Advancing Folkloristics
Advancing Folkloristics

Author: Jesse A. Fivecoate

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2021-08-03

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0253057108

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An unprecedented number of folklorists are addressing issues of class, race, gender, and sexuality in academic and public spaces in the US, raising the question: How can folklorists contribute to these contemporary political affairs? Since the nature of folkloristics transcends binaries, can it help others develop critical personal narratives? Advancing Folkloristics covers topics such as queer, feminist, and postcolonial scholarship in folkloristics. Contributors investigate how to apply folkloristic approaches in nonfolklore classrooms, how to maintain a folklorist identity without a "folklorist" job title, and how to use folkloristic knowledge to interact with others outside of the discipline. The chapters, which range from theoretical reorientations to personal experiences of folklore work, all demonstrate the kinds of work folklorists are well-suited to and promote the areas in which folkloristics is poised to expand and excel. Advancing Folkloristics presents a clear picture of folklore studies today and articulates how it must adapt in the future.

Out of Turmoil
Out of Turmoil

Author: Dean P. Vesperman

Publisher: IAP

Published: 2023-01-01

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

It is not difficult to argue that the social sciences are in a period of transition. Our day-to-day lives have been marked by uncertainty as our social lives have vacillated wildly between highs and lows, tensions between fellow citizens have heightened along ideological fault lines, and educators have been placed squarely at the center of public discourses about what—and how—we should be teaching. By any measure, we are living in a time where every moment seems to be rife with high stakes realities that must be navigated. Ladson-Billings (2020) called on educators to reimagine education and contest the notion of a “return to normal.” In the current highly polarized context where we see multiple competing narratives, rather than promoting a “return to normal” or “business as usual” approach, we argue that educators must use the lessons of the last two years, as well as draw on what we have learned from history and the social sciences. By asking ourselves how we might interrogate and inform current social landscapes and the challenges that arise from them, we have the opportunity to take leadership in fostering innovation, building solidarity, and re-imagining the teaching and learning of history and the social sciences. We recognize that humans live in multiple complex communities that include intersectional identities; relationships with power, agency, and discourses; and lived realities that are as unique as they are divergent. Consequently, the task of educators, and the goal of this volume, is to provide a clarion voice to a dynamic, relational, and undeniably human social world.

Keir Hardie, the Bible, and Christian Socialism
Keir Hardie, the Bible, and Christian Socialism

Author: Daniel L. Smith-Christopher

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-06-13

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 056770761X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Daniel L. Smith-Christopher focuses on the life and efforts of Keir Hardie, one of the founders of the UK Labour Party and one of the foremost figureheads of trade unionism. Drawing upon the work of two contemporary and significant American theorists-Herbert Gutman's classic essay on “Working-Class Religion” and Michael Gold's call for “Proletarian Literature”-Smith-Christopher marries British and American historical and theoretical debates to argue that Hardie's work is surely the quintessential example of a “proletarian exegesis” of the Bible. Beginning with a summary of the major events in Hardie's life, Smith-Christopher draws both upon existing biographies and more recent historical discussions that question assumption of British social history. He then reviews previous debates upon the influence of Hardie's own Christian faith upon his journalistic output, and assesses three Christian Socialists whose work was advertised and reviewed by Hardie himself: Dennis Hird, John Morrison Davidson, and Caroline Martyn. Smith-Christopher proceeds to Hardie's copious writings, both for The Labour Leader and separately published lectures, pamphlets, and somewhat longer works of autobiography and comment. Highlighting Hardie's tendency to cite favorite texts (heavily from the Gospels and James, but also some notable Old Testament discussions), Smith-Christopher proves Hardie's serious discussion of these texts beyond mere political rhetoric; concluding by comparing a selection of Hardie's favorite Biblical arguments with contemporary research in Biblical Studies about these same passages, evaluating the problems and possibilities of proposing a “Proletarian Exegesis”.

Claiming Space
Claiming Space

Author: Sheila Bock

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2023-10-09

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1646425251

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Claiming Space examines the growing tradition of decorating mortarboards at college graduations, offering a performance-centered approach to these material sites of display. Taking mortarboard displays seriously as public performances of the personal, this book highlights the creative, playful, and powerful ways graduates use their caps to fashion their personal engagement with notions of self, community, education, and the unknown future. Claiming the space of these graduation caps is a popular and widespread way that individuals make their voices heard, or rather seen, in the visual landscape of commencement ceremonies. The forms and meanings of these material displays take shape in relation to broader, ongoing conversations about higher education in the United States, conversations grounded in discourses of belonging, citizenship, and the promises of the American Dream. Integrating observational fieldwork with extensive interviews and surveys, author Sheila Bock highlights the interpretations of individuals participating in this tradition. She also attends to the public framings of this tradition, including how images of mortarboards have grounded online enactments of community through hashtags such as #LatinxGradCaps and #LetTheFeathersFly, as well as what rhetorical framings are employed in news coverage and legal documents in cases where the value of the practice is both called into question and justified. As university administrators and cultural commentators seek to make sense of the current state of higher education, these forms of material expression offer insight into how students themselves are grappling with higher ed's promises and shortcomings. Claiming Space is a meaningful contribution to folklore, cultural studies, media studies, and education.

Play in a Covid Frame
Play in a Covid Frame

Author: Anna Beresin

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2023-06-01

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1800648944

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

During the international coronavirus lockdowns of 2020–2021, millions of children, youth, and adults found their usual play areas out of bounds and their friends out of reach. How did the pandemic restrict everyday play and how did the pandemic offer new spaces and new content? This unique collection of essays documents the ways in which communities around the world harnessed play within the limiting frame of Covid-19. Folklorists Anna Beresin and Julia Bishop adopt a multidisciplinary approach to this phenomenon, bringing together the insights of a geographically and demographically diverse range of scholars, practitioners, and community activists. The book begins with a focus on social and physical landscapes before moving onto more intimate portraits of play among the old and young, including coronavirus-themed games and novel toy inventions. Finally, the co-authors explore the creative shifts observed in frames of play, ranging from Zoom screens to street walls. This singular chronicle of coronavirus play will be of interest to researchers and students of developmental psychology, childhood studies, education, playwork, sociology, anthropology and folklore, as well as to toy, museum, and landscape designers. This book will also be of help to parents, professional organizations, educators, and urban planners, with a postscript of concrete suggestions advocating for the essential role of play in a post-pandemic world.

Handbook on Food Tourism
Handbook on Food Tourism

Author: Eerang Park

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2024-03-14

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1803924179

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This Handbook on Food Tourism provides an overview of the past, present and future of research traditions, perspectives, and concerns about the food tourism phenomenon. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, it contributes to the historical and anthropological understanding of the nexus between food, society and tourism that underpins the divergent business and marketing efforts in tourism today.

The Gut
The Gut

Author: Elizabeth Pérez

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-01-05

Total Pages: 133

ISBN-13: 1009032925

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

If the head is religion, the gut is magic. Taking up this provocation, this Element delves into the digestive system within transnational Afro-Diasporic religions such as Haitian Vodou, Brazilian Candomblé, and Cuban Lucumí (also called Santería). It draws from the ethnographic and archival record to probe the abdomen as a vital zone of sensory perception, amplified in countless divination verses, myths, rituals, and recipes for ethnomedical remedies. Provincializing the brain as only one locus of reason, it seeks to expand the notion of 'mind' and expose the anti-Blackness that still prevents Black Atlantic knowledges from being accepted as such. The Element examines gut feelings, knowledge, and beings in the belly; African precedents for the Afro-Diasporic gut-brain axis; post-sacrificial offerings in racist fantasy and everyday reality; and the strong stomachs and intestinal fortitude of religious ancestors. It concludes with a reflection on kinship and the spilling of guts in kitchenspaces.

Just Wonder
Just Wonder

Author: Pauline Greenhill

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2024-05-15

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 1646425855

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Inspired by folklore, television, fairy tales, social media, novels, and films, Just Wonder addresses crucial themes in social and ecological justice efforts. Moving into the mid-twenty-first century, wonder—as a potentially critical sociocultural, ecological, and individual stance—will play a significant role in reconceptualizing the present to imagine a different and better world. These essays examine fairy tales and other traditional forms of the fantastic and the real to offer alternative expressions of justice relevant to gender, sex, sexuality, environment, Indigeneity, class, ability, race, decolonizing, and human and nonhuman relations. By analyzing fairy tales and wonder texts from various media through an intersectional feminist lens, Pauline Greenhill and Jennifer Orme consider how wonder genres and forms blend with diverse conceptions of seeking and enacting justice. International collaborators—both established and emerging scholars who self-identify with different subjectivities, locations, and generations and come from an impressive range of inter/disciplines—engage with contemporary and historical texts from various languages and cultural contexts, including interventions, counterparts, and comparisons to the fairy tale. Just Wonder offers a critical look at how creative wondering can expand the ability to resist modes of oppression while fostering equity, as well as encourage curiosity and imagination. In a world that can be overwhelming and precarious, this book presents scholarly, artistic, personal, and collective-action interventions to identify and respond to injustice while centering wonder and, thus, imagination, questioning, and hope. Just Wonder will appeal to fairy-tale scholars; folklorists; students and scholars of film, media studies, and cultural studies; as well as a general audience.

International Folkloristics
International Folkloristics

Author: Alan Dundes

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 1999-08-01

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1461637856

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

International folkloristics is a worldwide discipline in which scholars study various forms of folklore ranging from myth, folktale, and legend to custom and belief. Twenty classic essays, beginning with a piece by Jacob Grimm, reveal the evolving theoretical underpinnings of folkloristics from its nineteenth century origins to its academic coming-of-age in the twentieth century. Each piece is prefaced by extensive editorial introductions placing them in a historical and intellectual context. The twenty essays presented here, including several never published previously in English, will be required reading for any serious student of folklore.

Folklore Concepts
Folklore Concepts

Author: Dan Ben-Amos

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2020-09-01

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 0253052440

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

By defining folklore as artistic communication in small groups, Dan Ben-Amos led the discipline of Folklore in new directions. In Folklore Concepts, Henry Glassie and Elliott Oring have curated a selection of Ben-Amos's groundbreaking essays that explore folklore as a category in cultural communication and as a subject of scholarly research. Ben-Amos's work is well-known for sparking lively debate that often centers on why his definition intrinsically acknowledges tradition rather than expresses its connection forthright. Without tradition among people, there would be no art or communication, and tradition cannot accomplish anything on its own—only people can. Ben-Amos's focus on creative communication in communities is woven into the themes of the theoretical essays in this volume, through which he advocates for a better future for folklore scholarship. Folklore Concepts traces Ben-Amos's consistent efforts over the span of his career to review and critique the definitions, concepts, and practices of Folklore in order to build the field's intellectual history. In examining this history, Folklore Concepts answers foundational questions about what folklorists are doing, how they are doing it, and why.