Future Course Offerings
Winter 2010 Folklore Courses
Lower Division Courses:Comparative Studies 201: The Great Story Collections
Instructor: Margaret Mills
M W 10:30
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.
English 270: Introduction to Folklore
Instructor: TBA
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 275: Ways of "Knowing": Health, Illness, and Identity
Instructor: Sheila Bock
M W 3:30PM - 5:18PM
Denney Hall 0206
# 25816
In this course, we will explore the complex and dynamic nature of health beliefs as they relate to individual and group identities. Using a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts, we will examine critically the multiplicity of health beliefs in American culture and the complex ways ideas about health interact with how people identify themselves and others. Central questions we will address include: Where do people learn what they "know" about health and illness? In what ways do individuals (both patients and health professionals) draw upon a variety sources of knowledge as they strive to make sense of health and illness? Which beliefs are given the most credibility in American culture today and why? Which beliefs are most often marginalized and why? How do individuals respond to the ways others categorize their beliefs? Ultimately, students will use the readings and class discussions to inform their understandings of their own experiences with/ perspectives on health and illness. Students will also become familiar with different critical approaches to analysis and interpretation (literary, rhetorical, and folkloric) by examining a variety of textual representations of the human experience.
English 367.05: The US Folk Experience
Instructor: Martha Sims
MW 9:30 – 11:30
Central Classrooms 0212.
An intermediate course that extends and refines expository writing and analytical reading skills, introducing fieldwork and ethnographic approaches to the diversity of US folk culture. This quarter's offering will give you a chance to explore neighborhoods in Columbus—watch for further details!
Persian 370: Persian Folklore and Mythology
Instructor: Ben Gatling
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.
Arabic 375: The Arabian Nights
Instructor: Dr. Bruce Fudge.18
TuTh 10:30AM – 12:18PM
This course is intended to satisfy the GEC requirement for Category 2. Breadth: Section C. Arts and Humanities (1) Literature. Arabic 375 may also be applied this year to the Arabic major and minor programs.
The Nights are a remarkable example of a shared literary heritage, and at the same time have played a major part, for better or worse, in shaping Western perceptions of the Arabic-Islamic world. In this course students will be exposed to the original stories, which remain delightful to this day, as well as to the process by which manuscripts were bought, sold, copied, forged and translated. Then we will consider the remarkable diffusion of the tales and their characters, especially in cinema and modern literature. The course treats three related areas: i) the stories of the Nights themselves; ii) the textual history of the collection and its various editions and translations; and iii) some of the transformations and transmogrifications of the Nights, both literary and cinematic. The overall aim of the course is to demonstrate the range of the literary and cultural importance of the Arabian Nights. The origins of the collection lie in the Islamic Middle East, but the versions we know today are a direct result of a fascinating cross-cultural encounter, beginning with Antoine Galland’s translations of anonymous Arabic manuscripts in late seventeenth-century Paris. The subsequent vogue for “oriental tales” spread throughout Europe and back to the Islamic world, where subsequently there appeared a number of greatly expanded Arabic editions of the collection, apparently at least partly in response to European manuscript hunters. Within the Arabic world, such frivolous narratives were not regarded as serious literature, a prejudice that has not entirely disappeared today. Readings from The Arabian Nights; the history of the text, translations and literary and cinematic adaptations.
Upper Division Courses:
Comparative Studies/Near Eastern Languages and Cultures 648: Orality and Literacy
Instructor: Margaret Mills
MW 2:30
This course introduces the major theoretical trends concerned with literacy and oral communication and their interactions in global perspective, then critiques those theories in the light of case material primarily from the Middle East. All readings are in English. Students working in other areas of the world are encouraged to write their final research papers on case material or theory with direct reference to their own areas of specialization, and to bring their perspectives derived from other parts of the world to bear on classroom discussions of assigned readings. Global theories of literacy and orality owe a great deal to Middle Eastern data, which may in fact limit their applicability elsewhere. The writing system invented in southwestern Asia became the parent of all the surviving alphabetic writing systems of the Middle East, Europe, and South Asia. Furthermore, a rich body of research on oral traditions, testing certain dominant theories of oral formulation and transmission, has also accumulated for the region over the last thirty years or so. This course will sample this rich double data base to juxtapose and critique concepts and research strategies in comparison to one another. The course will equip students with an overview and critique of theories of literacy and of oral communication which is applicable worldwide.
Russian 644: Russian Folklore
Instructor: Helena Goscilo
T H 1:30-3:18
Never greet your guest over the threshold; face the right side when you sleep; and if you yawn make the sign of the cross over your mouth–failure to observe these rules courts disaster, for it places you at the mercy of evil spirits. Premised on the view that borders and apertures are particularly dangerous, these beliefs underpin Russian folklore, which teems with prohibitions that presuppose the aggressively malevolent nature of mysterious forces not only in the pagan, but also in the contemporary Christian world. Some of these forces, however, are ambivalent, such as the famously colorful Baba-Yaga, "the witch of all time," who paradoxically symbolizes both life and death, female and male, nurture and torture. Though these notions may be traced to medieval times and an agrarian society's dependence on the unpredictable elements in a bleak geographical expanse, some of them operate today, especially in rural areas, where the population believes in "the evil eye" that can cause people to wither and die. Startlingly, in the 21st century a group of "witches," armed with buckets and magic formulas, gathered on Moscow's Red Square on New Year's Eve to summon up the spirit of "Father Frost"–for snow had been atypically scant during the Russian winter. In other words, Russian folklore is not "outdated lore," for it continues to thrive today, even among the educated segment of Russian society.
In addition to examining various aspects of pagan demonology, this course focuses on sundry folkloric genres: epic poems (byliny), proverbs, spells, and the fairy tale. Students familiar with Western fairy tales and Walt Disney's screen adaptations will find Russian versions of the same or similar plots full of surprises evidencing the originality of the Russian folk imagination. Copious visual materials–film/video, paintings, graphics, and handicrafts–as well as some music supplement readings for the course.
English 770.01: Intro to Grad Study in Folklore 1: Genres and Interpretation
Instructor: Merrill Kaplan
M W 11:30
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.
Interested in Transnationalism?
Anthropology 810.22 : Theory and Problems in Cultural Anthropology: Defining Transnationalism
# 26741
Instructor: Jeffrey Cohen
W 1:30PM - 4:18PM
This class explores and debates the concept of transnationalism as it is used in the social sciences and humanities. While the idea of transnationalism assumes that people do not follow one-way streets and instead transcend and bridge physical, social and cultural space, there is very little debate concerning the costs and benefits of transnationalism. Further, there is a bias towards discussion of migration while the impacts of transnational outcomes on non-movers and stay-at-homes, are often ignored.
The course engages several themes and focuses on transnational aspects of migration, political organization, social life, expressive culture and religion. Weekly we will debate themes, theories and methods for defining transnational space and transnational social formations. Students will produce bibliographies as well as term papers focused on the topic as it relates to their interests.
Tentative Readings:
- Basch, Linda G., N.G. Shiller, and C.S. Blanc 1994: Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States.
- Paerregaard, Karsten 2008: Peruvians Dispersed: A Global Ethnography of Migration.
- Vertovec, Steven 2009: Transnationalism.
