging and loneliness but also to achieve greater satisfaction with their lives. Whether revived from childhood memories or inspired by their capacity to connect to others, meaningful memory projects serve as a lens for focusing on, remaking, and sharing the long-ago. These activities often help elders productively fill the hours after they have raised their children, retired from their jobs, and/or lost a loved one. These individuals forge new identities for themselves that do not erase their earlier lives but build on them and new lives that include sharing scenes and stories from their memories.
Fire in the Placa by
Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Fire in the Plaça is the first full-length study in English of the Patum, a Corpus Christi fire festival unique to Berga, Catalonia, Spain, celebrated annually since the seventeenth century. Participants in the festival are transformed through drink, sleep deprivation, crowding, constant motion, and the smoke and sparks of close-range firecrackers into passionate members of a precarious body politic. Combining richly layered symbolism with intense bodily expression, the Patum has long served as a grassroots equivalent of grand social theory; it moves from a representation of social divisions to a forcible communion among them. The Patum's dancing effigies--giants, dwarves, Turks and Christian knights, devils and angels, a crowned eagle, and two flaming mule-dragons--have provided local allegories for a long series of political conflicts, but the festival obscures its own messages in smoke and motion to enable a temporary merging of opposites. Activists in the 1970s transition to democracy in Spain took the Patum as a model of how old adversaries might collaborate: it helped to shape the mix of assertiveness in performance and compromise in practice that is typical of contemporary Catalan nationalism. The Patum became a focus of resistance to the Franco regime and drew visitors from all over Catalonia, serving as a rehearsal for the mass protests in Barcelona. Later, it provided the newly autonomous region with a vehicle for integrating immigrants and a vocabulary of belonging, culminating in the Patum-derived devils of the closing ceremonies of the 1992 Olympic games. Today, as mines and factories have closed in Berga, the Patum serves as an arena in which provincial Catalans model their relationship to Barcelona, Europe, and the world, and reflects their ambivalence about the choices open to them. Seeking a third way between tourism and terrorism, provincial towns like Berga show us the future of all local communities under globalization. In collective performances such as the Patum, tensions between cultural and political representation are made visible, and the gap between aspiration and possibility is both bridged and acknowledged. In this exceptionally rich ethnographic study, Dorothy Noyes explores the predicament of provincial communities striving to overcome internal conflict and participate in a wider world.
Built with Faith by
Over the course of 130 years, Italian American Catholics in New York City have developed a varied repertoire of devotional art and architecture to create community-based sacred spaces in their homes and neighborhoods. These spaces exist outside of but in relationship to the consecrated halls of local parishes and are sites of worship in conventionally secular locations. Such ethnic building traditions and urban ethnic landscapes have long been neglected by all but a few scholars. Joseph Sciorra's Built with Faith offers a place-centric, ethnographic study of the religious material culture of New York City's Italian American Catholics. Sciorra spent thirty-five years researching these community art forms and interviewing Italian immigrant and U.S.-born Catholics. By documenting the folklife of this group, Sciorra reveals how Italian Americans in the city use expressive culture and religious practices to transform everyday urban space into unique, communal sites of ethnically infused religiosity. The folk aesthetics practiced by individuals within their communities are integral to understanding how art is conceptualized, implemented, and esteemed outside of museum and gallery walls. Yard shrines, sidewalk altars, Nativity presepi, Christmas house displays, a stone-studded grotto, and neighborhood processions--often dismissed as kitsch or prized as folk art--all provide examples of the vibrant and varied ways contemporary Italian Americans use material culture, architecture, and public ceremonial display to shape the city's religious and cultural landscapes. Written in an accessible style that will appeal to general readers and scholars alike, Sciorra's unique study contributes to our understanding of how value and meaning are reproduced at the confluences of everyday life. Joseph Sciorra is the director of Academic and Cultural Programs at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College. He is the editor of Italian Folk: Vernacular Culture in Italian-American Lives and co-editor of Embroidered Stories: Interpreting Women's Domestic Needlework from the Italian Diaspora.
All That Is Native and Fine by
In the American imagination, the word Appalachia designates more than a geographical region. It evokes fiddle tunes, patchwork quilts, split-rail fences, and all the other artifacts that decorate a cherished romantic region of the American mind. David Whisnant challenges this view of Appalachia (and consequently this broader imaginitive tendency) by exploring connections between a comforting cultural myth and the troublesome complexities of cultural history. Looking at the work of some ballad hunters and collectors, handicraft revivalists, folk festival promoters, and other cultural missionaries, Whisnant discovers a process of intentional and systematic cultural intervention that had (and still has) far-reaching consequences. Why, Whisnant asks, did so many Bluegrass ladies and upper-class graduates of Seven Sisters colleges rush to erect cultural breakwaters around mountaineers? Why would a sophisticated New England woman build a Danish folk school in western North Carolina? Why did a classical musician from Richmond who hated blacks love southern mountain music? How did the notions and actions of all these cultural missionaries affect the lives of the mountaineers? And what do these episodes of intervention teach us about culture and cultural change--in Appalachia and elsewhere? Whisnant pursues these and other questions in closely documented case studies of the Hindman Settlement School in eastern Kentucky, the cultural work of Olive Dame Campbell throughout the mountains, and the White Top Folk Festival on the Virginia-North Carolina border. Moreover, he relates them to broader social and economic developments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the comingof the railroads and the opening of the mines, the Depression, the advent of TVA, and more diffuse processes such as urbanization, the decline of agriculture, the movement of radio and the commercial recording industry into the mountains, and the implicit restrictions Victorian America placed on the political perspectives and activities of socially conscious upper-class women. We must begin to understand the politics of culture, Whisnant writes, especially the role of formal institutions and foreceful individuals in defining and shaping perspectives, values, tastes and agendas for cultural change. All That Is Native and Fine opens the way not only to a reexamination of the history of a single region but also to a more sophisticated understanding of the dynamics of cultural continuity and change in other regions and in the nation as a whole.
An Arkansas Folklore Sourcebook by American Material Culture and Folklife by Chain Carvers by Folk Art and Art Worlds by
Eleven essays explore the changing face of folk art in its different context of folk art "worlds". The contributors examine who coined and developed the term "folk art", and the consequences of naming, collecting, and selling folk art.
Grasping Things by 
Homeplace by
Challenging many of the methods and preconceptions of conventional folk-architecture studies, Homeplace examines traditional houses in the mountains of Appalachia from the perspective offered by oral histories. Michael Ann Williams bases much of her study on interviews with some of the people most intimately familiar with her subject: more than fifty individuals born and raised in southwestern North Carolina in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their testimony links the perspective of former occupants and the experiential aspects of folk architecture with more traditional scholarly studies. Most scholarship on vernacular architecture emphasizes form and structure and is based primarily on the examination of extant buildings. While Homeplace contains floor plans and historical photographs, it also illustrates how oral history is often a more reliable guide in the interpretation of folk buildings than artifactual or documentary evidence. By foregrounding inhabitants' reminiscences, Williams brings rural Appalachian architecture to life by emphasizing human experience within the dwelling. An examination of universal concerns--continuity and change in the inhabitants' uses and conceptualizations of interior spaces, domestic life and cultural change in southern Appalachia, the shifting importance of formal and informal spaces--Homeplace offers new insights into the folk building tradition and its cultural context that will be most helpful to those seeking a broader understanding of Appalachian life.
Invitation to Vernacular Architecture by
Invitation to Vernacular Architecture: A Guide to the Study of Ordinary Buildings and Landscapes, is a manual for exploring and interpreting vernacular architecture, the common buildings of particular regions and time periods. Thomas Carter and Elizabeth Collins Cromley provide a comprehensive introduction to the field. Proposing a methodology, Invitation to Vernacular Architecture provides a systematic approach to vernacular architecture fieldwork. The authors walk readers through the process of examining and documenting a building, explaining in detail how to define a research area and create a research plan. They guide students step-by-step in how to take accurate measurements of sites and of building exteriors and interiors and explain what to look for at each level. They show how to find patterns and how to organize information to yield sound interpretations of buildings’ meanings. As a complement to this practical approach, Carter and Cromley present current scholarship on vernacular architecture and explain the need for a broad theoretical perspective. They show how analysis of facts related to a building can reveal important insights into the behavior and culture of people who lived in a certain area at a certain time. The authors then present a single ordinary house as a case study to explore the different points of view that scholars have brought to the study of vernacular architecture. Rich with illustrations and written in a clear and jargon-free style, Invitation to Vernacular Architecture is an ideal text for courses in architecture, material culture studies, historic preservation, American studies, and history, and a useful guide for anyone interested in the built environment.
Vernacular Architecture by
Based on thirty-five years of fieldwork, Glassie's Vernacular Architecture synthesizes a career of concern with traditional building. He articulates the key principles of architectural analysis, and then, centering his argument in the United States, but drawing comparative examples from many locations in Europe and Asia, he shows how architecture can be a prime resource for the one who would write a democratic and comprehensive history.
Folk Housing in Middle Virginia by An Arkansas Folklore Sourcebook by 
At Home with Apartheid by
Despite their peaceful, bucolic appearance, the tree-lined streets of South African suburbia were no refuge from the racial tensions and indignities of apartheid's most repressive years. In At Home with Apartheid, Rebecca Ginsburg provides an intimate examination of the cultural landscapes of Johannesburg's middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods during the height of apartheid (c. 1960-1975) and incorporates recent scholarship on gender, the home, and family. More subtly but no less significantly than factory floors, squatter camps, prisons, and courtrooms, the homes of white South Africans were sites of important contests between white privilege and black aspiration. Subtle negotiations within the domestic sphere between white, mostly female, householders and their black domestic workers, also primarily women, played out over and around this space. These seemingly mundane, private conflicts were part of larger contemporary struggles between whites and blacks over territory and power. Ginsburg gives special attention to the distinct social and racial geographies produced by the workers' detached living quarters, designed by builders and architects as landscape complements to the main houses. Ranch houses, Italianate villas, modernist cubes, and Victorian bungalows filled Johannesburg's suburbs. What distinguished these neighborhoods from their precedents in the United States or the United Kingdom was the presence of the ubiquitous back rooms and of the African women who inhabited them in these otherwise exclusively white areas. The author conducted more than seventy-five personal interviews for this book, an approach that sets it apart from other architectural histories. In addition to these oral accounts, Ginsburg draws from plans, drawings, and onsite analysis of the physical properties themselves. While the issues addressed span the disciplines of South African and architectural history, feminist studies, material culture studies, and psychology, the book's strong narrative, powerful oral histories, and compelling subject matter bring the neighborhoods and residents it examines vividly to life.
Clambake by
An appreciative examination of the New England clambake, Neustadt divides her study into three parts: historical (social, economic, political, regional, and cultural) influences on the clambake; a close focus on the Allen's Neck clambake as a cultural phenomena in its own right; and a critical examination of the central elements of the clambaking tradition--food, ritual, and festival. The author views the clambake as a unique American folk tradition with interesting connections and rich resonances with other aspects of American culture and history.
Comfort Food by
With contributions by: Barbara Banks, Sheila Bock, Susan Eleuterio, Jillian Gould, Phillis Humphries, Michael Owen Jones, Alicia Kristen, William G. Lockwood, Yvonne R. Lockwood, Lucy M. Long, LuAnne Roth, Rachelle H. Saltzman, Charlene Smith, Annie Tucker, and Diane Tye Comfort Food explores this concept with examples taken from Atlantic Canadians, Indonesians, the English in Britain, and various ethnic, regional, and religious populations as well as rural and urban residents in the United States. This volume includes studies of particular edibles and the ways in which they comfort or in some instances cause discomfort. The contributors focus on items ranging from bologna to chocolate, including sweet and savory puddings, fried bread with an egg in the center, dairy products, fried rice, cafeteria fare, sugary fried dough, soul food, and others. Several essays consider comfort food in the context of cookbooks, films, blogs, literature, marketing, and tourism. Of course what heartens one person might put off another, so the collection also includes takes on victuals that prove problematic. All this fare is then related to identity, family, community, nationality, ethnicity, class, sense of place, tradition, stress, health, discomfort, guilt, betrayal, and loss, contributing to and deepening our understanding of comfort food. This book offers a foundation for further appreciation of comfort food. As a subject of study, the comfort food is relevant to a number of disciplines, most obviously food studies, folkloristics, and anthropology, but also American studies, cultural studies, global and international studies, tourism, marketing, and public health.
Culinary Tourism by
""From Kosher Oreos to the gentrification of Mexican cusine, from the charismatic cook of Basque communities in Spain and the United States to the mainstreaming of southwestern foodways, Culinary Tourism maps a lively cultural and intellectual terrain."" -- from the foreword by Barbara Kirshenblatt-GimblettCulinary Tourism is the first book to consider food as both a destination and a means for tourism. The book's contributors examine the many intersections of food, culture and tourism in public and commercial contexts, in private and domestic settings, and around the world. The contributors argue that the sensory experience of eating provides people with a unique means of communication. Editor Lucy Long contends that although the interest in experiencing ""otherness"" is strong within American society, total immersion into the unfamiliar is not always welcome. Thus spicy flavors of Latin Aermcia and the exotic ingredients of Asia have been mainstreamed for everyday consumption. Culinary Tourism explains how and why interest in foreign food is expanding tastes and leading to commercial profit in America, but the book also show how tourism combines personal experiences with cultural and social attitudes toward food and the circumstances for adventurous eating.
Costume by
What does it mean to people around the world to put on costumes to celebrate their heritage, reenact historic events, assume a role on stage, or participate in Halloween or Carnival? Self-consciously set apart from everyday dress, costume marks the divide between ordinary and extraordinary settings and enables the wearer to project a different self or special identity. Pravina Shukla offers richly detailed case studies from the United States, Brazil, and Sweden to show how individuals use costumes for social communication and to express facets of their personalities.
American Children's Folklore by
Concentrating on lore gathered since World War II, Bronner has assembled an anthology of what children really say, not what adults wish they would say. It is through such shared lore songs, expressions, games and beliefs that children adapt to new situations. Bronner includes secret languages, jump rope rhymes, song parodies, games, taunts, tongue twisters, jokes, and more. These treasures make for nostalgic reading for adults who want to relive their own childhoods or gain a window to their own children's world."
Breaking the Magic Spell by
This revised, expanded, and updated edition of the 1979 landmark Breaking the Magic Spell examines the enduring power of fairy tales and the ways they invade our subjective world. In seven provocative essays, Zipes discusses the importance of investigating oral folk tales in their socio-political context and traces their evolution into literary fairy tales, a metamorphosis that often diminished the ideology of the original narrative. Zipes also looks at how folk tales influence our popular beliefs and the ways they have been exploited by a corporate media network intent on regulating the mystical elements of the stories. He examines a range of authors, including the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, Ernst Bloch, Tolkien, Bettelheim, and J.K. Rowling to demonstrate the continuing symbiotic relationship between folklore and literature.
Chaseworld by
Chaseworldis a study of the foxhunters in the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey. Mary Hufford examines the activities that occur before, during, and after foxchases and analyzes the stories that hunters tell about chases. Through these activities and narratives, she contends, Pine Barrens foxhunters have collaboratively constructed an alternate reality—the Chaseworld.
The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm by
The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm Perhaps no other stories possess as much power to enchant, delight, and surprise as those penned by the immortal Brothers Grimm. Now, in the new, expanded third edition, renowned scholar and folklorist Jack Zipes has translated all 250 tales collected and published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, plus twenty-nine rare tales omitted from the original German edition, as well as narratives uncovered in the brothers’ letters and papers. Truly the most comprehensive translation to date, this critically acclaimed edition recaptures the fairy tales as the Brothers Grimm intended them to be: rich, stark, spiced with humor and violence, resonant with folklore and song. One of the world’s experts on children’s literature, Jack Zipes is a professor of German at the University of Minnesota and is the author of numerous books on folklore and fairy tales.
Did You Hear about the Girl Who...? by
Ever hear the one about the man who wakes up after a chance sexual encounter to discover he's been involuntarily relieved of one of his kidneys? Or the tiny gift-wrapped box from a recently departed lover that reveals a horrible secret? Everyone knows contemporary legends, those barely believable, often lurid, cautionary tales, always told as though they happened to the friend of a friend. Sometimes we pass them on to others unsure of their truthfulness, usually we dismiss them as mere myth. But these far-fetched legends tell us quite a bit about our deepest fears and fantasies. In fact, a large part of what we know about our bodies we have learned informally, from kids on the playground or colleagues at work, from piecing together the information contained in folk beliefs, jokes and legends. Sexual folklore goes beyond classroom lessons of mechanics to answer many questions about what people actually do and how they do it. Mariamne H. Whatley and Elissa R. Henken have collected hundreds of sexually-themed stories and jokes from college students in order to tell us what they reveal about our sexual attitudes and show us how they have changed over time. They confront myths and stereotypes about sexual behavior and use folklore as a tool to educate students about sexual health and gender relations. Whether analyzing popular rumors about celebrity emergency room visits or the latest schoolyard jokes, Did You Hear About The Girl Who . . . ? presents these tales in a way that is intriguing and educational.
Ghost Stories from the American South by
Over 100 tales of the supernatural, drawn from Tidewater Virginia to the Lone Star State, are included in this collection. McNeil's introduction traces themes peculiar to the South, such as the screaming bridge and the levitating railroad light. Line drawings contribute to the mood of the stories; an index references various Southern localities by town and state.
Haunted Halls by
Why do so many American college students tell stories about encounters with ghosts? In Haunted Halls, the first book-length interpretive study of college ghostlore, Elizabeth Tucker takes the reader back to school to get acquainted with a wide range of college spirits. Some of the best-known ghosts that she discusses are Emory University\'s Dooley, who can disband classes by shooting professors with his water pistol; Mansfield Uni-versity\'s Sara, who threw herself down a flight of stairs after being rejected by her boyfriend; and Huntingdon College\'s Red Lady, who slit her wrists while dressed in a red robe. Gettysburg College students have collided with ghosts of soldiers, while students at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College have reported frightening glimpses of the Faceless Nun. Tucker presents campus ghostlore from the mid-1960s to 2006, with special attention to stories told by twenty-first-century students through e-mail and instant messages. Her approach combines social, psychological, and cultural analysis, with close attention to students\' own explanations of the significance of spectral phenomena. As metaphors of disorder, insanity, and school spirit, college ghosts convey multiple meanings. Their colorful stories warn students about the dangers of overindulgence, as well as the pitfalls of potentially horrifying relationships. Besides offering insight into students\' initiation into campus life, college ghost stories make important statements about injustices suffered by Native Americans, African Americans, and others. Elizabeth Tucker is associate professor of English at Binghamton University. She is the author of Campus Legends: A Handbook and has published widely in folklore journals.
Haunting Experiences by
Ghosts and other supernatural phenomena are widely represented throughout modern culture. They can be found in any number of entertainment, commercial, and other contexts, but popular media or commodified representations of ghosts can be quite different from the beliefs people hold about them, based on tradition or direct experience. Personal belief and cultural tradition on the one hand, and popular and commercial representation on the other, nevertheless continually feed each other. They frequently share space in how people think about the supernatural. In Haunting Experiences, three well-known folklorists seek to broaden the discussion of ghost lore by examining it from a variety of angles in various modern contexts. Diane E. Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, and Jeannie Banks Thomas take ghosts seriously, as they draw on contemporary scholarship that emphasizes both the basis of belief in experience (rather than mere fantasy) and the usefulness of ghost stories. They look closely at the narrative role of such lore in matters such as socialization and gender. And they unravel the complex mix of mass media, commodification, and popular culture that today puts old spirits into new contexts.
Inari Sami folklore: stories from Aanaar by
This anthology of folk tales, legends, joik-songs, proverbs, riddles, and omens represent the most comprehensive collection of Sámi oral tradition available in English to date. Collected in 1886 by A.V. Koskimies in the small arctic village of Aanaar (Inari), Finland, and later augmented by Toivo Itkonen and Lea Laitinen, it includes more than 150 stories and songs, and hundreds of proverbs, omens, and riddles, from nearly two dozen storytellers. It paints a picture of late nineteenth-century life in Aanaar, showing important changes occurring within the community, the hopes and fears of local people, and the complex web of social relations that existed both inside and outside the community.
The Kushmaker and Other Essays on Folk Speech and Folk Humor. Alan Dundes by 
Once upon a Virus by
Out to see America and satisfy his travel bug, W. T. Pfefferle resigned from his position as director of the writing program at Johns Hopkins University and hit the road to interview sixty-two poets about the significance of place in their work. The lively conversations that resulted may surprise with the potential meanings of a seemingly simple concept. This gathering of voices and ideas is illustrated with photo and word portraits from the road and represented with suitable poems. The poets are James Harms, David Citino, Martha Collins, Linda Gregerson, Richard Tillinghast, Orlando Ricardo Menes, Mark Strand, Karen Volkman, Lisa Samuels, Marvin Bell, Michael Dennis Browne, David Allan Evans, David Romtvedt, Sandra Alcosser, Robert Wrigley, Nance Van Winckel, Christopher Howell, Mark Halperin, Jana Harris, Sam Hamill, Barbara Drake, Floyd Skloot, Ralph Angel, Carol Muske-Dukes, David St. John, Sharon Bryan, Donald Revell, Claudia Keelan, Alberto Rios, Richard Shelton, Jane Miller, William Wenthe, Naomi Shihab Nye, Peter Cooley, Miller Williams, Beth Ann Fennelly, Natasha Trethewey, Denise Duhamel, Campbell McGrath, Terrance Hayes, Alan Shapiro, Nikki Giovanni, Charles Wright, Rita Dove, Henry Taylor, Dave Smith, Nicole Cooley, David Lehman, Lucie Brock-Broido, Michael S. Harper, C. D. Wright, Mark Wunderlich, James Cummins, Frederick Smock, Mark Jarman, Carl Phillips, Scott Cairns, Elizabeth Dodd, Jonathan Holden, Bin Ramke, Kenneth Brewer, and Paisley Rekdal.
Other People's Stories by
In Other People's Stories, Amy Shuman examines the social relations embedded in stories and the complex ethical and social tensions that surround their telling. Drawing on innovative research and contemporary theory, she describes what happens when one person's story becomes another person's source of inspiration, or when entitlement and empathy collide. The resulting analyses are wonderfully diverse, integrating narrative studies, sociolinguistics, communications, folklore, and ethnographic studies to examine the everyday, conversational stories told by cultural groups including Latinas, Jews, African Americans, Italians, and Puerto Ricans. Shuman offers a nuanced and clear theoretical perspective derived from the Frankfurt school, life history research, disability research, feminist studies, trauma studies, and cultural studies. Without compromising complexity, she makes narrative inquiry accessible to a broad population.
The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales by
From its ancient roots in the oral tradition to the postmodernist reworkings of the present day, the fairy tale has retained its powerful hold over the cultural imagination of Europe and North America. Now The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales provides the first authoritative reference source for this complex, captivating genre. With more than 800 entries written by a team of 67 specialists from around the world, the Companion offers an illuminating look at the classic tales themselves, both ancient and modern, from Jack and Jill and Cinderella to Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz. The contributors also profile the writers who wrote or reworked these luminous tales, as well as the illustrators, film-makers, choreographers, and composers who have been involved with creating or interpreting them. The Companion also covers such related topics as film, art, opera, ballet, music, even advertising. An introductory overview by Jack Zipes sets the subject in its historical and literary context, and special survey articles explore the development of the fairy-tale tradition in individual countries, focusing particularly on the European and North American traditions. The volume includes a detailed bibliography, to aid in further research into this fascinating topic. Strikingly illustrated with 70 beautiful pictures, from early engravings to 20th-century film stills, this is an essential companion for everyone who loves fairy tales and storytelling.
The Stigmatized Vernacular by
As part of this multilayered conversation about stigma, this volume discusses the relationship between the stigmatized individual and our role as researchers. Here we address our own perspectives as researchers struggling with stigma issues and tellability, as well as scholarly reflexive concerns dealing with what can't be said when working with stigmatized groups or topics. The disciplinary focus of folklore positions us well to concentrate on the vernacular experience of the stigmatized, but it also propels us toward analysis of the performance of stigma, the process of stigmatization, and the political representation of stigmatized populations. These perspectives come to the fore in this book, as does the multilayered nature of stigma--its ability to reproduce, overlap, and spread, not just in terms of replication but also in terms of the ethnographer's ability to apprehend it and her ability to research and write about it.
Storytelling on the Northern Irish Border by
More than quaint local color, folklore is a crucial part of life in Aghyaran, a mixed Catholic-Protestant border community in Northern Ireland. Neighbors socialize during wakes and ceilis--informal nighttime gatherings--without regard to religious, ethnic, or political affiliation. The witty, sometimes raucous stories swapped on these occasions offer a window into Aghyaran residents' views of self and other in the wake of decades of violent conflict. Through anecdotes about local characters, participants explore the nature of community and identity in ways that transcend Catholic or Protestant sectarian histories. Ray Cashman analyzes local character anecdotes in detail and argues that while politicians may take credit for the peace process in Northern Ireland, no political progress would be possible without ordinary people using shared resources of storytelling and socializing to imagine and maintain community.
An Arkansas Folklore Sourcebook by 
Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music by
The Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music is the first comprehensive reference to cover this important American musical form. Coverage includes all aspects of both African-American and white gospel from history and performers to recording techniques and styles as well as the influence of gospel on different musical genres and cultural trends.
Hidden in the Mix by
Country music's debt to African American music has long been recognized. Black musicians have helped to shape the styles of many of the most important performers in the country canon. The partnership between Lesley Riddle and A. P. Carter produced much of the Carter Family's repertoire; the street musician Tee Tot Payne taught a young Hank Williams Sr.; the guitar playing of Arnold Schultz influenced western Kentuckians, including Bill Monroe and Ike Everly. Yet attention to how these and other African Americans enriched the music played by whites has obscured the achievements of black country-music performers and the enjoyment of black listeners. The contributors to Hidden in the Mix examine how country music became "white," how that fictive racialization has been maintained, and how African American artists and fans have used country music to elaborate their own identities. They investigate topics as diverse as the role of race in shaping old-time record catalogues, the transracial West of the hick-hopper Cowboy Troy, and the place of U.S. country music in postcolonial debates about race and resistance. Revealing how music mediates both the ideology and the lived experience of race, Hidden in the Mix challenges the status of country music as "the white man's blues." Contributors. Michael Awkward, Erika Brady, Barbara Ching, Adam Gussow, Patrick Huber, Charles Hughes, Jeffrey A. Keith, Kip Lornell, Diane Pecknold, David Sanjek, Tony Thomas, Jerry Wever
Joe Scott, the Woodsman-Songmaker by 
Morning Dew and Roses by
"A major academic work that is also brilliantly, clearly, humanely, and poetically written. It can be enjoyed not only by ballad and bawdry scholars but by everyone who picks it up." -- Kenneth S. Goldstein, University of Pennsylvania, former president of the American Folklore Society "Toelken's insights . . . are unique. His study broadens and deepens scholarly appreciation of how folksong metaphors carry their own semantic weight. . . . One of the best expressions of the power of music in folksong that I have seen in recent years." -- James Porter, author of The Traditional Music of Britain and Ireland In this lively exploration of folksongs and their meanings, Barre Toelken looks closely at riddle songs and other ambiguous folksongs, as well as the various "ballad commonplaces." Ranging through metaphors such as weaving, plowing, plucking flowers, and walking in the dew, Toelken shows how each contributes to meaning in vernacular song. He includes comparisons to German folksongs, medieval poetry, Italian folk lyrics, and a wide range of Euro-American vernacular expression.
Old Time Music Makers of New York State by Southern Folk Ballads by Southern Mountain Folksongs by A Spiral Way by
The invention of the cylinder phonograph at the end of the nineteenth century opened up a new world for cultural research. Indeed, Edison's talking machine became one of the basic tools of anthropology. It not only equipped researchers with the means of preserving folk songs but it also enabled them to investigate a wide spectrum of distinct vocal expressions in the emerging fields of anthropology and folklore. Ethnographers grasped its huge potential and fanned out through regional America to record rituals, stories, word lists, and songs in isolated cultures. From the outset the federal government helped fuel the momentum to record cultures that were at risk of being lost. Through the Bureau of American Ethnology, the Smithsonian Institution took an active role in preserving native heritage. It supported projects to make phonographic documentation of American Indian language, music, and rituals before developing technologies and national expansion might futher undermine them. This study of the early phonograph's impact shows traditional ethnography being transformed, for attitudes of both ethnographers and performers were reshaped by this exciting technology. In the presence of the phonograph both fieldwork and the materials collected were revolutionized. By radically altering the old research modes, the phonograph brought the disciplines of anthropology and folklore into the modern era. At first the instrument was as strange and new to the fieldworkers as it was to their subjects. To some the first encounter with the phonograph was a deeply unsettling experience. When it was demonstrated in 1878 before members of the National Academy of Sciences, several members of the audience fainted. Even its inventor was astonished. Of his first successful test of his tinfoil phonograph, Thomas A. Edison said, "I was never taken so aback in my life." The cylinders that have survived from these times offer an unrivaled resource not only for contemporary scholarship but also for a grassroots renaissance of cultural and religious values. In tracing the historical interplay of the talking machine with field research, A Spiral Way underscores the natural adaptablity of cultural study to this new technology.
Staging Tradition by
Based on extensive archival research & oral history, Michael Ann Williams traces the parallel careers of the creators of the Renfro Valley Barn Dance & the National Folk Festival.
Ghosts and the Japanese by
The Japanese have ambivalent attitudes toward death, deeply rooted in pre-Buddhist traditions. In this scholarly but accessible work, authors Iwasaka and Toelken show that everyday beliefs and customs--particularly death traditions--offer special insight into the living culture of Japan.
Ghost Stories from the American South by
Over 100 tales of the supernatural, drawn from Tidewater Virginia to the Lone Star State, are included in this collection. McNeil's introduction traces themes peculiar to the South, such as the screaming bridge and the levitating railroad light. Line drawings contribute to the mood of the stories; an index references various Southern localities by town and state.
The Hallowed Eve by
In Northern Ireland, Halloween is such a major celebration that it is often called the Irish Christmas. A day of family reunions, meals, and fun, Halloween brings people of all ages together with rhyming, storytelling, family fireworks, and community bonfires. Perhaps most important, it has become a day that transcends the social conflict found in this often troubled nation. Through the extensive use of interviews, The Hallowed Eve offers a fascinating look at the various customs, both past and present, that mark the celebration of the holiday. Looking through the lenses of gender, ethnicity, and religious affiliation, Jack Santino examines how the traditions exist in a nonthreatening, celebratory way to provide a model of how life could be in Northern Ireland. Halloween, concludes Santino, is a marriage of death and life, a joining of cultural opposites: indoor and outdoor, domesticity and wildness, male and female, old and young. Although current folk and popular traditions can be divisive, Halloween in Northern Ireland is universally considered to belong to everyone, regardless of their background or political leanings. The holiday is a dramatic example of how a community comes together one day a year, and these Northern Irish traditions capture the fundamental and everyday dimensions of life in Ulster.
Haunted Halls by
Why do so many American college students tell stories about encounters with ghosts? In Haunted Halls, the first book-length interpretive study of college ghostlore, Elizabeth Tucker takes the reader back to school to get acquainted with a wide range of college spirits. Some of the best-known ghosts that she discusses are Emory University\'s Dooley, who can disband classes by shooting professors with his water pistol; Mansfield Uni-versity\'s Sara, who threw herself down a flight of stairs after being rejected by her boyfriend; and Huntingdon College\'s Red Lady, who slit her wrists while dressed in a red robe. Gettysburg College students have collided with ghosts of soldiers, while students at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College have reported frightening glimpses of the Faceless Nun. Tucker presents campus ghostlore from the mid-1960s to 2006, with special attention to stories told by twenty-first-century students through e-mail and instant messages. Her approach combines social, psychological, and cultural analysis, with close attention to students\' own explanations of the significance of spectral phenomena. As metaphors of disorder, insanity, and school spirit, college ghosts convey multiple meanings. Their colorful stories warn students about the dangers of overindulgence, as well as the pitfalls of potentially horrifying relationships. Besides offering insight into students\' initiation into campus life, college ghost stories make important statements about injustices suffered by Native Americans, African Americans, and others. Elizabeth Tucker is associate professor of English at Binghamton University. She is the author of Campus Legends: A Handbook and has published widely in folklore journals.
Haunting Experiences by
Ghosts and other supernatural phenomena are widely represented throughout modern culture. They can be found in any number of entertainment, commercial, and other contexts, but popular media or commodified representations of ghosts can be quite different from the beliefs people hold about them, based on tradition or direct experience. Personal belief and cultural tradition on the one hand, and popular and commercial representation on the other, nevertheless continually feed each other. They frequently share space in how people think about the supernatural. In Haunting Experiences, three well-known folklorists seek to broaden the discussion of ghost lore by examining it from a variety of angles in various modern contexts. Diane E. Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, and Jeannie Banks Thomas take ghosts seriously, as they draw on contemporary scholarship that emphasizes both the basis of belief in experience (rather than mere fantasy) and the usefulness of ghost stories. They look closely at the narrative role of such lore in matters such as socialization and gender. And they unravel the complex mix of mass media, commodification, and popular culture that today puts old spirits into new contexts.
Out of the Ordinary by
This contributed volume explores the functions of belief andsupernatural experience within an array of cultures, as well as thestance of academe toward the study of belief and the supernatural. Theessays in this volume call into question the idea that supernaturalexperience is extraordinary.Among the contributors are Shelley Adler, David Hufford, Barre Toelken, and Gillian Bennett.
Slender Man Is Coming by
The essays in this volume explore the menacing figure of Slender Man--the blank-faced, long-limbed bogeyman born of a 2009 Photoshop contest who has appeared in countless horror stories circulated on- and offline among children and young people. Slender Man is arguably the best-known example in circulation of "creepypasta," a genre derived from "copypasta," which in turn derived from the phrase "copy/paste." As narrative texts are copied across online forums, they undergo modification, annotation, and reinterpretation by new posters in a folkloric process of repetition and variation. Though by definition legends deal largely with belief and possibility, the crowdsourced mythos behind creepypasta and Slender Man suggests a distinct awareness of fabrication. Slender Man is therefore a new kind of creation: one intentionally created as a fiction but with the look and feel of legend. Slender Man Is Coming offers an unprecedented folkloristic take on Slender Man, analyzing him within the framework of contemporary legend studies, "creepypastas," folk belief, and children's culture. This first folkloric examination of the phenomenon of Slender Man is a must-read for anyone interested in folklore, horror, urban legends, new media, or digital cultures. Contributors: Timothy H. Evans, Andrea Kitta, Mikel J. Koven, Paul Manning, Andrew Peck, Jeffrey A. Tolbert, Elizabeth Tucker
Burley by
Once iconic American symbols, tobacco farms are gradually disappearing. It is difficult for many people to lament the loss of a crop that has come to symbolize addiction, disease, and corporate deception; yet, in Kentucky, the plant has played an important role in economic development and prosperity. Burley tobacco -- a light, air-cured variety used in cigarette production -- has long been the Commonwealth's largest cash crop and an important aspect of regional identity, along with bourbon, bluegrass music, and Thoroughbred horses. In Burley: Kentucky Tobacco in a New Century, Ann K. Ferrell investigates the rapidly transforming process of raising and selling tobacco by chronicling her conversations with the farmers who know the crop best. She demonstrates that although the 2004 "buyout" ending the federal tobacco program is commonly perceived to be the most significant change that growers have had to negotiate, it is, in reality, only one new factor among many. Burley reveals the tangible and intangible challenges tobacco farmers face today, from the logistics of cultivation to the growing stigma against the crop. Ferrell uses ethnography, archival research, and rhetorical analysis to tell the complex story of burley tobacco production in twenty-first-century Kentucky. Not only does she give a voice to the farmers who persevere in this embattled industry, but she also sheds light on their futures, contesting the widely held assumption that they can easily replace the crop by diversifying their operations with alternative crops. As tobacco fades from both the physical and economic landscapes, this nuanced volume documents and explores the culture and practices of burley production today.
Diagnosing Folklore by
Diagnosing Folklore provides an inclusive forum for an expansive conversation on the sensitive, raw, and powerful processes that shape and imbue meaning in the lives of individuals and communities beleaguered by medical stigmatization, conflicting public perceptions, and contextual constraints. This volume aims to showcase current ideas and debates, as well as promote the larger study of disability, health, and trauma within folkloristics, helping bridge the gaps between the folklore discipline and disability studies. This book consists of three sections, each dedicated to key issues in disability, health, and trauma. It explores the confluence of disability, ethnography, and the stigmatized vernacular through communicative competence, esoteric and exoteric groups in the Special Olympics, and the role of family in stigmatized communities. Then, it considers knowledge, belief, and treatment in regional and ethnic communities with case studies from the Latino/a community in Los Angeles, Javanese Indonesia, and Middle America. Lastly, the volume looks to the performance of mental illness, stigma, and trauma through contemporary legends about mental illness, vlogs on bipolar disorder, medical fetishism, and veterans' stories.
Healing Logics by
Scholars in folklore and anthropology are more directly involved invarious aspects of medicine--such as medical education, clinical pastoralcare, and negotiation of transcultural issues--than ever before. Oldmodels of investigation that artificially isolated "folk medicine,""complementary and alternative medicine," and "biomedicine" as mutuallyexclusive have proven too limited in exploring the real-lifecomplexities of health belief systems as they observably exist and areapplied by contemporary Americans. Recent research strongly suggeststhat individuals construct their health belief systmes from diversesources of authority, including community and ethnic tradition,education, spiritual beliefs, personal experience, the influence ofpopular media, and perception of the goals and means of formal medicine.Healing Logics explores the diversity of these belief systems and howthey interact--in competing, conflicting, and sometimes remarkablycongruent ways. This book contains essays by leading scholars in thefield and a comprehensive bibliography of folklore and medicine.
Once upon a Virus by
Out to see America and satisfy his travel bug, W. T. Pfefferle resigned from his position as director of the writing program at Johns Hopkins University and hit the road to interview sixty-two poets about the significance of place in their work. The lively conversations that resulted may surprise with the potential meanings of a seemingly simple concept. This gathering of voices and ideas is illustrated with photo and word portraits from the road and represented with suitable poems. The poets are James Harms, David Citino, Martha Collins, Linda Gregerson, Richard Tillinghast, Orlando Ricardo Menes, Mark Strand, Karen Volkman, Lisa Samuels, Marvin Bell, Michael Dennis Browne, David Allan Evans, David Romtvedt, Sandra Alcosser, Robert Wrigley, Nance Van Winckel, Christopher Howell, Mark Halperin, Jana Harris, Sam Hamill, Barbara Drake, Floyd Skloot, Ralph Angel, Carol Muske-Dukes, David St. John, Sharon Bryan, Donald Revell, Claudia Keelan, Alberto Rios, Richard Shelton, Jane Miller, William Wenthe, Naomi Shihab Nye, Peter Cooley, Miller Williams, Beth Ann Fennelly, Natasha Trethewey, Denise Duhamel, Campbell McGrath, Terrance Hayes, Alan Shapiro, Nikki Giovanni, Charles Wright, Rita Dove, Henry Taylor, Dave Smith, Nicole Cooley, David Lehman, Lucie Brock-Broido, Michael S. Harper, C. D. Wright, Mark Wunderlich, James Cummins, Frederick Smock, Mark Jarman, Carl Phillips, Scott Cairns, Elizabeth Dodd, Jonathan Holden, Bin Ramke, Kenneth Brewer, and Paisley Rekdal.
Other People's Stories by
In Other People's Stories, Amy Shuman examines the social relations embedded in stories and the complex ethical and social tensions that surround their telling. Drawing on innovative research and contemporary theory, she describes what happens when one person's story becomes another person's source of inspiration, or when entitlement and empathy collide. The resulting analyses are wonderfully diverse, integrating narrative studies, sociolinguistics, communications, folklore, and ethnographic studies to examine the everyday, conversational stories told by cultural groups including Latinas, Jews, African Americans, Italians, and Puerto Ricans. Shuman offers a nuanced and clear theoretical perspective derived from the Frankfurt school, life history research, disability research, feminist studies, trauma studies, and cultural studies. Without compromising complexity, she makes narrative inquiry accessible to a broad population.
The Stigmatized Vernacular by
As part of this multilayered conversation about stigma, this volume discusses the relationship between the stigmatized individual and our role as researchers. Here we address our own perspectives as researchers struggling with stigma issues and tellability, as well as scholarly reflexive concerns dealing with what can't be said when working with stigmatized groups or topics. The disciplinary focus of folklore positions us well to concentrate on the vernacular experience of the stigmatized, but it also propels us toward analysis of the performance of stigma, the process of stigmatization, and the political representation of stigmatized populations. These perspectives come to the fore in this book, as does the multilayered nature of stigma--its ability to reproduce, overlap, and spread, not just in terms of replication but also in terms of the ethnographer's ability to apprehend it and her ability to research and write about it.
Troubling Violence by
Troubling Violence: A Performance Project follows the collaboration between performance studies professor M. Heather Carver and ethnographic folklorist Elaine J. Lawless. The book traces the creative development of a performance troupe in which women take the stage to narrate true, harrowing experiences of domestic violence and then invite audience members to discuss the tales. Similar to the performances, the book presents real-life narratives as a means of heightening social awareness and dialogue about intimate partner violence. "Troubling violence" refers not only to the cultures in our society that are "troubling," but also to the authors' intent to "trouble" perceptions that enforce social, cultural, legal, and religious attitudes that perpetuate abuse against women. Performance, this book argues, enhances ethnographic research and writing by allowing ethnographers to approach both their field studies and their ethnographic writing as performance. The book also demonstrates how ethnography enhances the study of performance. The authors discuss the development of the Troubling Violence Performance Project in conjunction with their own "performances" within the academy.
Who Owns Native Culture? by
The author proposes alternative strategies for defending the heritage of vulnerable native communities without blocking the open communicatin essential to the life of pluralist democracies. The book is a lively, accessible introduction to questions of cultural ownership, group privacy, intellectual property, and the recovery of indigenous identities.
Bloody Mary in the Mirror by
Bloody Mary in the Mirror mixes Sigmund Freud with vampires and The Little Mermaid to see what new light psychoanalysis can bring to folklore techniques and forms. Ever since Freud published his analysis of Jewish jokes in 1905 and his disciple Otto Rank followed with his groundbreaking The Myth of the Birth of the Hero in 1909, the psychoanalytic study of folklore has been an acknowledged part of applied psychoanalysis. However, psychoanalysts, handicapped by their limited knowledge of folklore techniques, have tended to confine their efforts to the Bible, to classical mythology, and to the Grimm fairy tales. Most folklorists have been slow to consider psychoanalysis as a method of interpreting folklore. One notable exception is folklorist Alan Dundes. In the seven fascinating essays of Bloody Mary in the Mirror, psychoanalytic theory illuminates such folklore genres as legend (in the vampire tale), folktale (in the ancient Egyptian tale of two brothers), custom (in fraternity hazing and ritual fasting), and games (in the modern Greek game of "Long Donkey"). One of two essays Dundes co-authored with his daughter Lauren Dundes, professor of sociology at Western Maryland College, successfully probes the content of Disney's The Little Mermaid, yielding new insights into this popular reworking of a Hans Christian Andersen favorite. Among folk rituals investigated is the girl's game of "Bloody Mary." Elementary or middle school-age girls huddle in a darkened bathroom awaiting the appearance in the mirror of a frightening apparition. The plausible analysis of this well-known--if somewhat puzzling--American rite is one of many surprising and enlightening finds in this book. All of the essays in this remarkable volume create new takes on old traditions. Bloody Mary in the Mirror is an expedition into psychoanalytic folklore techniques and constitutes a giant step towards realizing the potential Freud's work promises for folklore studies. Alan Dundes is professor of anthropology and folklore at the University of California, Berkeley. Among many others, his books include Interpreting Folklore (1980) and From Game to War and Other Psychoanalytic Essays on Folklore (1997). He edited Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel: Readings in the Interpretation of Afro-American Folklore (1991), which was published by University Press of Mississippi.
Built with Faith by
Over the course of 130 years, Italian American Catholics in New York City have developed a varied repertoire of devotional art and architecture to create community-based sacred spaces in their homes and neighborhoods. These spaces exist outside of but in relationship to the consecrated halls of local parishes and are sites of worship in conventionally secular locations. Such ethnic building traditions and urban ethnic landscapes have long been neglected by all but a few scholars. Joseph Sciorra's Built with Faith offers a place-centric, ethnographic study of the religious material culture of New York City's Italian American Catholics. Sciorra spent thirty-five years researching these community art forms and interviewing Italian immigrant and U.S.-born Catholics. By documenting the folklife of this group, Sciorra reveals how Italian Americans in the city use expressive culture and religious practices to transform everyday urban space into unique, communal sites of ethnically infused religiosity. The folk aesthetics practiced by individuals within their communities are integral to understanding how art is conceptualized, implemented, and esteemed outside of museum and gallery walls. Yard shrines, sidewalk altars, Nativity presepi, Christmas house displays, a stone-studded grotto, and neighborhood processions--often dismissed as kitsch or prized as folk art--all provide examples of the vibrant and varied ways contemporary Italian Americans use material culture, architecture, and public ceremonial display to shape the city's religious and cultural landscapes. Written in an accessible style that will appeal to general readers and scholars alike, Sciorra's unique study contributes to our understanding of how value and meaning are reproduced at the confluences of everyday life. Joseph Sciorra is the director of Academic and Cultural Programs at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College. He is the editor of Italian Folk: Vernacular Culture in Italian-American Lives and co-editor of Embroidered Stories: Interpreting Women's Domestic Needlework from the Italian Diaspora.
Public Performances by
Public Performances offers a deep and wide-ranging exploration of relationships among genres of public performance and of the underlying political motivations they share. Illustrating the connections among three themes--the political, the carnivalesque, and the ritualesque--this volume provides rich and comprehensive insight into public performance as an assertion of political power. Contributors consider how public genres of performance express not only celebration but also dissent, grief, and remembrance; examine the permeability of the boundaries between genres; and analyze the approval or regulation of such events by municipalities and other institutions. Where the particular use of public space is not sanctioned or where that use meets with hostility from institutions or represents a critique of them, performers are effectively reclaiming public space to make public statements on their own terms--an act of popular sovereignty. Through these concepts, Public Performances distinguishes the sometimes overlapping dimensions of public symbolic display. Carnival, and thus the carnivalesque, is understood to possess tacit social permission for unconventional or even deviant performance, on the grounds that normal social order will resume when the performance concludes. Ritual, and the ritualesque, leverages a deeper symbolic sensibility, one believed--or at least intended--by the participants to effect transformative, longer-term change. Contributors: Roger D. Abrahams, John Borgonovo, Laurent Sébastien Fournier, Lisa Gilman, Barbara Graham, David Harnish, Samuel Kinser, Scott Magelssen, Elena Martinez, Pamela Moro, Beverly J. Stoeltje, Daniel Wojcik, Dorothy L. Zinn
Revisioning Ritual by
Often overlooked as routine or even dismissed as odd customs, ritual in its many guises demands attention as a central strategy for embodying experience. Like other groups, Jews rely on ritual to provide an inventory of social meanings and a context for negotiating the challenges of everyday life. Ritual for Jews has historically carried special meanings for conveying what is Jewish about Jewishness. It is not enough, however, simply to document customs: for a full understanding of ritual and its meaning for participants we need to analyse how ritual expressions such as liturgies, holidays, life-cycle events - even political rallies - change in response to developments in the wider society, or are adapted to meet new needs. The innovative studies of adapted, invented, and evolving rituals presented in this volume, that include the Tunisian Jewish celebration of Se'udat Yitro, liturgical prayers for Israel Independence Day, shiva observance in an old-age home, transplanted Ethiopian Jewish wedding events, and same-sex marriage rituals. thus interpret the Jewish enactment of ritual and uses of tradition in everyday life against the background of modernity and community.It is the complexities of ritual - the dynamics of negotiating the religious and the secular, the traditional and the modern, the social and the political, performance and practice - that form the core of the book. Together, the contributors show ritual action to be key to the maintenance of Jewish identity and to the expression of a distinctive world-view.
Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death by
This is an edited volume of approximately 17 essays that deal with various types of spontaneous shrines and other, related public memorializations of death. The articles address events such as New York after 9/11; roadside crosses, and the use of 'Day of the Dead' altars to bring attention to deceased undocumented immigrants.
Witching Culture by
Taking the reader into the heart of one of the fastest-growing religious movements in North America, Sabina Magliocco reveals how the disciplines of anthropology and folklore were fundamental to the early development of Neo-Paganism and the revival of witchcraft. Magliocco examines the roots that this religious movement has in a Western spiritual tradition of mysticism disavowed by the Enlightenment. She explores, too, how modern Pagans and Witches are imaginatively reclaiming discarded practices and beliefs to create religions more in keeping with their personal experience of the world as sacred and filled with meaning. Neo-Pagan religions focus on experience, rather than belief, and many contemporary practitioners have had mystical experiences. They seek a context that normalizes them and creates in them new spiritual dimensions that involve change in ordinary consciousness. Magliocco analyzes magical practices and rituals of Neo-Paganism as art forms that reanimate the cosmos and stimulate the imagination of its practitioners. She discusses rituals that are put together using materials from a variety of cultural and historical sources, and examines the cultural politics surrounding the movement--how the Neo-Pagan movement creates identity by contrasting itself against the dominant culture and how it can be understood in the context of early twenty-first-century identity politics. Witching Culture is the first ethnography of this religious movement to focus specifically on the role of anthropology and folklore in its formation, on experiences that are central to its practice, and on what it reveals about identity and belief in twenty-first-century North America.
Putting Folklore to Use by
The first book of its kind, Putting Folklore to Use provides guidance to folklorists but also informs practitioners in other fields about how to use folklore studies to augment their own studies. How can acting like a folklore fieldworker help a teacher reduce inter-group stereotyping and increase student's self-esteem? How can adopting a folklore fieldworker's point of view when interviewing patients help practitioners render health care more effectively? How can using folklore research help rural communities survive and thrive? Thirteen folklorists provide answers to these and other questions and demonstrate the many ways folklore can be put to use. Their essays, commissioned for this volume and edited by Michael Owen Jones, apply the methods and insights of modern folklore research to thirteen different professions and areas of practical concern. The authors, all of whom have themselves put folklore to use in the fields they describe, consider applications in detail and explain how folkloristic concepts and techniques can enhance the work of various professions. They explore applications in such areas as museums, aiding the homeless, environmental planning, art therapy, designing public spaces, organization development, tourism, the public sector, aging, and creating an occupation's image. In an extensive introduction to the volume, Jones provides an overview of applied folkloristics that defines the field, surveys its history in the United States, and scrutinizes its basic issues and premises. Part I of the book shows how to promote learning, problem solving, and cultural conservation through folklore and its study. Part II deals with folklorists helping to improve the quality of life. Part III reveals folklore's role in enhancing identity and community.
All That Is Native and Fine by
In the American imagination, the word Appalachia designates more than a geographical region. It evokes fiddle tunes, patchwork quilts, split-rail fences, and all the other artifacts that decorate a cherished romantic region of the American mind. David Whisnant challenges this view of Appalachia (and consequently this broader imaginitive tendency) by exploring connections between a comforting cultural myth and the troublesome complexities of cultural history. Looking at the work of some ballad hunters and collectors, handicraft revivalists, folk festival promoters, and other cultural missionaries, Whisnant discovers a process of intentional and systematic cultural intervention that had (and still has) far-reaching consequences. Why, Whisnant asks, did so many Bluegrass ladies and upper-class graduates of Seven Sisters colleges rush to erect cultural breakwaters around mountaineers? Why would a sophisticated New England woman build a Danish folk school in western North Carolina? Why did a classical musician from Richmond who hated blacks love southern mountain music? How did the notions and actions of all these cultural missionaries affect the lives of the mountaineers? And what do these episodes of intervention teach us about culture and cultural change--in Appalachia and elsewhere? Whisnant pursues these and other questions in closely documented case studies of the Hindman Settlement School in eastern Kentucky, the cultural work of Olive Dame Campbell throughout the mountains, and the White Top Folk Festival on the Virginia-North Carolina border. Moreover, he relates them to broader social and economic developments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the comingof the railroads and the opening of the mines, the Depression, the advent of TVA, and more diffuse processes such as urbanization, the decline of agriculture, the movement of radio and the commercial recording industry into the mountains, and the implicit restrictions Victorian America placed on the political perspectives and activities of socially conscious upper-class women. We must begin to understand the politics of culture, Whisnant writes, especially the role of formal institutions and foreceful individuals in defining and shaping perspectives, values, tastes and agendas for cultural change. All That Is Native and Fine opens the way not only to a reexamination of the history of a single region but also to a more sophisticated understanding of the dynamics of cultural continuity and change in other regions and in the nation as a whole.
American Aloha by
At the 1989 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, throngs of visitors gathered on the National Mall to celebrate Hawai'i's multicultural heritage through its traditional arts. The "edu-tainment" spectacle revealed a richly complex Hawai'i few tourists ever see and one never before or since replicated in a national space. The program was restaged a year later in Honolulu for a local audience and subsequently inspired several spin-offs in Hawai'i. In both Washington, D.C., and Honolulu, the program instigated a new paradigm for cultural representation. Based on archival research and extensive interviews with festival organizers and participants, this innovative cross-disciplinary study uncovers the behind-the-scenes negotiations and processes that inform the national spectacle of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Intersecting the fields of museum studies, folklore studies, Hawaiian studies, performance studies, cultural studies, and American studies, American Aloha supplies a nuanced analysis of how the carefully crafted staging of Hawai'i's cultural diversity was used to serve a national narrative of utopian multiculturalism--one that collapsed social inequities and tensions, masked colonial history, and subordinated indigenous politics--while empowering Hawai'i's traditional artists and providing a model for cultural tourism that has had long-lasting effects. Heather Diamond deftly positions the 1989 program within a history of institutional intervention in the traditional arts of Hawai'i's ethnic groups as well as in relation to local cultural revivals and the tourist industry. By tracing the planning, fieldwork, site design, performance, and aftermath stages of the program, she examines the uneven processes through which local culture is transformed into national culture and raises questions about the stakes involved in cultural tourism for both culture bearers and culture brokers.
Clambake by
An appreciative examination of the New England clambake, Neustadt divides her study into three parts: historical (social, economic, political, regional, and cultural) influences on the clambake; a close focus on the Allen's Neck clambake as a cultural phenomena in its own right; and a critical examination of the central elements of the clambaking tradition--food, ritual, and festival. The author views the clambake as a unique American folk tradition with interesting connections and rich resonances with other aspects of American culture and history.
Ethnomimesis by
Wide-ranging and provocative, this book will fascinate all those intrigued by how we create and perpetuate our representations of folklife and culture. Ethnomimesis is Robert Cantwell's word for the process by which we take cultural influences, traditions, and practices to ourselves and then manifest them to others. Ethnomimesis is an element of ordinary social communication, but springing out of it, too, is that extraordinary summoning up that produces our literature, our art, and our music. In the broadest sense, ethnomimesis is the representation of culture. Using such diverse cultural artifacts as King Lear and an eighteenth-century English manor garden to deepen our understanding of ethnomimesis, Cantwell then explores at length the representation of culture in our national museum, the Smithsonian, focusing especially on the Festival of American Folklife. Like many other such exhibitions, the Festival enacts presentations of culture across the boundaries of rank and class, race and ethnicity, gender and the life cycle. Like the concept of 'folklife' itself, Cantwell argues, the Festival stands where ethnomimesis finds its creative source, at the cultural frontier between self and other. That boundary, and the energy that accumulates there, runs through the many, varied 'exhibits' of this book.
Fire in the Placa by
Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Fire in the Plaça is the first full-length study in English of the Patum, a Corpus Christi fire festival unique to Berga, Catalonia, Spain, celebrated annually since the seventeenth century. Participants in the festival are transformed through drink, sleep deprivation, crowding, constant motion, and the smoke and sparks of close-range firecrackers into passionate members of a precarious body politic. Combining richly layered symbolism with intense bodily expression, the Patum has long served as a grassroots equivalent of grand social theory; it moves from a representation of social divisions to a forcible communion among them. The Patum's dancing effigies--giants, dwarves, Turks and Christian knights, devils and angels, a crowned eagle, and two flaming mule-dragons--have provided local allegories for a long series of political conflicts, but the festival obscures its own messages in smoke and motion to enable a temporary merging of opposites. Activists in the 1970s transition to democracy in Spain took the Patum as a model of how old adversaries might collaborate: it helped to shape the mix of assertiveness in performance and compromise in practice that is typical of contemporary Catalan nationalism. The Patum became a focus of resistance to the Franco regime and drew visitors from all over Catalonia, serving as a rehearsal for the mass protests in Barcelona. Later, it provided the newly autonomous region with a vehicle for integrating immigrants and a vocabulary of belonging, culminating in the Patum-derived devils of the closing ceremonies of the 1992 Olympic games. Today, as mines and factories have closed in Berga, the Patum serves as an arena in which provincial Catalans model their relationship to Barcelona, Europe, and the world, and reflects their ambivalence about the choices open to them. Seeking a third way between tourism and terrorism, provincial towns like Berga show us the future of all local communities under globalization. In collective performances such as the Patum, tensions between cultural and political representation are made visible, and the gap between aspiration and possibility is both bridged and acknowledged. In this exceptionally rich ethnographic study, Dorothy Noyes explores the predicament of provincial communities striving to overcome internal conflict and participate in a wider world.
Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life by
Why do we celebrate Halloween? No one gets the day off, and unlike all other major holidays it has no religious or governmental affiliation. A survivor of our pre-Christian, agrarian roots, it has become one of the most popular and widely celebrated festivals on the contemporary American calendar. Jack Santino has put together the first collection of essays to examine the evolution of Halloween from its Celtic origins through its adaptation into modern culture. Using a wide variety of perspectives and approaches, the thirteen essayists examine customs, communities, and material culture to reveal how Halloween has manifested itself throughout all aspects of our society to become not just a marginal survivor of a dying tradition but a thriving, contemporary, post-industrial festival. Its steadily increasing popularity, despite overcommercialization and criticism, is attributed to its powerful symbolism that employs both pre-Christian images and concepts from popular culture to appeal to groups of all ages, orientations, and backgrounds. However, the essays in this volume also suggest that there is something ironic and unsettling about the immense popularity of a holiday whose main images are of death, evil, and the grotesque. Halloween and other Festivals of Death and Life is a unique contribution that questions our concepts of religiosity and spirituality while contributing to our understanding of Halloween as a rich and diverse reflection of our society's past, present, and future identity. The Editor: Jack Santino is an associate professor in the department of popular culture at Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio.
Ordinary Life, Festival Days by
Encompassing all aspects of the county fair and drawing on more than one hundred ethnographic interviews, this book presents the first in-depth cultural analysis of this rural institution and argues that participants devise an aesthetic system that places their activities in the realm of art.
Public Performances by
Public Performances offers a deep and wide-ranging exploration of relationships among genres of public performance and of the underlying political motivations they share. Illustrating the connections among three themes--the political, the carnivalesque, and the ritualesque--this volume provides rich and comprehensive insight into public performance as an assertion of political power. Contributors consider how public genres of performance express not only celebration but also dissent, grief, and remembrance; examine the permeability of the boundaries between genres; and analyze the approval or regulation of such events by municipalities and other institutions. Where the particular use of public space is not sanctioned or where that use meets with hostility from institutions or represents a critique of them, performers are effectively reclaiming public space to make public statements on their own terms--an act of popular sovereignty. Through these concepts, Public Performances distinguishes the sometimes overlapping dimensions of public symbolic display. Carnival, and thus the carnivalesque, is understood to possess tacit social permission for unconventional or even deviant performance, on the grounds that normal social order will resume when the performance concludes. Ritual, and the ritualesque, leverages a deeper symbolic sensibility, one believed--or at least intended--by the participants to effect transformative, longer-term change. Contributors: Roger D. Abrahams, John Borgonovo, Laurent Sébastien Fournier, Lisa Gilman, Barbara Graham, David Harnish, Samuel Kinser, Scott Magelssen, Elena Martinez, Pamela Moro, Beverly J. Stoeltje, Daniel Wojcik, Dorothy L. Zinn
Staging Tradition by
Based on extensive archival research & oral history, Michael Ann Williams traces the parallel careers of the creators of the Renfro Valley Barn Dance & the National Folk Festival.
All That Is Native and Fine by
In the American imagination, the word Appalachia designates more than a geographical region. It evokes fiddle tunes, patchwork quilts, split-rail fences, and all the other artifacts that decorate a cherished romantic region of the American mind. David Whisnant challenges this view of Appalachia (and consequently this broader imaginitive tendency) by exploring connections between a comforting cultural myth and the troublesome complexities of cultural history. Looking at the work of some ballad hunters and collectors, handicraft revivalists, folk festival promoters, and other cultural missionaries, Whisnant discovers a process of intentional and systematic cultural intervention that had (and still has) far-reaching consequences. Why, Whisnant asks, did so many Bluegrass ladies and upper-class graduates of Seven Sisters colleges rush to erect cultural breakwaters around mountaineers? Why would a sophisticated New England woman build a Danish folk school in western North Carolina? Why did a classical musician from Richmond who hated blacks love southern mountain music? How did the notions and actions of all these cultural missionaries affect the lives of the mountaineers? And what do these episodes of intervention teach us about culture and cultural change--in Appalachia and elsewhere? Whisnant pursues these and other questions in closely documented case studies of the Hindman Settlement School in eastern Kentucky, the cultural work of Olive Dame Campbell throughout the mountains, and the White Top Folk Festival on the Virginia-North Carolina border. Moreover, he relates them to broader social and economic developments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the comingof the railroads and the opening of the mines, the Depression, the advent of TVA, and more diffuse processes such as urbanization, the decline of agriculture, the movement of radio and the commercial recording industry into the mountains, and the implicit restrictions Victorian America placed on the political perspectives and activities of socially conscious upper-class women. We must begin to understand the politics of culture, Whisnant writes, especially the role of formal institutions and foreceful individuals in defining and shaping perspectives, values, tastes and agendas for cultural change. All That Is Native and Fine opens the way not only to a reexamination of the history of a single region but also to a more sophisticated understanding of the dynamics of cultural continuity and change in other regions and in the nation as a whole.
Culinary Tourism by
""From Kosher Oreos to the gentrification of Mexican cusine, from the charismatic cook of Basque communities in Spain and the United States to the mainstreaming of southwestern foodways, Culinary Tourism maps a lively cultural and intellectual terrain."" -- from the foreword by Barbara Kirshenblatt-GimblettCulinary Tourism is the first book to consider food as both a destination and a means for tourism. The book's contributors examine the many intersections of food, culture and tourism in public and commercial contexts, in private and domestic settings, and around the world. The contributors argue that the sensory experience of eating provides people with a unique means of communication. Editor Lucy Long contends that although the interest in experiencing ""otherness"" is strong within American society, total immersion into the unfamiliar is not always welcome. Thus spicy flavors of Latin Aermcia and the exotic ingredients of Asia have been mainstreamed for everyday consumption. Culinary Tourism explains how and why interest in foreign food is expanding tastes and leading to commercial profit in America, but the book also show how tourism combines personal experiences with cultural and social attitudes toward food and the circumstances for adventurous eating.
Destination Culture by
Destination Culture takes the reader on an eye-opening journey from ethnological artifacts to kitsch. Posing the question, "What does it mean to show?" Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett explores the agency of display in a variety of settings: museums, festivals, world's fairs, historical re-creations, memorials, and tourist attractions. She talks about how objects--and people--are made to "perform" their meaning for us by the very fact of being collected and exhibited, and about how specific techniques of display, not just the things shown, convey powerful messages. Her engaging analysis shows how museums compete with tourism in the production of "heritage." To make themselves profitable, museums are marketing themselves as tourist attractions. To make locations into destinations, tourism is staging the world as a museum of itself. Both promise to deliver heritage. Although heritage is marketed as something old, she argues that heritage is actually a new mode of cultural production that gives a second life to dying ways of life, economies, and places. The book concludes with a lively commentary on the "good taste/bad taste" debate in the ephemeral "museum of the life world," where everyone is a curator of sorts and the process of converting life into heritage begins.
Displacing Desire by
Why do millions of people from around the world flock to Dali, a small borderland town in the Himalayan foothills of southwest China? "Lonely planeteers"-- American, European, and Israeli backpackers named for the guidebook they carry--trek halfway across the globe to "get off the beaten track," yet converge here to drink coffee, eat banana pancakes, and share music from home. Coastal Chinese who are prospering in the phenomenal economic growth of China's reform era travel thousands of miles to sing songs and dress up as their favorite characters from a revolutionary-era movie musical. Overseas Chinese from Southeast Asia as well as a new generation of mainland youth follow in the footsteps of heroes and villains from Hong Kong martial arts novels, seeking an experience of a Buddhist "wild, wild, West" at a martial arts theme park dubbed "Hollywood East," or "Daliwood." Inspired by representations in popular culture that engender fantasies of the exotic, these tourists, Western and Chinese, journey to Dali, Yunnan, in search of an imagined place where they can indulge their craving for authenticity, display their status in the present, and act out their nostalgia for the past. Based on more than a decade of ethnographic research, Beth Notar explores struggles over place as people in Dali attempt to represent their historical identity and define their future. Displacing Desire takes representation into the realm of practice to consider the ways in which those who are represented must contend with their image in popular culture and the material after-effects of representations even decades after their original production. It contributes to an exploration of travel as performance of nostalgia, fantasy, and status. More specifically it contributes to an understanding of the growth of consumer culture in China, examining what China's modernization process and market economy mean for different social actors in their struggles over power and place.
UNESCO on the Ground by
For nearly 70 years, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has played a crucial role in developing policies and recommendations for dealing with intangible cultural heritage. What has been the effect of such sweeping global policies on those actually affected by them? How connected is UNESCO with what is happening every day, on the ground, in local communities? Drawing upon six communities ranging across three continents--from India, South Korea, Malawi, Japan, Macedonia and China--and focusing on festival, ritual, and dance, this volume illuminates the complexities and challenges faced by those who find themselves drawn, in different ways, into UNESCO's orbit. Some struggle to incorporate UNESCO recognition into their own local understanding of tradition; others cope with the fallout of a failed intangible cultural heritage nomination. By exploring locally, by looking outward from the inside, the essays show how a normative policy such as UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage policy can take on specific associations and inflections. A number of the key questions and themes emerge across the case studies and three accompanying commentaries: issues of terminology; power struggles between local, national and international stakeholders; the value of international recognition; and what forces shape selection processes. With examples from around the world, and a balance of local experiences with broader perspectives, this volume provides a unique comparative approach to timely questions of tradition and change in a rapidly globalizing world.
The Written Suburb by
Chadds Ford, an upscale suburb in southeastern Pennsylvania, devotes a lot of energy to creating a historical identity. Numerous institutions participate in this task, including museums, a land conservancy dedicated to the preservation of its historical landscape, and the Historical Society, which is responsible for an annual community celebration. Larger institutions related to regional tourism and suburban development generate a steady flow of texts about Chadds Ford in the form of glossy travel magazines, pamphlets, brochures, and gallery displays.
Decolonizing Museums by
Museum exhibitions focusing on Native American history have long been curator controlled. However, a shift is occurring, giving Indigenous people a larger role in determining exhibition content. In Decolonizing Museums, Amy Lonetree examines the complexities of these new relationships with an eye toward exploring how museums can grapple with centuries of unresolved trauma as they tell the stories of Native peoples. She investigates how museums can honor an Indigenous worldview and way of knowing, challenge stereotypical representations, and speak the hard truths of colonization within exhibition spaces to address the persistent legacies of historical unresolved grief in Native communities. Lonetree focuses on the representation of Native Americans in exhibitions at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, the Mille Lacs Indian Museum in Minnesota, and the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways in Michigan. Drawing on her experiences as an Indigenous scholar and museum professional, Lonetree analyzes exhibition texts and images, records of exhibition development, and interviews with staff members. She addresses historical and contemporary museum practices and charts possible paths for the future curation and presentation of Native lifeways.
Destination Culture by
Destination Culture takes the reader on an eye-opening journey from ethnological artifacts to kitsch. Posing the question, "What does it mean to show?" Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett explores the agency of display in a variety of settings: museums, festivals, world's fairs, historical re-creations, memorials, and tourist attractions. She talks about how objects--and people--are made to "perform" their meaning for us by the very fact of being collected and exhibited, and about how specific techniques of display, not just the things shown, convey powerful messages. Her engaging analysis shows how museums compete with tourism in the production of "heritage." To make themselves profitable, museums are marketing themselves as tourist attractions. To make locations into destinations, tourism is staging the world as a museum of itself. Both promise to deliver heritage. Although heritage is marketed as something old, she argues that heritage is actually a new mode of cultural production that gives a second life to dying ways of life, economies, and places. The book concludes with a lively commentary on the "good taste/bad taste" debate in the ephemeral "museum of the life world," where everyone is a curator of sorts and the process of converting life into heritage begins.
Folklife and Museums by All That Is Native and Fine by
In the American imagination, the word Appalachia designates more than a geographical region. It evokes fiddle tunes, patchwork quilts, split-rail fences, and all the other artifacts that decorate a cherished romantic region of the American mind. David Whisnant challenges this view of Appalachia (and consequently this broader imaginitive tendency) by exploring connections between a comforting cultural myth and the troublesome complexities of cultural history. Looking at the work of some ballad hunters and collectors, handicraft revivalists, folk festival promoters, and other cultural missionaries, Whisnant discovers a process of intentional and systematic cultural intervention that had (and still has) far-reaching consequences. Why, Whisnant asks, did so many Bluegrass ladies and upper-class graduates of Seven Sisters colleges rush to erect cultural breakwaters around mountaineers? Why would a sophisticated New England woman build a Danish folk school in western North Carolina? Why did a classical musician from Richmond who hated blacks love southern mountain music? How did the notions and actions of all these cultural missionaries affect the lives of the mountaineers? And what do these episodes of intervention teach us about culture and cultural change--in Appalachia and elsewhere? Whisnant pursues these and other questions in closely documented case studies of the Hindman Settlement School in eastern Kentucky, the cultural work of Olive Dame Campbell throughout the mountains, and the White Top Folk Festival on the Virginia-North Carolina border. Moreover, he relates them to broader social and economic developments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the comingof the railroads and the opening of the mines, the Depression, the advent of TVA, and more diffuse processes such as urbanization, the decline of agriculture, the movement of radio and the commercial recording industry into the mountains, and the implicit restrictions Victorian America placed on the political perspectives and activities of socially conscious upper-class women. We must begin to understand the politics of culture, Whisnant writes, especially the role of formal institutions and foreceful individuals in defining and shaping perspectives, values, tastes and agendas for cultural change. All That Is Native and Fine opens the way not only to a reexamination of the history of a single region but also to a more sophisticated understanding of the dynamics of cultural continuity and change in other regions and in the nation as a whole.
Folklorizing America by
Today, the long-assumed belief in the permanence of an enlightened world is suddenly open to challenge. Human rights, participatory government, and social justice are losing global influence, and the world of ordinary people is pushing back against Enlightenment conceits. Accumulated anger links Taliban, Tea Party, and Trump, threatening women's rights, social justice, and democracy. To understand and counteract the threat to these ideas, we must set aside embedded explanations and embrace a new frame of observation and tolerance grounded in the power of belief, legend, and tradition. In Rebuilding an Enlightened World, Bill Ivey explores how folklore offers a unique and compelling new way to understand the underlying forces disrupting the world today. If we are to salvage the best of the Enlightenment dream and build a better future, we must begin to listen, patiently and inquisitively, in order to interpret the customs, norms, and traditional practices that shape all human behavior.
Handmaking America by
America has survived an economic near-disaster. While the state of employment and housing will one day improve, we will never return to the delusional prosperity that defined the first decade of the 21st century. Progressives should hold the key to quality of life in our coming post-consumerist society, but today Democrats have become timid, our vision of the good life marginalized by three decades of partisan attacks and the think tank-induced assumption that an unfettered marketplace, low taxes, and international adventurism will somehow give us an America capable of inspiring the world.Handmaking America, reaches back to the Arts-and-Crafts roots of progressive thought, confronting the way right-wing ideology and the power of post-industrial capitalism have undermined work, government; our very way of life, advancing a practical, achievable vision for a good society that can use the capacity of government to recover the essential strength of the American idea.
One space, many places : folklife and land use in New Jersey's Pinelands National Reserve : report and recommendations to the New Jersey Pinelands Commission for cultural conservation in the Pinelands National Reserve by UNESCO on the Ground by
For nearly 70 years, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has played a crucial role in developing policies and recommendations for dealing with intangible cultural heritage. What has been the effect of such sweeping global policies on those actually affected by them? How connected is UNESCO with what is happening every day, on the ground, in local communities? Drawing upon six communities ranging across three continents--from India, South Korea, Malawi, Japan, Macedonia and China--and focusing on festival, ritual, and dance, this volume illuminates the complexities and challenges faced by those who find themselves drawn, in different ways, into UNESCO's orbit. Some struggle to incorporate UNESCO recognition into their own local understanding of tradition; others cope with the fallout of a failed intangible cultural heritage nomination. By exploring locally, by looking outward from the inside, the essays show how a normative policy such as UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage policy can take on specific associations and inflections. A number of the key questions and themes emerge across the case studies and three accompanying commentaries: issues of terminology; power struggles between local, national and international stakeholders; the value of international recognition; and what forces shape selection processes. With examples from around the world, and a balance of local experiences with broader perspectives, this volume provides a unique comparative approach to timely questions of tradition and change in a rapidly globalizing world.
Who Owns Native Culture? by
The author proposes alternative strategies for defending the heritage of vulnerable native communities without blocking the open communicatin essential to the life of pluralist democracies. The book is a lively, accessible introduction to questions of cultural ownership, group privacy, intellectual property, and the recovery of indigenous identities.
Troubling Violence by
Troubling Violence: A Performance Project follows the collaboration between performance studies professor M. Heather Carver and ethnographic folklorist Elaine J. Lawless. The book traces the creative development of a performance troupe in which women take the stage to narrate true, harrowing experiences of domestic violence and then invite audience members to discuss the tales. Similar to the performances, the book presents real-life narratives as a means of heightening social awareness and dialogue about intimate partner violence. "Troubling violence" refers not only to the cultures in our society that are "troubling," but also to the authors' intent to "trouble" perceptions that enforce social, cultural, legal, and religious attitudes that perpetuate abuse against women. Performance, this book argues, enhances ethnographic research and writing by allowing ethnographers to approach both their field studies and their ethnographic writing as performance. The book also demonstrates how ethnography enhances the study of performance. The authors discuss the development of the Troubling Violence Performance Project in conjunction with their own "performances" within the academy.
Undisciplined Women by
Contributors demonstrate that informal traditional and popular expressive cultural forms continue to be central to Canadians' gender constructions and clearly display the creation and re-creation of women's often subordinate position in society. They not only explore positive and negative images of women - the witch, the Icelandic Mountain Woman, and the Hollywood "killer dyke" - but also examine how actual women - taxi drivers, quilters, spiritual healers, and storytellers - negotiate and remake these images in their lives and work. Contributors also propose models for facilitating feminist dialogue on traditional and popular culture in Canada. Drawing on perspectives from women's studies, folklore, anthropology, sociology, art history, literature, and religious studies, Undisciplined Women is an insightful exploration of the multiplicity of women's experiences and the importance of reclaiming women's cultures and traditions.
Unsettling Assumptions by
In Unsettling Assumptions, editors Pauline Greenhill and Diane Tye examine how tradition and gender come together to unsettle assumptions about culture and its study. Contributors explore the intersections of traditional expressive culture and sex/gender systems to question, investigate, or upset concepts like family, ethics, and authenticity. Individual essays consider myriad topics such as Thanksgiving turkeys, rockabilly and bar fights, Chinese tales of female ghosts, selkie stories, a noisy Mennonite New Year's celebration, the Distaff Gospels, Kentucky tobacco farmers, international adoptions, and more. In Unsettling Assumptions, folkloric forms express but also counteract negative aspects of culture like misogyny, homophobia, and racism. But expressive culture also emerges as fundamental to our sense of belonging to a family, an occupation, or friendship group and, most notably, to identity performativity and the construction and negotiation of power.
Slender Man Is Coming by
The essays in this volume explore the menacing figure of Slender Man--the blank-faced, long-limbed bogeyman born of a 2009 Photoshop contest who has appeared in countless horror stories circulated on- and offline among children and young people. Slender Man is arguably the best-known example in circulation of "creepypasta," a genre derived from "copypasta," which in turn derived from the phrase "copy/paste." As narrative texts are copied across online forums, they undergo modification, annotation, and reinterpretation by new posters in a folkloric process of repetition and variation. Though by definition legends deal largely with belief and possibility, the crowdsourced mythos behind creepypasta and Slender Man suggests a distinct awareness of fabrication. Slender Man is therefore a new kind of creation: one intentionally created as a fiction but with the look and feel of legend. Slender Man Is Coming offers an unprecedented folkloristic take on Slender Man, analyzing him within the framework of contemporary legend studies, "creepypastas," folk belief, and children's culture. This first folkloric examination of the phenomenon of Slender Man is a must-read for anyone interested in folklore, horror, urban legends, new media, or digital cultures. Contributors: Timothy H. Evans, Andrea Kitta, Mikel J. Koven, Paul Manning, Andrew Peck, Jeffrey A. Tolbert, Elizabeth Tucker
Folk Culture in the Digital Age by
Smart phones, tablets, Facebook, Twitter, and wireless Internet connections are the latest technologies to have become entrenched in our culture. Although traditionalists have argued that computer-mediated communication and cyberspace are incongruent with the study of folklore, Trevor J. Blank sees the digital world as fully capable of generating, transmitting, performing, and archiving vernacular culture. Folklore in the Digital Age documents the emergent cultural scenes and expressive folkloric communications made possible by digital "new media" technologies. New media is changing the ways in which people learn, share, participate, and engage with others as they adopt technologies to complement and supplement traditional means of vernacular expression. But behavioral and structural overlap in many folkloric forms exists between on- and offline, and emerging patterns in digital rhetoric mimic the dynamics of previously documented folkloric forms, invoking familiar social or behavior customs, linguistic inflections, and symbolic gestures. Folklore in the Digital Age provides insights and perspectives on the myriad ways in which folk culture manifests in the digital age and contributes to our greater understanding of vernacular expression in our ever-changing technological world.
Chaseworld by
Chaseworldis a study of the foxhunters in the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey. Mary Hufford examines the activities that occur before, during, and after foxchases and analyzes the stories that hunters tell about chases. Through these activities and narratives, she contends, Pine Barrens foxhunters have collaboratively constructed an alternate reality—the Chaseworld.
Ordinary Life, Festival Days by
Encompassing all aspects of the county fair and drawing on more than one hundred ethnographic interviews, this book presents the first in-depth cultural analysis of this rural institution and argues that participants devise an aesthetic system that places their activities in the realm of art.
Killing Tradition by
Across the country and around the world, people avidly engage in the cultural practice of hunting. Children are taken on rite-of-passage hunting trips, where relationships are cemented and legacies are passed on from one generation to another. Meals are prepared from hunted game, often consisting of regionally specific dishes that reflect a community's heritage and character. Deer antlers and bear skins are hung on living room walls, decorations and relics of a hunter's most impressive kills. Only 5 percent of Americans are hunters, but that group has a substantial presence in the cultural consciousness. Hunting has spurred controversy in recent years, inciting protest from animal rights activists and lobbying from anti-cruelty demonstrators who denounce the custom. But hunters have responded to such criticisms and the resulting legislative censures with a significant argument in their defense -- the claim that their practices are inextricably connected to a cultural tradition. Further, they counter that they, as representatives of the rural lifestyle, pioneer heritage, and traditional American values, are the ones being victimized. Simon J. Bronner investigates this debate in Killing Tradition: Inside Hunting and Animal Rights Controversies. Through extensive research and fieldwork, Bronner takes on the many questions raised by this problematic subject: Does hunting promote violence toward humans as well as animals? Is it an outdated activity, unnecessary in modern times? Is the heritage of hunting worth preserving? Killing Tradition looks at three case studies that are at the heart of today's hunting debate. Bronner first examines the allegedly barbaric rituals that take place at deer camps every late November in rural America. He then analyzes the annual Labor Day pigeon shoot of Hegins, Pennsylvania, which brings animal rights protests to a fever pitch. Noting that these aren't simply American concerns (and that the animal rights movement in America is linked to British animal welfare protests), Bronner examines the rancor surrounding the passage of Great Britain's Hunting Act of 2004 -- the most comprehensive and divisive anti-hunting legislation ever enacted. The practice of hunting is sure to remain controversial, as it continues to be touted and defended by its supporters and condemned and opposed by its detractors. With Killing Tradition, Bronner reflects on the social, psychological, and anthropological issues of the debate, reevaluating notions of violence, cruelty, abuse, and tradition as they have been constructed and contested in the twenty-first century.
An Arkansas Folklore Sourcebook by Burley by
Once iconic American symbols, tobacco farms are gradually disappearing. It is difficult for many people to lament the loss of a crop that has come to symbolize addiction, disease, and corporate deception; yet, in Kentucky, the plant has played an important role in economic development and prosperity. Burley tobacco -- a light, air-cured variety used in cigarette production -- has long been the Commonwealth's largest cash crop and an important aspect of regional identity, along with bourbon, bluegrass music, and Thoroughbred horses. In Burley: Kentucky Tobacco in a New Century, Ann K. Ferrell investigates the rapidly transforming process of raising and selling tobacco by chronicling her conversations with the farmers who know the crop best. She demonstrates that although the 2004 "buyout" ending the federal tobacco program is commonly perceived to be the most significant change that growers have had to negotiate, it is, in reality, only one new factor among many. Burley reveals the tangible and intangible challenges tobacco farmers face today, from the logistics of cultivation to the growing stigma against the crop. Ferrell uses ethnography, archival research, and rhetorical analysis to tell the complex story of burley tobacco production in twenty-first-century Kentucky. Not only does she give a voice to the farmers who persevere in this embattled industry, but she also sheds light on their futures, contesting the widely held assumption that they can easily replace the crop by diversifying their operations with alternative crops. As tobacco fades from both the physical and economic landscapes, this nuanced volume documents and explores the culture and practices of burley production today.
Folk Groups and Folklore Genres by
Oring's introductory folklore text consists of a series of essays by leading scholars that give the student a solid sense of major folklore topics and interpretive techniques. Since 1986, when it was first published, this book has met the need for good instructional material at a time of tremendous growth in folklore programs and introductory courses in colleges and universities around the world.
Joe Scott, the Woodsman-Songmaker by Killing Tradition by
Across the country and around the world, people avidly engage in the cultural practice of hunting. Children are taken on rite-of-passage hunting trips, where relationships are cemented and legacies are passed on from one generation to another. Meals are prepared from hunted game, often consisting of regionally specific dishes that reflect a community's heritage and character. Deer antlers and bear skins are hung on living room walls, decorations and relics of a hunter's most impressive kills. Only 5 percent of Americans are hunters, but that group has a substantial presence in the cultural consciousness. Hunting has spurred controversy in recent years, inciting protest from animal rights activists and lobbying from anti-cruelty demonstrators who denounce the custom. But hunters have responded to such criticisms and the resulting legislative censures with a significant argument in their defense -- the claim that their practices are inextricably connected to a cultural tradition. Further, they counter that they, as representatives of the rural lifestyle, pioneer heritage, and traditional American values, are the ones being victimized. Simon J. Bronner investigates this debate in Killing Tradition: Inside Hunting and Animal Rights Controversies. Through extensive research and fieldwork, Bronner takes on the many questions raised by this problematic subject: Does hunting promote violence toward humans as well as animals? Is it an outdated activity, unnecessary in modern times? Is the heritage of hunting worth preserving? Killing Tradition looks at three case studies that are at the heart of today's hunting debate. Bronner first examines the allegedly barbaric rituals that take place at deer camps every late November in rural America. He then analyzes the annual Labor Day pigeon shoot of Hegins, Pennsylvania, which brings animal rights protests to a fever pitch. Noting that these aren't simply American concerns (and that the animal rights movement in America is linked to British animal welfare protests), Bronner examines the rancor surrounding the passage of Great Britain's Hunting Act of 2004 -- the most comprehensive and divisive anti-hunting legislation ever enacted. The practice of hunting is sure to remain controversial, as it continues to be touted and defended by its supporters and condemned and opposed by its detractors. With Killing Tradition, Bronner reflects on the social, psychological, and anthropological issues of the debate, reevaluating notions of violence, cruelty, abuse, and tradition as they have been constructed and contested in the twenty-first century.
New England and the Maritime Provinces by
A wide-reaching, inter-disciplinary examination of the links between New England and the Maritimes.
One space, many places : folklife and land use in New Jersey's Pinelands National Reserve : report and recommendations to the New Jersey Pinelands Commission for cultural conservation in the Pinelands National Reserve by Ordinary Life, Festival Days by
Encompassing all aspects of the county fair and drawing on more than one hundred ethnographic interviews, this book presents the first in-depth cultural analysis of this rural institution and argues that participants devise an aesthetic system that places their activities in the realm of art.
When You're up to Your Ass in Alligators by
Office copier folklore--those tattered sheets of cartoons, mottoes, zany poems, defiant sayings, parodies, and crude jokes that regularly circulate in office buildings everywhere--is the subject of this innovative study. this type of folklore represents a major form of tradition in modern America, and the authors have compiled this raw data for scholarship--and entertainment. These creations of the Paperwork Empire comment on topics and problems that concern all urban Americans. No one and nothing escapes their raunchy wit and sarcasm. Bosses, ethnic groups, minorities, the sexes, alternative lifestyles, politics, welfare, government workers, the law, bureaucracy, and even "The Night Before Christmas" all come under fire to form a biting, and hilarious, commentary on modern American society.
Appalachian Images in Folk and Popular Culture by 
The Folkloresque by
This volume introduces a new concept to explore the dynamic relationship between folklore and popular culture: the "folkloresque." With "folkloresque," Foster and Tolbert name the product created when popular culture appropriates or reinvents folkloric themes, characters, and images. Such manufactured tropes are traditionally considered outside the purview of academic folklore study, but the folkloresque offers a frame for understanding them that is grounded in the discourse and theory of the discipline. Fantasy fiction, comic books, anime, video games, literature, professional storytelling and comedy, and even popular science writing all commonly incorporate elements from tradition or draw on basic folklore genres to inform their structure. Through three primary modes--integration, portrayal, and parody--the collection offers a set of heuristic tools for analysis of how folklore is increasingly used in these commercial and mass-market contexts. The Folkloresque challenges disciplinary and genre boundaries; suggests productive new approaches for interpreting folklore, popular culture, literature, film, and contemporary media; and encourages a rethinking of traditional works and older interpretive paradigms. Contributors: Trevor J. Blank, Chad Buterbaugh, Bill Ellis, Timothy H. Evans, Michael Dylan Foster, Carlea Holl-Jensen, Greg Kelley, Paul Manning, Daniel Peretti, Gregory Schrempp, Jeffrey A. Tolbert
Superman in Myth and Folklore by
Superman rose from popular culture--comic books, newspaper strips, radio, television, novels, and movies--but people have so embraced the character that he has now become part of folklore. This transition from popular to folk culture signals the importance of Superman to fans and to a larger American populace. Superman's story has become a myth dramatizing identity, morality, and politics. Many studies have examined the ways in which folklore has provided inspiration for other forms of culture, especially literature and cinema. In Superman in Myth and Folklore, Daniel Peretti explores the meaning of folklore inspired by popular culture, focusing not on the Man of Steel's origins but on the culture he has helped create. Superman provides a way to approach fundamental questions of human nature, a means of exploring humanity's relationship with divinity, an exemplar for debate about the type of hero society needs, and an articulation of the tension between the individual and the community. Through examinations of tattoos, humor, costuming, and festivals, Peretti portrays Superman as a corporate-owned intellectual property and a model for behavior, a means for expression and performance of individual identity, and the focal point for disparate members of fan communities. As fans apply Superman stories to their lives, they elevate him to a mythical status. Peretti focuses on the way these fans have internalized various aspects of the character. In doing so, he delves into the meaning of Superman and his place in American culture and demonstrates the character's staying power.
Why Don't Sheep Shrink When It Rains? by
This text presents a collection of nearly 200 examples of the fake memos, pseudo mottoes and folk cartoons that are transmitted by fax, email and the Internet. It treats these examples of photocopylore as cultural artefacts recording folklore and culture in the post-print era.
American Children's Folklore by
Concentrating on lore gathered since World War II, Bronner has assembled an anthology of what children really say, not what adults wish they would say. It is through such shared lore songs, expressions, games and beliefs that children adapt to new situations. Bronner includes secret languages, jump rope rhymes, song parodies, games, taunts, tongue twisters, jokes, and more. These treasures make for nostalgic reading for adults who want to relive their own childhoods or gain a window to their own children's world."
Campus Traditions by
From their beginnings, campuses emerged as hotbeds of traditions and folklore. American college students inhabit a culture with its own slang, stories, humor, beliefs, rituals, and pranks. Simon J. Bronner takes a long, engaging look at American campus life and how it is shaped by students and at the same time shapes the values of all who pass through it. The archetypes of absent-minded profs, fumbling jocks, and curve-setting dweebs are the stuff of legend and humor, along with the all-nighters, tailgating parties, and initiations that mark campus tradition--and student identities. Undergraduates in their hallowed halls embrace distinctive traditions because the experience of higher education precariously spans childhood and adulthood, parental and societal authority, home and corporation, play and work. Bronner traces historical changes in these traditions. The predominant context has shifted from what he calls the "old-time college," small in size and strong in its sense of community, to mass society's "mega-university," a behemoth that extends beyond any campus to multiple branches and offshoots throughout a state, region, and sometimes the globe. One might assume that the mega-university has dissolved collegiate traditions and displaced the old-time college, but Bronner finds the opposite. Student needs for social belonging in large universities and a fear of losing personal control have given rise to distinctive forms of lore and a striving for retaining the pastoral "campus feel" of the old-time college. The folkloric material students spout, and sprout, in response to these needs is varied but it is tied together by its invocation of tradition and social purpose. Beneath the veil of play, students work through tough issues of their age and environment. They use their lore to suggest ramifications, if not resolution, of these issues for themselves and for their institutions. In the process, campus traditions are keys to the development of American culture.
Children's Folklore by
A collection of orginal essays by scholars from a variety of fields-- includng American studies, folklore, anthropology, pyschology, sociology, and education---Children's Folklore: A Source Book moves beyond traditional social-science views of child development. It reveals the complexity and artistry of interactions among children, challenging stereotypes of simple childhood innocence and conventional explanations of development that privilege sober and sensible adult outcomes. Instead, the play and lore of children is shown to be often disruptive, wayward, and irrational. nbsp;
Haunted Halls by
Why do so many American college students tell stories about encounters with ghosts? In Haunted Halls, the first book-length interpretive study of college ghostlore, Elizabeth Tucker takes the reader back to school to get acquainted with a wide range of college spirits. Some of the best-known ghosts that she discusses are Emory University\'s Dooley, who can disband classes by shooting professors with his water pistol; Mansfield Uni-versity\'s Sara, who threw herself down a flight of stairs after being rejected by her boyfriend; and Huntingdon College\'s Red Lady, who slit her wrists while dressed in a red robe. Gettysburg College students have collided with ghosts of soldiers, while students at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College have reported frightening glimpses of the Faceless Nun. Tucker presents campus ghostlore from the mid-1960s to 2006, with special attention to stories told by twenty-first-century students through e-mail and instant messages. Her approach combines social, psychological, and cultural analysis, with close attention to students\' own explanations of the significance of spectral phenomena. As metaphors of disorder, insanity, and school spirit, college ghosts convey multiple meanings. Their colorful stories warn students about the dangers of overindulgence, as well as the pitfalls of potentially horrifying relationships. Besides offering insight into students\' initiation into campus life, college ghost stories make important statements about injustices suffered by Native Americans, African Americans, and others. Elizabeth Tucker is associate professor of English at Binghamton University. She is the author of Campus Legends: A Handbook and has published widely in folklore journals.
Other People's Stories by
In Other People's Stories, Amy Shuman examines the social relations embedded in stories and the complex ethical and social tensions that surround their telling. Drawing on innovative research and contemporary theory, she describes what happens when one person's story becomes another person's source of inspiration, or when entitlement and empathy collide. The resulting analyses are wonderfully diverse, integrating narrative studies, sociolinguistics, communications, folklore, and ethnographic studies to examine the everyday, conversational stories told by cultural groups including Latinas, Jews, African Americans, Italians, and Puerto Ricans. Shuman offers a nuanced and clear theoretical perspective derived from the Frankfurt school, life history research, disability research, feminist studies, trauma studies, and cultural studies. Without compromising complexity, she makes narrative inquiry accessible to a broad population.
Piled Higher and Deeper by 
The Anguish of Snails by
After a career working and living with American Indians and studying their traditions, Barre Toelken has written this sweeping study of Native American folklore in the West. Within a framework of performance theory, cultural worldview, and collaborative research, he examines Native American visual arts, dance, oral tradition (story and song), humor, and patterns of thinking and discovery to demonstrate what can be gleaned from Indian traditions by Natives and non-Natives alike. In the process he considers popular distortions of Indian beliefs, demystifies many traditions by showing how they can be comprehended within their cultural contexts, considers why some aspects of Native American life are not meant to be understood by or shared with outsiders, and emphasizes how much can be learned through sensitivity to and awareness of cultural values. Winner of the 2004 Chicago Folklore Prize, The Anguish of Snails is an essential work for the collection of any serious reader in folklore or Native American studies.
The Dynamics of Folklore by
One of the most comprehensive and widely praised introductions to folklore ever written. Toelken's discussion of the history and meaning of folklore is delivered in straightforward language, easily understood definitions, and a wealth of insightful and entertaining examples. Toelken emphasizes dynamism and variety in the vast array of folk expressions he examines, from "the biology of folklore," to occupational and ethnic lore, food ways, holidays, personal experience narratives, ballads, myths, proverbs, jokes, crafts, and others. Chapters are followed by bibliographical essays, and over 100 photographs illustrate the text. This new edition is accessible to all levels of folklore study and an essential text for classroom instruction.
Inari Sami folklore: stories from Aanaar by
This anthology of folk tales, legends, joik-songs, proverbs, riddles, and omens represent the most comprehensive collection of Sámi oral tradition available in English to date. Collected in 1886 by A.V. Koskimies in the small arctic village of Aanaar (Inari), Finland, and later augmented by Toivo Itkonen and Lea Laitinen, it includes more than 150 stories and songs, and hundreds of proverbs, omens, and riddles, from nearly two dozen storytellers. It paints a picture of late nineteenth-century life in Aanaar, showing important changes occurring within the community, the hopes and fears of local people, and the complex web of social relations that existed both inside and outside the community.
Native American Oral Traditions by
This collection provides a benchmark that helps secure the position of collaboration between Native American and non-Native American scholars in the forefront of study of Native oral traditions. Seven sets of intercultural authors present Native American oral texts with commentary, exploring dimensions of perspective, discovery, and meaning that emerge through collaborative translation and interpretation. The texts studied all come from the American West but include a rich variety of material, since their tribal sources range from the Yupik in the Arctic to the Yaqui in the Sonoran Desert. This presentation of jointly authored work is timely: it addresses increasing interest in, calls for, and movement toward reflexivity in the relationships between scholars and the Native communities they study, and it responds to the renewed commitment in those communities to asserting more control over representations of their traditions. Although Native and academic communities have long tried to work together in the study of culture and literature, the relationship has been awkward and imbalanced toward the academics. In many cases, the contributions of Native assistants, informants, translators, and field workers to the work of professional ethnographers has been inadequately credited, ignored, or only recently uncovered. Native Americans usually have not participated in planning and writing such projects. Native American Oral Traditions provides models for overcoming such obstacles to interpreting and understanding Native oral literature in relation to the communities and cultures from which it comes.
Out of the Ordinary by
This contributed volume explores the functions of belief andsupernatural experience within an array of cultures, as well as thestance of academe toward the study of belief and the supernatural. Theessays in this volume call into question the idea that supernaturalexperience is extraordinary.Among the contributors are Shelley Adler, David Hufford, Barre Toelken, and Gillian Bennett.
Who Owns Native Culture? by
The author proposes alternative strategies for defending the heritage of vulnerable native communities without blocking the open communicatin essential to the life of pluralist democracies. The book is a lively, accessible introduction to questions of cultural ownership, group privacy, intellectual property, and the recovery of indigenous identities.
By the Work of Their Hands by
In this book, America's foremost scholar of African-American folklife revolutionizes our understanding of Afro-American material culture. Bringing to the essays his extensive research into the written, oral, and material sources of Afro-American culture as well as his impressive scholarly knowledge of folklife, social history, anthropology, and art history, Vlach presents the evidence of African influence on black American folklife, both past and present.
Hidden in the Mix by
Country music's debt to African American music has long been recognized. Black musicians have helped to shape the styles of many of the most important performers in the country canon. The partnership between Lesley Riddle and A. P. Carter produced much of the Carter Family's repertoire; the street musician Tee Tot Payne taught a young Hank Williams Sr.; the guitar playing of Arnold Schultz influenced western Kentuckians, including Bill Monroe and Ike Everly. Yet attention to how these and other African Americans enriched the music played by whites has obscured the achievements of black country-music performers and the enjoyment of black listeners. The contributors to Hidden in the Mix examine how country music became "white," how that fictive racialization has been maintained, and how African American artists and fans have used country music to elaborate their own identities. They investigate topics as diverse as the role of race in shaping old-time record catalogues, the transracial West of the hick-hopper Cowboy Troy, and the place of U.S. country music in postcolonial debates about race and resistance. Revealing how music mediates both the ideology and the lived experience of race, Hidden in the Mix challenges the status of country music as "the white man's blues." Contributors. Michael Awkward, Erika Brady, Barbara Ching, Adam Gussow, Patrick Huber, Charles Hughes, Jeffrey A. Keith, Kip Lornell, Diane Pecknold, David Sanjek, Tony Thomas, Jerry Wever
Hurston by
This Library of America volume, with its companion, brings together for the first time all of the best writing of Zora Neale Hurston, one of the most significant twentieth-century American writers, in one authoritative set. "Folklore is the arts of the people," Hurston wrote, "before they find out that there is any such thing as art." A pioneer of African-American ethnography who did graduate study in anthropology with the renowned Franz Boas, Hurston devoted herself to preserving the black folk heritage. In Mules and Men (1935), the first book of African-American folklore written by an African American, she returned to her native Florida and to New Orleans to record stories and sermons, blues and work songs, children's games, courtship rituals, and formulas of voodoo doctors. This classic work is presented here with the original illustrations by the great Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias. Tell My Horse (1938), part ethnography, part travel book, vividly recounts the survival of African religion in Jamaican obeah and Haitian voodoo in the 1930s. Keenly alert to political and intellectual currents, Hurston went beyond superficial exoticism to explore the role of these religious systems in their societies. The text is illustrated by twenty-six photographs, many of them taken by Hurston. Her extensive transcriptions of Creole songs are here accompanied by new translations. A special feature of this volume is Hurston's controversial 1942 autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road. With consultation by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., it is presented here for the first time as she intended, restoring passages omitted by the original because of political controversy, sexual candor, or fear of libel. Included in an appendix are four additional chapters, one never published, which represent earlier stages of Hurston's conception of the book. Twenty-two essays, from "The Eatonville Anthology" (1926) to "Court Order Can't Make Races Mix" (1955), demonstrate the range of Hurston's concerns as they cover subjects from religion, music, and Harlem slang to Jim Crow and American democracy. The chronology of Hurston's life prepared for this edition sheds fresh light on many aspects of her career. In addition, this volume contains detailed notes and a brief essay on the texts. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel by
Exploring the scope, diversity, and vitality of black culture, here is a fascinating collection of more than sixty articles from some of the most perceptive and authoritative commentators upon the black experience--Zora Neale Hurston, J. Mason Brewer, Sterling A. Brown, Eldridge Cleaver, Willis Laurence James, John Lovell Jr., Langston Hughes, Charles W. Chesnutt, Alan Lomax, Ralph Ellison, A. Philip Randolph, Newbell Niles Puckett, Roger D. Abrahams, and many others. Readers cannot help coming away from this book with a new appreciation of the nature and richness of African American folklore. For those with little or no previous knowledge of this heterogeneous and spellbinding lore Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel will be an eye-opening encounter. Drawn out of the deep, rich well of African American culture, these essays convey the import of the black folk experience for all Americans. No library or individual with a serious interest in African American folklore should fail to own this remarkable anthology.
Mules and Men by
MAXnotes. . .- offer a fresh look at masterpieces of literature- present material in an interesting, lively fashion- are written by literary experts who currently teach the subjects- are designed to stimulate independent thinking by raising various issues and thought-provoking ideas and questions- enhance understanding and enjoyment of the work- cover what one must know about each work- include an overall summary, character lists, explanation and discussion of the plot, the work's historical context, biography of the author- each chapter is individually summarized and analyzed and includes study questions and answers- feature illustrations conveying the period and mood of the workEach MAXnotes measures 5 1/4" x 8 1/4" (13.3 cm x 21 cm).
