Center for Folklore Studies

Collaborations

The Center provides financial and/or organizational support to a wide range of research and outreach activities relating to folklore and involving Center participants. To discuss a possible collaboration, please write to Barbara Lloyd (lloyd.123@osu.edu) or Dorothy Noyes (noyes.10@osu.edu); see also under Funding Opportunities.

Current Collaborations

A number of folklorists will be visiting OSU this year for events organized by other units. In addition, many lecture series and conferences around the university are of great interest to folklorists: our students are strongly encouraged to keep their eyes open.

Project Title: On the Streets of Notting Hill: Carnival in the Twenty-First Century
Contact: Lesley Ferris, ferris.36@osu.edu
Description: A travelling exhibition on costume arts in London's Notting Hill Carnival, a festival in the Afro-Caribbean tradition which has become both "Europe's largest street party" and an important site of negotiation over race and belonging in contemporary Britain. The exhibition will be curated by Lesley Ferris, Professor of Theatre, OSU, and Ruth Tompsett, Principal Lecturer in Drama and Performing Arts, Middlesex University, London. Other OSU participants include R. Brian Stone, Associate Professor of Design, and Dorothy Noyes, Associate Professor of English. The exhibition, with an accompanying multimedia program produced by OSU design students, will be shown at London City Hall on the Thames in 2007 and travel to other British and American venues in 2008.

Project Title: 2008 Qualia
Contact: Mick Weems, mickeyweems@yahoo.com.
Description: Starting in 2004, the OSU Center for Folklore Studies has given support to Qualia: Festival of Gay Folklife. Founded in 2002, Qualia is an organization established to promote and celebrate LGBT folklife. Qualia's mission is to educate people about LGBT culture through scholarship and celebration. Each year the Qualia organization holds lectures and events on timely topics.

The sixth annual Qualia Festival of Gay Folklife (May 2-4, 2008) is issuing a call for papers. The date of the academic conference that is held in conjunction with the festival is May 2 and 3.

The theme this year is "After the Pride Parade: Global Ethics of Our People." As LGBTQA people become more accepted into mainstream society, what is it that we can contribute to the improvement of humanity? Issues to be addressed this year include the ethics of AIDS treatment and policy, ethics of inclusion of disabled/differently abled people, insider/outsider status within the LGBTQA collective, and the role of Gay folklore and its history in Folklore Studies.

As with every Qualia, admission to and participation in the conference is open to all and free of charge. Our keynote speaker is Diane Goldstein. We will also begin an archive of LGBTQA folklore with recordings of the lived experiences of those who founded the AFS-LGBTQA section. We will also have fundraiser dances and shows to raise money for the Buckeye Region Anti-Violence Organization (BRAVO).

Please send all proposals to Mickey Weems (mickeyweems@yahoo.com), 614-746-1778 by April 4.

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Past Collaborations

Title: 2007 American Folklore Society Annual Meeting
Contact: http://www.afsnet.org/annualmeet/index.cfm
Description: The Annual Meeting of the American Folklore Society, jointly with the Association Canadienne d'Études Folkloriques, will be held at the Hilton Québec in Québec, Canada. This year's theme, "The Politics and Practices of Intangible Cultural Heritage" is both current and controversial, and this will be the largest meeting in recent memory. Twenty-one OSU folklorists will be attending and presenting, along with many of our alumni. For the meeting program, see http://www.afsnet.org/annualmeet/index.cfm.

Title: Society for Ethnomusicology 51st Annual Conference
Contact: http://www.indiana.edu/~semhome/2007/index.shtml
Description: The Society for Ethnomusicology 51st Annual Conference, held in the Hyatt on Capital Square in downtown Columbus from October 25th-28th, focuses this year on Music, War, and Reconciliation. Among the folklorists in attendance will be Judy McCulloh, Carol Silverman, Jason B. Jackson, Deborah Kapchan, Alan Burdette, Lucy Long, Doris Dyen, Michael Taft, Cathy Kerst; OSU's own Tim Lloyd, Chan Park, and Daniel Avorgbedor; and current AFS president Bill Ivey (see below) On Wednesday, October 24, a pre-conference symposium will be held on new directions in ethnomusicology. For information, see http://www.indiana.edu/~semhome/2007/index.shtml.

On Saturday, October 27, don't miss Bill Ivey, who will give the Charles Seeger Lecture to the ethnomusicologists, at Weigel Hall from 4:15 to 5:30 PM. Ivey is President of the American Folklore Society, former Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, and current Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University. His new book, Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights, will be published by the University of California Press in 2008.

Title: Multicultural Narratives and Narrative Theory
Contact: Amy Shuman
Description: Project Narrative is holding this important symposium on October 25-27 at the Blackwell Hotel Conference Center. See http://projectnarrative.osu.edu/. Among the well-known speakers from ethnic and narrative studies is folklorist Maria Herrera-Sobek.

On Saturday, October 27, be sure to catch Maria Herrera-Sobek, Luis Leal Chair of Chicano Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara and author of many studies of Mexican and Chicano folklore, including The Bracero Experience: Elite Lore versus Folklore, Northward Bound: The Mexican Immigrant Experience in Ballad and Song, and The Mexican Corrido: A Feminist Analysis. Herrera-Sobek who will speak at the Project Narrative symposium on "Violent Constructions of Subjectivity: The Narrative Voice of the Subaltern in the Mexican Narcocorrido" on Saturday at 1:40 PM.

Title: Women and War
Contact: http://slaviccenter.osu.edu/WIW/schedule.html
Description: The Center for Slavic and East European Studies is sponsoring an international conference on Women and War on October 26th and 27th, to be held at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. Speakers address issues of memory and representation in the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the current struggles in Chechnya and Afghanistan. See http://slaviccenter.osu.edu/WIW/schedule.html.

Project Title: 2007 Qualia: Chica/Chico: Expressions of Gender
Contact: Mick Weems, mickeyweems@yahoo.com.
Description: Starting in 2004, the OSU Center for Folklore Studies has given support to Qualia: Festival of Gay Folklife. Founded in 2002, Qualia is an organization established to promote and celebrate LGBT folklife. Qualia's mission is to educate people about LGBT culture through scholarship and celebration. Each year the Qualia organization holds lectures and events on timely topics. Qualia 2007 will be held on the weekend of April 13-15, 2007 in Columbus, Ohio. The conference is dedicated to performance in the GLBT community. The theme this year is "Chica/Chico: Expressions of Gender." The conference promises to be very good, with the welcome presence of Joe Goodwin and Polly Stewart. This year, we have scheduled two documentaries ("Almost Myself" about male-to-female transgendered persons, and "Drag Kings on Tour"). The keynote speaker will be female-to-male transman, artist, and scholar Jay Sennett. There will also be a performance of "Paint" by drag king/scholar Sile Singleton.

The range of presentations/performances is as varied as the human capacity for gendered expression. It can include (but is not limited to) issues of masculinity, femininity, youth, the elderly, race, ethnicity, history, scholarship, representation, illusion, straight/gay relationships, family, realness, spirituality, psychology, humor, medicine, law, and the media. Conference directors welcome papers and presentations concerning queer gender issues in folklore. If interested, please submit a 300-word synopsis on your topic by March 15 to mickeyweems@yahoo.com. Presentations should be at least 20 minutes in length but no longer than 40 minutes. All Qualia conference events are open to the public and free of charge. There is no fee for presenters, participants, or spectators. Mickey Weems and Kevin Mason, coordinators; Sile Singleton and Erin Tarr, coordinators.

Project Title: Lusophone Globalicities
Contact: Richard Gordon, gordon.397@osu.edu
Description: Lusophone Globalicities: An Interdisciplinary Collaborative Research Project is a working group whose purpose is to enhance understanding of cultural texts and dynamics that have resulted from the centuries-long networks of exchange among and beyond Portuguese-speaking regions in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. It is interested in what this inquiry teaches about present-day cultural and political realities in the Lusophone world, as well as the role of Lusophone societies in the global milieu. Issues to be explored include domestic and transnational negotiations between "high" and "low" culture, and the impact of audiovisual culture (e.g., music, television, cinema) and diverse forms of expressive culture (e.g., folklore and folk life, religious and ritual traditions, festival practices) on contemporary national and global politics, economic systems, and discourses of identity. For more information, you can visit the group's page, or contact one of the co-leaders of the group: Daniel Avorgbedor (avorgbedor.1@osu.edu) or Richard Gordon (gordon.397@osu.edu).

Project Title: Discovering the Stories of Native Ohioans
Contact: Katherine Borland, Borland.19@osu.edu.
Description: The Newark Earthworks Center with support from an Ohio State University Outreach and Engagement Grant is conducting a multiyear oral history project designed to accurately document the life experiences and perspectives of Native American Indians living in Ohio. Materials collected are being used to improve teaching about Native American Indians in Ohio's public schools. During our third year of the project, we are privileged to have Center for Folklore Studies student researcher Sheila Bock is on loan to the project. She is conducting and processing interviews with communities in Cleveland, Dayton and Seaford, Ohio. All interviews will be available for community and academic research at the Newark Earthworks Center archives, currently under construction.

Project Title: On the Streets of Notting Hill: Carnival in the Twenty-First Century
Contact: Lesley Ferris, ferris.36@osu.edu.
Description: A travelling exhibition on costume arts in London's Notting Hill Carnival, a festival in the Afro-Caribbean tradition which has become both "Europe's largest street party" and an important site of negotiation over race and belonging in contemporary Britain. The exhibition will be curated by Lesley Ferris, Professor of Theatre, OSU, and Ruth Tompsett, Principal Lecturer in Drama and Performing Arts, Middlesex University, London. Other OSU participants include R. Brian Stone, Associate Professor of Design, and Dorothy Noyes, Associate Professor of English. The exhibition, with an accompanying multimedia program produced by OSU design students, will be shown at London City Hall on the Thames in 2007 and travel to other British and American venues in 2008.

Project Title: Disability in Kenya: Culture and Advocacy
Contact: Nina Berman, berman.58@osu.edu.
Description: An ongoing project exploring cultural constructions of disability, community support mechanisms, and advocacy projects for disabled persons in Kenya. The Center organized a one-week residency in November 2005 for Dr. Mbugua wa-Mungai, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, and Dr. Kimani Njogu, Twaweza Communications, Nairobi. The next steps include a meeting in Nairobi in June 2007 and a quarter-long teaching residency at OSU for the Kenyan scholars in Autumn 2007. Participating OSU faculty come from the departments of African American and African Studies, Comparative Studies, Design, and English.

Project Title: Key Ingredients, An Exhibition on American Foodways
Contact: Tim Lloyd, lloyd.100@osu.edu.
Description: The Ohio Humanities Council, with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and in collaboration with the American Folklore Society, will be bringing an exhibition on American foodways, titled "Key Ingredients" and curated by folklorist and OSU alumnus Charley Camp, to eight sites in Ohio between May 2007 and March 2008. (For information, see www.museumonmainstreet.org/exhibs_key/key.htm and www.keyingredients.org). The Ohio exhibit sites are:

• Aurora (Portage County, northeastern Ohio)
• Batavia (Clermont County, southwestern Ohio)
• Bowling Green (Wood County, northwestern Ohio)
• Bremen (Logan County, southeastern Ohio)
• Dayton (Montgomery County, southwestern Ohio)
• Gambier (Knox County, central Ohio)
• Twinsburg (Summit County, northeastern Ohio)
• Urbana (Champaign County, southwestern Ohio)

The AFS is working on behalf of the OHC to produce an interpretive publication on foodways in the areas of the state where the exhibition will be installed, designed to amplify the value and extend the life of the exhibition.

OSU folklore student researchers work under the supervision of AFS executive director Tim Lloyd and associate director Brent Björkman, and in collaboration with scholars such as Lucy Long of Bowling Green State University, Marjorie McLellan of Wright State University, and Howard Sacks of Kenyon College.

Project Title: "Silver Butterflies: Displaying Miao (Hmong) Folklife in China" -- a presentation by Wu Yifang, Guizhou Provincial Museum
Contact: Brian S. Bare, bare.3@osu.edu.
Description: Wednesday October 25th, 3:30pm, 014 University Hall. Wu Yifang is a public sector folklorist in the ethnic minority division of the Guizhou Provincial Museum in mountainous Guizhou province in southwest China. Numbering about 8 million, the Miao (or Hmong) are one of the largest ethnic minority groups in China, with strong traditions of folk song and story, folk dance, and a material culture that includes weaving and silver work. Along with Power-point images, Wu will demonstrate a number of these folk traditions and discuss how they are integrated into museum and tourist displays. The daughter of Miao scholar and epic singer, Jin Dan, Wu will also perform a short segment of a Miao antiphonal epic recently translated by Prof. Mark Bender, DEALL. Everyone is welcome to this exciting presentation, which will enhance our understanding of the diversity of China.

Project Title: 2006 Qualia: “Ohana: We Are Family”
Contact: Mick Weems, mickeyweems@yahoo.com.
Description: Starting in 2004, the OSU Center for Folklore Studies has given support to Qualia: Festival of Gay Folklife. Founded in 2002, Qualia is an organization established to promote and celebrate LGBT folklife. Qualia's mission is to educate people about LGBT culture through scholarship and celebration. Each year the Qualia organization holds lectures and events on timely topics. Qualia 2006: "Ohana: We Are Family" will focus on issues of family and kinship in the GLBT community. April 15 and 16, 2006.

Project Title: “How is This Folklore?: Negotiating the Boundaries of Folklore Theory and Practice.”
Contact: Ann Ferrell, ferrell.98@osu.edu or Norita Dobyns, dobyns.6@osu.edu.
Description: The OSU Folklore Student Association conference to be held on May 19-20, 2006, at the Mershon Center at the Ohio State University. This conference addresses the question of whether there is a fundamental "grand theory" that defines the folklore discipline. Is folklore an object or a lens or both? Presentations for this conference are expected to contribute to a broader discussion of the role of folklore in public, applied, and academics spheres.

Project Title: 2006 Summer Institute: Arab American Family Immigration Sagas: Teachers Institutes in the Humanities
Contact: Sabra Webber, webber.1@osu.edu.
Description: This project, "Arab American Family Immigration Sagas" aims to convene a summer institute of Ohio high school teachers that will help to open up a dialogue to assist concerned teachers in understanding the challenges their new (or newly noticed) student populations face and in teaching more effectively about the Arab world to non-Arab students, but also to help teachers find ways to involve Arab and Muslim students in the dialogue. The purpose of the course is not to share information about Arabs or Muslims "over there," but here in our midst, their experience, in all its complexity, of being American.

Project Title: 2006 The Banjo: African Roots and American Influences
Contact: Daniel Avorgbedor, avorgbedor.1@osu.edu.
Description: The Ethnomusicology Program hosted a special lecture-demonstration on March 6, 2006, a collaborative event involving the well-known Maninka musician Cheick Hamala Djabate (specialist on a West African stringed instrument, ngoni, which is documented as the ancestor of the banjo) and the banjo performer and specialist Bob Carlin. The event had two components: a formal lecture with illustrations and an evening concert. The event was part of the Lectures in Musicology series.

Project Title: 2005 Cultural Circulations
Contact: Amy Shuman, shuman.1@osu.edu.
Description: The Cultural Circulations project was a collaborative project brought about through the combined efforts and support of CIRIT: Clusters of Interdisciplinary Research on International Themes, Office of International Affairs, The Center for Folklore Studies, The Mershon Center for Public Policy and International Security, Office of Research, Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, College of Humanities, Department of English, Middle East Studies Center, College of the Arts, Department of Art, Center for Slavic and East European Studies, Department of Women's Studies, and the Iranian Cultural Association. The conference and published volume (forthcoming) examine the re-intensification of local cultural practices and cultural border-crossings that defy political obstacles to the circulation of culture. The project was designed to provide a powerful counter-narrative to claims and predictions for the erosion of local culture; the participants examined cultural border crossings across divides of race, class, gender, etc.; the uses of technology to subvert governmental constraints on the circulation of people, goods, or ideas; and the strategic uses of folk heritage culture in public policy.

2005 Cultural Circulations Conference Program [PDF]

Project Title: 2005 Qualia: “GLBT Expressions of Spirituality.”
Contact: Mick Weems, mickeyweems@yahoo.com.
Description: Each year Qualia is a folklife festival and conference that is dedicated to performance in the GLBT community. Our goals are to provide a forum for scholarly presentations on the LGBT community concerning subjects such as festival, healthways, media, politics, gender, and spirituality; to provide performances from the LGBT community in areas as diverse as song, dance, prayer, film production, speech, drag and politics; and to raise money for organizations that support of anti-violence.

Project Title: 2004 Qualia: “Secrecy and Revelation in the LGBT Community.”
Contact: Mick Weems, mickeyweems@yahoo.com.

Project Title: 2003 Protest Music as Responsible Citizenship
Contact: Amy Horowitz, horowitz.36@osu.edu.
Description: (September 10-11, 2003), focuses on how music helps to construct the political consciousness of a nation, how songs mobilize thousands of people around issues affecting American life, and how music addresses the role of America in the global context. The event and conversation brings together Harry Belafonte, Holly Near, Bernice Johnson Reagon, and Pete Seeger, four musicians who have played key public roles in the past decades. Issues of citizenship, music, and social change take on increasing significance in this time of increasing polarization both at home and globally. Music and social change have been documented through autobiographies and biographies of performers, ethnographic studies of music and cultural performance, and ethnomusicology research on music and revolution. However, little has been documented about the role of public music performances in shaping citizen responses to political events.

View More Past Collaborations

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