Center for Folklore Studies

Future Course Offerings

Winter 2009

Preliminary Course Descriptions (subject to alteration; check at time of enrollment for updates and call numbers)

Comparative Studies 201: Literature in Society: Great Story Collections East and West
Instructor: Margaret A. Mills
MW 9:30-11:18 AM
#05613-3

This course takes a journey generally eastward from Europe and backward in time, to explore a selection of the world’s great story collections in the social and historical settings of their literary creation. All are representations of live storytelling, as the literary compiler or compilers understood it, and all drew on local oral tradition for their stories to one degree or another. As such, these collections give us windows on ideas about story performance at different times and places, actual and imaginary: its styles, its settings, its purposes and meanings. What do these representations have in common? How are they different? What can they tell us about actual social practices involving storytelling, and how can we distinguish this social background from literary fantasy or invention? How do these collections, dating from the 15th century CE and earlier, from Europe to India, relate to storytelling as it is practiced today, either as formal entertainment or as part of our everyday lives? Where and how do stories get repeated? What are the contributions of different media (live voice, writing or print, audio recording, film, television) to the telling of tales?

The collections we will sample are Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Boccaccio’s Decameron (for which we will also view and discuss Pasolini’s film Decameron), the Thousand and One Nights (for which we will also view and discuss the Disney film, Aladdin), Sufi stories from Fariduddin ‘Attar’s Conference of the Birds and Jalaluddin Rumi’s Mathnavi, and the classical Sanskrit Panchatantra.

Besides two short (3-5 page) papers commenting on course readings and class discussion, due during the term, and a final exam consisting of a choice of short essay questions, each member of the class will perform for the class a short (5 to 10-minute) story or narrative joke of their own choosing (which can be fictional, or from personal experience or oral history from their family or elsewhere), and respond to other students’ questions about how they chose the story, where it came from, what interests them about it, what they consider to be effective story-telling, etc. Your style as a performer will not be graded, but rather the quality of discussion that is created around the example you bring for the class to discuss.

Medieval and Renaissance Studies 240: Witchcraft and Magic
Instructor: Sarah Iles Johnston
MW F 11:30 -12:18
#13737-4

In this interdisciplinary course, students will explore the history and culture of witchcraft and magic from ca. 400 to 1700 C.E. within sociological, religious, and intellectual contexts. By the end of the course, students will have a better understanding of the practice, persecution, and social construct of magic and witchcraft in the medieval and early modern periods and its far-reaching impact on society.

English 270: Introduction to Folklore
Instructor: Sheila Bock
MW 1:30-3:18 PM
#08631-1

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, and the construction of personal and group identities.

English 367.05: Memory and Place in the University District (The US Folk Experience)
Instructor: TBA
TR 9:30-11:18 AM
#08677-3

To better appreciate memory, place, and community in everyday life we will collect oral histories in our own backyard from residents of 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, and how mere space is transformed into meaningful place through narrative. Interview transcripts, fieldwork documentation, and analyses will be deposited in the archives of the OSU Center for Folklore Studies. 367.05 fulfills the GEC "Social Diversity in the US" requirement and the second composition course you need to graduate.

Persian 370: Persian Mythology and Folklore
Instructor: Benjamin Gatling
TR 1:30-3:18 PM
#16299-1

This course explores the mythology and folklore of Persian-speaking lands, from cosmological texts through popular theater and narrative performance to popular customs and beliefs. 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.

Near Eastern Languages and Cultures 380: Everyday Life in South Asia
Instructor: Margaret A. Mills
TR 1:30-3:18 PM
#21857-3

This course is an introduction to the cultural diversity of South Asia through the study of everyday life and media representations. The cultural wealth and diversity of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka) mainly comes to the attention of the American public in the form of brief news reports on sectarian and other violence or concerning interruptions of national and international political processes. This course is designed for those who want to know more about how members of the culturally, religiously, and professionally diverse population of this important region experience, manage, and find meaning in their everyday lives. Anthropologists, historians, folklorists, and scholars of religion, media and cultural studies all contribute different insights on this subject. The broad-ranging essay collection of Mines and Lamb, (eds.), Everyday Life in South Asia, will ground the course, balanced with readings on contemporary folklore in everyday use and several recent documentary and feature films.

International Studies 501: People and the Environment in China
Instructor: Elana Chipman
TR 11:30-1:18 PM
#12124-4

This seminar explores the relationship between society and the natural environment in Chinese societies by looking at conflicts over access to and use of the environment, as well as ideas about "nature" and our rights and responsibilities toward it. As a course grounded in anthropological and historical perspectives, its aim is to understand China's environmental issues and conflicts in terms of particular cultures, places, and times. Through readings and films, we will consider environmental debates in relation to issues such as land rights, environmental regulation, environmental knowledge (scientific and popular), population and food security, migration and urbanization, conservation and resource management, gender and ethnicity, global commodity chains, and hazardous waste. The emphasis will be on specific case studies which will then be set in relation to movements within the global political economy, as well as larger scholarly debates.

International Studies 501: Music in Disputed Territories: Cultureal Dimensions of Globalization
Instructor: Amy Horowitz
TR 9:30–11:18 AM
#12123–9

This course examines the role that music plays in forging new identities and in crossing political boundaries in disputed territory. Music has played a significant, if not always recognized role in world politics from campaign jingles to revolutionary protest music. We will explore music in the context of performances in daily life, religious ritual, and cultural and political events. From the music of Israeli Jews from Islamic lands to the proliferation of Reggae and Afro–Cuban music in Europe, we will focus on how music defies national and political boundaries and creates unlikely coalitions among listeners and performers. Some of the questions we will ask are: what is the role of technology in the globalization of local music? What is the impact of community upheaval (migration, exile, refugee status,) on music formation and change? The course challenges students to examine the assymetrical encounter and subsequent power relationships between local African, Asian, European, North American and Latin American musical traditions.

English 577.02: Folklore Genres: Legend
Instructor: Merrill Kaplan
MW 1:30-3:18 PM
#08704-2

This course introduces students to legend, that genre of folk narrative that includes narratives of King Arthur and Elvis Presley, elves and aliens, and everything you’ve heard about the Mooney Mansion on Walhalla Drive. Students will gain familiarity with traditions of several places and times while exploring the structure and subject matter of legend, the relationship between legend and personal experience, and the nature of legend as contested truth. Students will learn about the history of the collection of legends and become acquainted with some of the major scholars of legend and their ideas. By the end of the course, students will understand some of the difficulties posed by attempts to define legends as a genre and have learned strategies for interpreting legend as meaningful expression.

Comparative Studies 677.04: Understanding China through Ethnography
Instructor: Elana Chipman
TR 3:30-5:18 PM
#21456-2

In this reading-intense seminar we will examine both the minutiae of daily life and larger scale issues in contemporary Chinese societies. We will read a range of works, beginning with Fei Xiaotong’s classic village ethnographies from the 1930s, and continue to contemporary works such as Jing Jun’s portrait of a community displaced by a dam project, Tamara Jacka’s study of migrant women laborers in Shenzhen, and an ethnography of bridal studios in Taipei by Bonnie Adrian. Through these anthropological and ethnographic materials focusing on individuals, communities, and their lives we will strive to understand some of the continuing and emerging issues facing China today in context; including migration and urbanization, environmental degradation, economic change, tourism, and family organization. Students will write short response papers to the readings through the semester and complete a final take home essay.

English/Comparative Studies 770.01: Introduction to Graduate Study in Folklore 1: Folklore Genres and Interpretive Methods
Instructor: Dorothy Noyes
MW 11:30-1:18 PM
Eng# 08889-4; CS# 05685-5

This course, part of the newly revised graduate curriculum in folklore, provides an entry into folklore studies through the ground floor. While at 800-level we offer courses focusing on the core bodies of folklore theory-tradition, performance, and sociocultural differentiation--, the 770 series provides a practical introduction to the stuff of vernacular cultural creation and its study. This first course throws us into the deep end: interpreting folklore in context, the equivalent of close reading in literary studies. After a brief introduction to the history and politics of folklore research, we will survey the canonical oral, material, and gestural genres of the field, looking at a variety of traditions internationally through the work of good ethnographers. Through these examples, students will find guidelines for conducting their own "philology of the vernacular," in Richard Bauman's phrase. In addition to responses to the readings, students will perform a series of interpretive exercises to be revised into a final paper on material of their own choosing.

Near Eastern Languages and Cultures/Comparative Studies 792:
Tradition and Transmission
Instructor: Margaret A. Mills
MW 2:30-4:18 PM
NELC# 12278-9; CS# 05693-1

This course is offered as one of the core graduate seminars for those interested in theory and research methodology in folklore studies. We will review theories of how cultural forms travel through time and space across social networks, their stability, variation, and cultural reproduction. Key terms such as genre, structure, formula, and text/ entextualization are examined for their place in theories of transmission. Other key concepts and topics: Diffusion and the comparative method; ethnomimesis; habit and the reproduction of the everyday; implicit vs. explicit memorial forms; theories of oral transmission, orality and memory techniques, literacy and entextualization; sites of memory (memory as celebrated, as sequestered, or censored/suppressed); cultural continuities operating below awareness; traditionalization and invented traditions; heritage.

Education T&L 905: Ethnography of Communication
Instructor: Marcia Farr
W 4:30-6:48 PM
#08353-8

This two-quarter seminar introduces the Ethnography of Communication as a field of inquiry for studies of oral and written language. We explore cultural differences in language use, investigating oral language genres and/or literacy practices within specific groups across social contexts. This sequence of two courses is foundational for those considering such research for their dissertations or theses.

The first quarter course provides the theoretical framework and general methodology of this field, as well as examples of specific studies carried out within this tradition. Over the course of the two quarters we read ethnographies of communication of specific populations within the United States and in other world sites.

The second quarter course is project-oriented. We focus on fieldwork and analysis as students conduct their own research. The final paper reporting on this research might serve as an initial draft of an article for a scholarly journal or a book chapter. Students enrolling in the second quarter of this course sequence (Winter 2009) should either have taken the first quarter of the sequence or otherwise have some background in this area.