Autumn 2007 | Winter 2008 | Spring 2008
Autumn 2007
ENGLISH 270: Introduction to Folklore
Sheila Bock
MW 9:30-11:18
#08696-8
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.
ENGLISH 367.05: US Folk Experience: Writing About Culture
Amy Shuman
MW 1:30-3:18
#08739-4
We will explore a variety of ways to write about culture and will read the best examples of writing about culture as an insider, an outsider, from a first-person personal perspective, and a third-person distanced perspective, for example. We will read both essays and a complete ethnography and will view documentary films and examine other visual representations of culture. Students will write and revise three essays during the term.
ENGLISH 577.02: Legend
Merrill Kaplan
TR 1:30-3:18
#08769-3
This course introduces students to the legend, one of the three major genres of folk narrative. Is legend, as the Grimms wrote, “more historical” than folktale? Is this form of traditional narrative always “told as true,” as other scholars have maintained? Is it a narrative genre at all? This course explores these questions and examines the structure and subject matter of legend, the relationship between legend and personal experience, the place of legend in social discourse, and possibilities for interpreting legend as a meaningful expression. Examples will be drawn from several places and periods including the contemporary US and 19th-century Scandinavia. There are no prerequisites for this course. Assignments will include a class presentation, a term paper, and a final exam. Readings will be made available in a course packet and/or on electronic reserve.
ENGLISH 596: Studies in Literature and the Other Arts: The Poetry and Music of Bob Dylan
Patrick Mullen
MW 3:30-5:18P
#08778-4
Bob Dylan’s songs are a mix of literary and vernacular influences, from Arthur Rimbaud and the French symbolists to Woody Guthrie and Chuck Berry; from Frank Hutchison, Mississippi John Hurt and other 1920s and early 30s artists on the Anthology of American Folk Music to Alan Ginsberg and the Beat poets of the 40s, 50s and 60s; from gospel, blues, country, and rock n roll to protest and pop. We will look closely at selected Dylan songs within the cultural and historical context of both the poetry and the music, from the earliest demos to the latest CD but with a concentration on the crucial years of the 1960s. Requirements: mid-term exam, term research paper, and final exam. Texts: Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Neil Corcoran, ed. Do You, Mr. Jones?: Bob Dylan With the Poets and Professors, course packet of analytic essays and selected song lyrics.
COMPARATIVE STUDIES 677.02: Cultures of Waste and Recycling
Dorothy Noyes
TR 1:30-3:18
#05638-9
This course explores the notion of the residual: what is leftover, useless, unclassifiable. Starting off from Agnès Varda’s film The Gleaners and I (2000), we will explore the customary management of communal resources, both human and material. We’ll examine the creation of waste (and its converse, deprivation) with the codification of custom in modernity, and look at strategies by which waste is recuperated as a matter of necessity, aesthetics, or ideology. We’ll look at how different kinds of leftovers move in and out of systems of value: for example, the labeling of things as “junk” or “antiques,” people as “trash,” or ideas as “folklore.” Finally, we’ll think about the status of residues in social and cultural theory. Readings will be eclectic, including classis selections from symbolic anthropology (Douglas, Leach, Lévi-Strauss, Thompson) and sociology (Weber, Veblen), folktales, the Book of Ruth, Benjamin Franklin, and ethnographic articles on stereotyping, outlaws and outsiders, collecting, folk art, and popular protest. Students will write a few short response papers and a research paper.
ENGLISH 770.01: Intro to Grad Study in Folklore 1: Genres and Interpretation
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.
ENGLISH 870: Seminar in Folklore: The Ethnography of Performance
Dorothy Noyes
TR 9:30-11:18
#08952-5
Since the 1970s, the performance turn in folklore, anthropology, and related disciplines has illuminated our understanding of agency and efficacy in cultural production. In a major revision of the modern culture concept, it focuses on cultural forms as process and practice: not texts exemplifying a static shared worldview but historically situated, conventional transactions among persons. As part of the philosophy of language's critique of reference, it looks at how language is used to construct reality; reacting to the focus on deep structure in most grand theory, it insists on the significance of material and interactional surfaces. Today it is newly relevant as a corrective to the mystique of "values" and/or identities in contemporary cultural politics. This seminar, one of the three core theory courses in the graduate folklore curriculum, will examine both programmatic texts and selected case studies in the ethnography of performance: that is, an approach based in "thick description" of instances. While theory in the field has tended to develop within genre specializations, we will examine verbal art, cultural performance (ritual, festival, spectacle) and the performance of self together in the attempt to illustrate common issues and a general paradigm.
The reading will be intensive and eclectic, including various journal articles online as well as a coursepack and probably three books:
* Bauman, Richard 1984 (2d ed.). Verbal Art as Performance Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press.
* Basso, Keith. 1979. Portraits of "the Whiteman." Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
* Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Students will share in preparing for discussion and write a research paper: literary and historical topics are welcome as well as field-based projects.
ENGLISH 872: Critical Discourse Analysis (Seminar in the English Language)
Galey Modan
T R 3:30-5:18
#08953-1
Critical Discourse Analysis is the study of how power is enacted and contested through language.Drawing from research in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, we will examine the "manufacture of consent", the ways that people use language to gain, keep, or fight against power, and how forms of language can promote and privilege certain points of view while masking others. We will explore such topics as ethnoracial discrimination, gender relations, discursive constructions of space, and government policymaking within domains such as media communication, political discourse, and everyday conversation.
Requirements: Presentation of CDA concepts applied to your data
2 short papers of 3-4 pages
Final presentation
15 page final paper
ENGLISH 890: Interdisciplinary Seminar in Critical Theory: The Frankfurt School
Amy Shuman
MW 9:30–11:18
#08955-1
This course explores the development of the concept of cultural critique through the work of the Frankfurt School theorists, especially their debates about the role of the arts in strategies for political change. Many of their arguments focused on the role of mass culture (television, film, the music industry—understood as "the culture industry") either as a tool of Fascism or as offering possibilities for critique. We will explore the fundamental concepts of the culture industry and cultural critique and then turn in depth to the work of Walter Benjamin, who was arguably a minor figure but whose essays on mass produced art, tradition, and history continue to be significant for research on the relationship between high and low culture.
REQUIRED TEXTS: Essays by Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, and others. ASSIGNMENTS: Seminar Paper and Presentation
CHINESE 879 NATURE IN YI LITERATURE
Mark Bender
TR 1:30-3:18
#05028-3
The course will concern oral and oral-connected narrative poems, rituals, and folk culture of the Yi ethnic group of southwest China. The focus will be on emic attitudes towards Nature and the environment.
Winter 2008
English 270: Introduction to Folklore
Instructor: 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:
1. 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.
2. The folklore process, which includes the process of performance in context, the process of textualization, and psychosomatic dimensions of performance.
3. 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.
4. 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.
Aside from class discussions based on the assigned readings, students will participate in several "ethnopoetic" translation exercises coupled with experimental (i.e. fun) "recitals" or enactments of select items of tradition. Films, audio-tapes, guest speakers, etc. will supplement classroom lectures (occasional) and discussions.
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.
Spring 2008
English 270: Introduction to Folklore
Instructor: Ray Cashman
MW 9:30-11:18 am
#08538-6
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.
East Asian Languages and Literatures 357: East Asian Folklore
Instructor: Mark Bender
MW 1:30-3:18 pm
#02529-5
This class is a survey of various aspects of oral tradition and material culture in China, Korea, and Japan, with most of the emphasis on select ethnic minority groups in southwest China.
English 367.05: The US Folk Experience
Instructor: Martha Sims
TR 9:30-11:18 am
#08589-2
"367.05 The U.S. Folk Experience" typically focuses on the experiences, traditions, and expressive and material culture of common Americans from a wide range of groups and subcultures. In this particular ".05" section we will come to better appreciate of memory, place, and community here in University District of Columbus, Ohio. In order to do so, we will adopt methods and perspectives shared by folklorists, anthropologists, and oral historians. You will conduct fieldwork research (including observation, participation, note-taking), record interviews with University District residents, and transcribe these interviews. In addition to documenting your fieldwork, 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 presented to the University Community Association and housed in the OSU Center for Folklore Studies Archives.
Comparative Studies 377: Contemporary Folklore in the Arab World
Instructor: Sabra Webber
TR 9:30-11:18 am
#05647-7 (Arabic) or #05647-7 (Comp Std)
This Non-Western or Global Cultures and Ideas GEC course will introduce students to a wealth of Arabic folklore, including the lore of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Arabs as well as Berbers, Kurds and other Arab world communities. Folklore is defined here as traditional expressive culture: verbal art (e.g., myths, legends, folktales, riddles, jokes); material culture (e.g., the construction of shrines, homes, boats as well as production of pottery, jewelry, embroidery, carpets, and calligraphic art); visual presentation of self (e.g., applications of henna, tattoos, dress, hairstyles); folk religion, rituals, and festivals; and folk music (e.g., lullabies). Emphasis will be not on finished products but on cultural process. We will look at what Arab world "Folk," from different regions, religions, and language and ethnic traditions have in common in regard to ethos, world view, practical and aesthetic needs and how they differ, as well as at national and international appropriations of local lore.
International Studies 501: Living Jerusalem: Ethnography and Bridgeblogging in Disputed Territory
Instructor: Amy Horowitz
TR 11:30-1:18 pm
#21389-2
The "Living Jerusalem" course is an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of this complex city. We will explore ethnographic, historical, political and peace studies fields and examine their approaches to the study of Jerusalem. Some of the issues to be studied include: dueling (or dualing) histories, contemporary political issues, intersections of cultural practice, cultural borrowing, transmission, appropriation, disputed claims to cultural legacies, and how the internet allows culture to travel across borders. During the quarter students will have several opportunities to enter into an electronic learning environment with Palestinian and Israeli students and faculty at Al-Quds University and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Under the auspices of the International Studies Program (OSU), the Rothberg International School (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and the Centre for Jerusalem Studies (Al-Quds University) students will examine the impact of web logs (blogs) and videoconferencing as dialogue points for individuals living as adversarial neighbors in this disputed urban context. One of our goals is to better understand the capabilities of weblogging to bridge student and faculty communities from Israel, Palestine, and the United States as they learn about Jerusalem. Several sessions during the seminar will be conducted electronically. During the class, students and faculty will use weblogs and video conferencing to engage in dialogues about course readings, lectures, and fieldwork archives that were collected during the early 1990's by the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Studies.
English 577.02: The Ballad (Folklore Genres)
Instructor: Richard Firth Green
TR 3:30-5:18 pm
#08618-7
This course will study development of the traditional folk ballad (songs like 'Barbara Allen' and 'The Gypsy Laddie') from its origins in the British Isles down to its continuing presence in contemporary North America. The primary focus will be thematic (Tragic Ballads, Supernatural Ballads, Outlaw Ballads, Humorous Ballads, etc), but there will some opportunity to discuss the traditional ballad in relation to related types like the broadside, and the literary ballad. There will be a strong emphasis upon the ballad in performance throughout, and wherever possible ballad tunes will also be included.
Near Eastern Languages and Cultures 648: Orality and Literacy
Instructor: Margaret Mills
TR 11:30-1:18, Hagerty 335
#12317-6
Students will examine major theories of writing and of oral composition and transmission, in juxtaposition to case material deriving from a variety of Middle Eastern cultures.
Prereq: Permission of instructor.
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.
English 770.02: Intro to Grad Study in Folklore 2: Fieldwork
Instructor: Ray Cashman
MW 1:30-3:18 pm
#08805-7
This course explores a range of methodological, theoretical, and ethical issues in fieldwork as practiced in folklore and allied fields of ethnographic research. Students will take turns leading discussion of class readings. Equal emphasis will fall on students applying perspectives, methods, and strategies from readings and discussion in a series of hands-on exercises that will include participant-observation out in the world and face-to-face interviewing of other living, breathing homo sapiens (no auto-ethnography or internet research allowed). Written work for the course will consist of reports based on these empirical projects of gathering, documenting, and analyzing folklore materials.
Comparative Studies 792 (future 770.04): Folklore in the History of Disciplines
Instructor: Sabra Webber
TR 1:30-3:18 pm
#05687-0
This 792 course, "Folklore and the Disciplines," is a foundational course for graduate studies in folklore, but also offers students in related fields of anthropology, socio-linguistics, and studies of religion, literature, science, and psychoanalysis insight into the ways that their disciplines, as well, were shaped by and shaped nineteenth century phenomena such as colonialism, nationalism, industrialization, spiritualism, and romanticism. Folkloristics today continues to draw upon these other co-emergent disciplines, and those disciplines, in turn, draw upon "traditional" expressive culture genres and indicators for data, for inspiration, and for resources upon which to draw in order to inject rhetorical power into their theoretical discourses. There are at least three foci of this seminar: First, how can we re-think the effects of the scholarly energy of the nineteenth century, especially in Western Europe, more complexly and less stereotypically? Certain "givens" of that period need to be re-examined by broadening geographically and in terms of social roles, races, genders and classes the spectrum of where what we now think of as folklore was studied and by whom. Second, what kinds of scholarly and societal "underpinnings" did folklore and the other emerging disciplines share—not only those of empire, but of a "classical" education, of politics, of travel habits, of missionary and military endeavors, of theories of race, class, and gender. Especially we will investigate how these theoretical assumptions were being troubled, and by whom. Where were the loci of tensions, especially in 19th century Britain and other Western European venues, and how did these translate over into early studies of folklore in the US. Third, how were the relationships between the armchair students of the practices of the folk and the "other," whether of verbal art genres, material culture, body art, dance, music, rituals or festivals negotiated with those who conducted field studies? And, How did those dedicated to the archeological past or the geographic present, relate to those dedicated to the study of what Sir Richard Burton’s nemesis, John Hanning Speke, referred to disdainfully as those (like Burton) fascinated by the "manners and customs" of global inhabitants of their 19th century world?
Anthropology 810.21: Study Design and Data Analysis in Ethnographic Research
Instructor: Mark Moritz
R 2:30-5:18 pm
#01525-7
The focus of this course is research design and ethnographic methods. Instead of attempting to survey the vast literature on ethnographic fieldwork, we focus on a selection of methods that are central to much anthropological fieldwork – writing fieldnotes, participant observation, interviewing, surveys, freelists, pile-sorts, and rankings. Other techniques and issues will be incorporated as they emerge from student inquiry. In addition to data-gathering methods, we will also learn and experiment with quantitative and qualitative data analyses. And because methods are meaningless if they are not part of a well though through research design, you will also learn how to design a research project and write it up in a research proposal. Students can use this course to design their MA or Ph.D. research project. This course will be taught as a seminar. This means that students share responsibility for the success of the course and have to come to class prepared, i.e., having read and reflected on the readings and be prepared to discuss them.