Margaret Mills (MM) Finding Aid

By Patrick Dunn and Kyle Knott

Margaret Mills, c1970 - c2012 

SUMMARY OF THE COLLECTION  

Collection ID: MM  

Language: English 

Physical Description:

Two 12x12x18 inch cardboard boxes (one audio, one printed materials) 

Repository/Location:

Center for Folklore Studies, The Ohio State University, Hagerty Hall Room 455  

ABSTRACT  

This collection contains scholarly materials from the career of Dr. Margaret Mills, faculty associate of Ohio State’s Center for Folklore Studies from 1998 to 2012. Included are Dr. Mills’ published and unpublished articles, Ph.D dissertation, notes, correspondences, audio lecture recordings, and various research ephemera.  

CONTENT 

Biographical and Historical Notes 

Dr. Margaret Mills joined Ohio State’s faculty in 1998 and retired in 2012. During this time, she served as chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and was a faculty associate of the Center for Folklore Studies and the Mershon Center for Strategic Studies. Dr. Mills was previously a tenured faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, where she spent 13 years in the Folklore and Folklife Department. She received her Ph.D from Harvard University in 1978. 

Scope 

The bulk of these materials, donated by Dr. Mills, pertain to her studies of Afghan folklore and Persian-language popular culture. They reflect Mills’ long-term research interests in gender politics, narrative rhetoric, and oral culture within folk storytelling traditions. Other materials highlight areas where Mills’ interests intersect with the research of peers and colleagues. The collection provides a personal, ground-level record, however incomplete, of Mills’ career and scholarly development. As such, it reflects cultural developments within the fields of Folklore Studies and Near Eastern Studies and shows the evolution of OSU’s folklore curriculum.  

Specific items of note include extensive audio recordings of Mills’ lectures, as well as lectures from her student years, an original print-copy of her completed dissertation, and ephemera tracing institutional processes of publication, presentation, and peer-review.   

Research Strength/Suggestions 

This collection holds primary research materials relevant to the study of folklore, gender, and narrative culture in Persian-language regions – including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and other former-Soviet territories. In addition, the collection reflects the disciplinary trajectories of Folklore Studies, Near Eastern Studies, and Comparative Literature as academic fields. Materials shed light specifically on the institutional development of Ohio State’s Center for Folklore Studies, and of folklore centers at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.   

These materials may also be relevant for cross-cultural and comparative studies of myth, ritual, and symbol, and for studies of local spirituality across Islamic cultural regions. Select items pertain to gender politics and folk cultures in other geographical areas – including Japan, Bengal, Latin America, Appalachia, and the Himalayas – and to popular cultures of the contemporary Anglophone world.  

ACCESS AND USE 

Arrangement notes 

The collection is organized in two boxes:

Box 1: Printed and handwritten materials organized in labeled folders 

Box 2: Audio cassettes in plastic cases 

Administration 

CFS Archivist: Dr. Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth 

Archival Assistants: Zahra Abedinezhad and Rhiar Kanouse 

Collection Assistants: Patrick Dunn and Kyle Knott 

Using the collection 

Physical materials can be accessed on-site at the CFS archive, located at 455 Hagerty Hall on OSU’s main campus. Audio tapes can also be accessed on-site. Please contact the archive to schedule an appointment.  

Preferred Citation 

Folklore Archives, Center for Folklore Studies, Ohio State University. Margaret Mills Collection. Box number (when applicable), "Folder Title" (when applicable), "File Number" (when applicable). 

Keywords 

Afghanistan, Persian Folk Cultures, Women and Gender in Folklore, Oral Storytelling, Myth and Symbol, Near Eastern Languages 

BOX/FOLDER LEVEL DESCRIPTIONS

Printed and handwritten documents in 36 labeled folders 

1978 Ph.D Dissertation from Harvard University, in small cardboard box 

1993 Poster for University of Pennsylvania Performance-Lecture by Mills

Box 1, Folder 1 John Hopknell, Local Islam Talk 

Box 1, Folder 2 Rosan Jordan, “A Note on Sociocentrism in Folklore Studies” 

Box 1, Folder 3 M. Ziai ms” Islamic Oral Lit.” (1983?) 

Box 1, Folder 4 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar, Program Proposal, 1993 

Box 1, Folder 5 Islamic Folklore Biblo-Hafiz (with Persian Folklore biblo=scott) 

Box 1, Folder 6 Council of Europe on Education of Margaret 

Box 1, Folder 7 Kenyon College Folklife Style  

Box 1, Folder 8 Indo-Chinees Refugee Education Council (Center for applied linguistic, 1981)  

Box 1, Folder 9 N. Shahrami. “State Blog and Social Fragmentation in Afghanistan”  

Box 1, Folder 10 Comic Book Stuff from Amy Rashap 

Box 1, Folder 11 Mill, “On the Concept of Muslim Folklore & Folklife” (1994) 

Box 1, Folder 12 Raw for JFR, Al-Ges (Mecca Women's Ritual), 1994 

Box 1, Folder 13 Feild school in Kenyon 7 Folklore in Education 

Box 1, Folder 14 Roger Abraham and Stereotypes  

Box 1, Folder 15 Anna Careweli, “Scattered in Fragile Lands,” 1984 

Box 1, Folder 16 Margaret Mills Essays 

Box 1, Folder 17 Types & Motif, F. Kate Wilson 

Box 1, Folder 18 C. Silverman, “Bulgarian Gypsies: Adaptation in a Socialist Context,” 1984 

Box 1, Folder 19 Riffat Hassan, “Equal Before Allah,” Women Living Under Muslim Laws, 1987 

 Box 1, Folder 20 Elain Eff, Baltimore's Greek 

Box 1, Folder 21 Tibetan Refugees  

Box 1, Folder 22 Mills, “On the Concept of Folklore & Folklife,” 1994 

Box 1, Folder 23 Margaret Mills Essays 

Box 1, Folder 24 Muslim Folklore-Types &/Lectures 

Box 1, Folder 25 M. Mills,Muslim Folklore & Folklife” in A. Nanji. Ed, The Muslim Almanac, 1996 

Box 1, Folder 26 Ramon A. Gutierrez, “When Parde Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Conquest, Religion and Revolt in Colonial New Mexico” (1987) 

Box 1, Folder 27 M. Mills, Oral Narrative in Afghanistan, Thesis, Harvard University, 1978 

 

115 audio cassette tapes in 8 plastic cases (audio lectures), Collection donated by Margaret Mills

Box 2, Folder 1: Harvard University: Lectures on Structuralism and Anthropology, 1973, by David Maybury-Lewis, Nur Yalman, George Godelier (on Marxism and Anthropology) 

Box 2, Folder 2 Dell Hymes lectures, Ethnography of Speech, University of Pennsylvania 1987 

Charlette Ross (Storyteller), U Pen, Performances (Copied from Keneth Goldstein- authorized by Ross) 

Bruno Nettl On Persian Music System, U. Illinois 1986  

Box 2, Folder 3 Lectures, U. Penn 

Charles Briggs. Ethnography of Speech (not full) 

Clifford, Games (Speech Lecture) 

Henry Glassie, “Folklore and Ethnography” 

Vincent Crapanzano, “Subversion in Ethnographic Description,” C 1984, U. Penn. 

Henry Glassie (?),: Marxist Criticism, (1970?) 

Margaret Mills, “Gender and Performance Style in Afghanistan,” 1984 (U. Penn). 

Steve Feld, “Pygmy Pop,” U. Penn. (1986?) 

John Baily, Cambridge lecture, Professional Documentaries, Herat 

Box 2, Folder 4 Albert Lord, Humanities 9A: Oral and early Lectures, Fall 1977  

Huminites 9B: Oral and Popular Lectures, SP 1978 (more in 2nd Box) 

Box 2, Folder 5 Albert lord, Humanities 9B, Oral and Popular Lectures, SP 1978 

Homer Seminar Series, U Penn, 1984 (Lord and Others) 

Mills, South Asia Seminar Talk, U Penn, 1984  

Mills, “Ethnography Narratives,” U Penn, 7.23.93 

Box 2, Folder 6 M. Mills, Folklore 313: Epic and Romance, U Penn, 1984, Part 1 

Box 2, Folder 7 M. Mills, Folklore 313: Epic and Romance, U Penn, 1984, Part 2 

Box 2, Folder 8 M. Mills, Poetry and Romance, U Penn1984.