Current Course Offerings
Winter 2008
English 270: Introduction to FolkloreInstructor: Ray Cashman | MW 1:30-3:18 |#08504-0
This class explores forms of traditional, vernacular culture--including verbal art, custom, and material culture--shared by men and women from a number of regional, ethnic, religious, and occupational groups. At the same time, we will consider various interpretive, theoretical approaches to examples of folklore and folklife discussed, and we will investigate the history of folklore studies and the cultural contexts in which this field has flourished. Recurring central issues will include the dynamics of tradition, the nature of creativity and artistic expression, the construction of personal and group identity, and the relationship between folklore and worldview. Assignments will include quizzes, essays, a folklore collection and analysis project, and a final exam.
English 367.05: Memory and Place in the University District (The US Folk Experience)
Instructor: Ray Cashman | TR 7:30-9:18 pm | #08552-5S
To better appreciate memory, place, and community in everyday life we will collect and explore oral histories and personal narratives in our own backyard, the University District. You will learn fieldwork techniques used by anthropologists, folklorists, and oral historians (e.g., interviewing, participant-observation, transcription). Ethnographic writing assignments will include reflections on the fieldwork process, how the past is represented in the present and to what ends, how mere space is transformed into meaningful place through narrative, and how and to what extent the University District may be considered a community. Interview transcripts, fieldwork documentation, and analyses will be incorporated into the archives of the University District Community Association and the OSU Center for Folklore Studies Archives.
Note that we will regularly meet with "English 571: Studies in the English Language: Oral History in the University District" taught by Professor Gabriella Modan, and may be taken for "Service Learning" credit.
English 571: Stories of the University District: Collecting Oral Histories
Instructor: Gabriella Modan | TR 7:30-9:18 pm | #08580-6S
Have you ever wondered what it's like as a non-student to live near the university? The University District has a longstanding multi-generational community of residents who have witnessed enormous changes in Columbus at-large and at OSU. This class will provide you the opportunity to get to know people in the University District and their stories, while creating an oral history archive for community use. Students will learn how to conduct oral histories and interview residents and other community members, and make decisions about how best to represent neighborhood stories in ways that are interesting, useful, and accessible to members of the multiple communities around OSU. Because English 571 is a linguistics class, we will devote a considerable amount of time to thinking about language use in interview situations. Other topics will include ethics, recording technology, transcription, and controversies of oral history work. Assignments will include conducting and transcribing oral history interviews, a short reflection paper, and a final project that examines themes emerging from the collected materials. The class is open to all students who have an interest in gaining new perspectives on the University District. Students who are residents of the area are especially encouraged to sign up.
Near Eastern Languages and Cultures 367: The Arab American Family Immigration Saga
Instructor: Sara Webber | MW 10:30-12:18 | #01667-9
In this second writing course, students will study personal experience narratives and record Arab-American family immigration sagas as a "way into" both improving writing skills and coming to better understand facets of "the" Arab American immigrant experience as it has developed over more than a century. Drawing from lectures, film, music, literature and ethnography, we will think not so much about how Arab-Americans are represented as how they represent themselves. We will especially consider loci where cultures collide and the kinds of interventions writers and filmmakers make at those times. We will attend to such situations via visual as well as written representations. Where might the visual make sense of or challenge aspects of the inter-cultural? A major project for the course will be the video recording of an immigration saga that you have elicited yourself from an Arab American immigrant or his or her descendants and a paper you have been developing over the quarter that will study your saga both as literature and as a "model" for the stories that immigrants, in this case Arab-American immigrants, tell themselves and others about themselves. Why does your informant present the story as s/he does? Much of your writing will be owned by you in that, with my feedback and that of your classmates, you will do fieldwork and library research, and write extensively on a topic of your choosing (as well as write on shorter topics of my choosing). Each of you will contribute to others’ projects (and get feedback on your own) by sharing insights, experiences, writing, and film with the class.
In addition to broader writing skills, we will regularly address issues of writing—punctuation, sentence structure, style, documentation of sources, and overall essay structure. At least once a week, we’ll have a "writing moment" during which we field questions about general writing issues or cover a specific writing strategy/topic related to one of the readings (perhaps on style or structure) or one of your writing assignments.
Persian 370: Persian Mythology and Folklore
Instructor: Margaret Mills | TR 12:30-2:18 | #21208-4
Mythology and folklore of Persian-speaking lands, from cosmological texts through popular theater and narrative performance to popular customs and beliefs.
Prereq: English 110 or 111. GEC arts and hums lit course.
Students will become familiar with the concepts and individuals (gods, heroes, demons) of ancient and more recent Persian mythology, as well as with various categories of folklore and folklife in present day Iran. This course will also introduce students to the basic concepts and methods of comparative myth and folklore studies. Although a variety of texts will be read, the emphasis of the course will be on the mythological and folk aspects of the texts, rather than their purely literary qualities.
English 577.03: Life Stories and Narrative in Everyday Life
Instructor: Amy Shuman | MW 9:30-11:18 | #08585-3
Stories give shape to our everyday life experiences. We tell stories about ourselves, about others, about trivial interactions that fade from memory, and about life changing events. In this course we explore who tells stories to whom and in what contexts. We'll examine narrative form, genre, performance, repertoire and interaction. Each student will collect stories that will become the focus of a term paper. Required reading includes Living Narrative by Ochs and Capps.
Chinese 600: Chinese Performance Traditions
Instructor: Mark Bender | TuTh | 1:30-3:18 (we will decide on class meetings the first day) #04997-4
Language of the course: The primary language of the course will be English. In some instances, examples of other languages, including Chinese, Yi, and Miao will also be offered for examination, along with an English transcription/translation.
Chinese 600 introduces topics in the panorama of oral and oral-connected performance traditions of China. Local traditions of professional storytelling, epic singing, folksongs, ritual, and local drama will be explored from an interdisciplinary perspective that will include folkloristics, popular culture, and performance studies, ethnopoetics, and translation studies. Taking a multi-ethnic approach, stress will be given to the idea that the performance traditions in China, rather than being parts of a monolithic "Chinese" tradition are better represented as diverse and distinct traditions with occasional similarities that exist or have existed within the modern borders of China.
The theoretical basis of the course will include a review of recent Western theories on verbal art and performance, including the works of Richard Bauman, John Miles Foley, Lauri Honko, and others. A major focus of the discussions on theory will be the writings of China specialists from both within and outside of China such as Bamo Qubumo, Vibeke Bordhal, Chao Gejin, and Victor Mair.
Topics to be explored include:
- The dynamics of traditional performances in contemporary China, which includes relations between performance and ethnicity in terms of local, national, and global representations; and tourism and ethnicity/identity.
- The folklore process, which includes the process of performance in context, the process of textualization, and psychosomatic dimensions of performance.
- An examination of texts from select genres: antiphonal singing, myth and epic narrative, oral and oral-connected prosimetric traditions; a regional look at myth and epic; antiphonal folksongs in China and contiguous border areas; professional storytelling in the Yangzi corridor, local drama, and ritual.
- Examples of oral and orally-related material will be examined from among the following groups: various local Han cultures (China’s majority ethnic group), and some of the ethnic minorities, that may include Yi, Miao (Hmong), Dong (Gaem), Bai, Naxi, Mosuo, Yao, Zhuang, Hui, Uygur, Mongol, Daur, Manchu, and Tibetan.
Requirements: regular attendance, class participation, class project, individual project/paper, 4 short take-home essays
Arabic 672: Arab World Folk Narrative in Translation
Instructor: Sabra Webber | M W 1:30-3:18 | #01671-3
This course focuses on Arab world folk narrative as performed in specific places at specific times by specific narrators. We will study some narratives, like 1001 Nights, the Bani Hilal ("sons of the crescent moon") epics, "neck riddles" (stories of riddles told that save the riddler from death) and the trickster tales of Juha as they appear in different centuries and varied cultural settings. Other narratives we will investigate in only one very specific performance context—taking a much closer look at the narrator and how s/he uses intimate knowledge of a specific audience and a specific local cultural context artistically to fashion a narrative that will persuade listeners to a certain point of view.
As this is a seminar, student participation is crucial. Students will be responsible for selecting and reporting on certain texts not read by other members of the seminar.
Comparative Studies 677.04: Folklore and Gender Politics
Instructor: Amy Shuman | MW 1:30-3:18 | #21382-6
Folklorists have always studied gender, whether in research on women's lament songs or on men's work songs, but this research has only recently become part of discussions on sexuality, global feminism, or feminist ethnography. Often the larger theoretical studies fail to account for local culturally-specific experiences. This course is designed to bring the culturally specific research into conversation with the theoretical work. Topics include: gender and "traditional" cultural practices; representations of gender in folktales, ballads, jokes and other genres; and gender politics in everyday life including sexuality, social roles, and stigma. Theoretical issues include the incompatibility of cultural relativism and feminism; global feminism and local cultural resistance movements; and feminist ethnography. Student work includes comments on the readings, an oral presentation, and a seminar paper.
English 770.01: Intro to Grad Study in Folklore 1: Genres and Interpretation
Instructor: Merrill Kaplan | TR 1:30-3:18 | #08766-7
How do you interpret traditional forms and the cultural practices that create them when there are multiple versions, none of them authoritative? How do you read cultural expression as text within the context of its performance? This course provides a lightning introduction to folklore and the intellectual wellsprings of its study. It then moves on through several canonical genres of traditional expression such as festival, fairytale, legend, folk belief, jokes, and foodways with an eye towards developing the tools necessary for their interpretation. Assignments will include class presentations and a term paper.
