Ohio State nav bar

Working Papers

Knowledge Bank

The OSU Center for Folklore Studies is actively engaged in the production of scholarship. The products of this work are permanently housed in the OSU Knowledge Bank and indexed in the Open Folklore portal. If you have any questions about the materials below, please contact Dr. Dorothy Noyes at noyes.10@osu.edu.

  • Volume 1: the proceedings of our conference "Culture Archives and the State," with papers on the politics of archiving folklore around the world.
  • Volume 2: the Working Papers of the Center for Folklore Studies has just been published in the OSU Knowledge Bank, whence it will be indexed in the OpenFolklore. It consists of a first set of materials from the AFS Teagle Project on Lay and Expert Knowledge in undergrad education, and includes Jay Mechling's provocative essay, "You Can't Teach Folklore."
  • Volume 3 (in process): Additional materials from the AFS Teagle Project on Lay and Expert Knowledge, consisting of sample syllabi, assignments, and further reflections from the project.

Conferences & Discussions

The materials below have been compiled by CFS faculty and their collaborators in order to generate discussions about particular topics or to share materials in preparation for conference presentations.

Saturday, November 8, 10:15-12:15,
Advances in Folklore Scholarship: New Directions in Folk Arts Scholarship
2014 Annual Meeting of the American Folklore Society, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Sponsored by the Women's Section; Debra Lattanzi Shutika (George Mason University), Solimar Otero (Louisiana State University), chairs;

Carolyn Ware (Louisiana State University) discussant.

This forum features two recent books that explore new directions in folk arts scholarship. Authors Elaine Eff (The Painted Screens of Baltimore, 2013) and Carol Silverman (Romani Routes: Cultural Politics and Balkan Music in Diaspora 2014) will present their central arguments and discuss new directions in folk arts scholarship. Discussant Carolyn Ware will synthesize, contextualize, and assess the authors’ collective contributions to the field. Debra Lattanzi Shutika and Solimar Otero will chair an open discussion with an eye toward identifying advances in folklore scholarship.

This forum is the third annual “Advances in Folklore Scholarship,” series, sponsored by the Women’s Section, features recent women authors and to highlight their contributions to folklore scholarship.  This year we will focus on two recent books on the folk arts.  The first book, Carol Silverman’s Romani Routes: Cultural Politics and Balkan Music in Diaspora (2014) explores how the political and economic plight of European Roma and the popularity of their music are objects of international attention and provides a timely and insightful view into Romani communities both in their home countries and in the diaspora.  Now that the political and economic plight of European Roma and the popularity of their music are objects of international attention, Romani Routes provides a timely and insightful view into Romani communities both in their home countries and in the diaspora. Over the past two decades, a steady stream of recordings, videos, feature films, festivals, and concerts has presented the music of Balkan Gypsies, or Roma, to Western audiences, who have greeted them with exceptional enthusiasm. Yet, as author Carol Silverman notes, Roma are revered as musicians and reviled as people.

The second book, Elaine Eff’s The Painted Screens of Baltimore (2013) takes a first look at this beloved iconic artform of one major American city through the words and images of dozens of self-taught artists who trace their creations to the capable and unlikely brush of one Bohemian immigrant, William Oktavec. Painted screens have long been synonymous in the popular imagination with the Baltimore row house. Picturesque, practical, and quirky, window and door screens adorned with scenic views simultaneously offer privacy and ventilation in crowded neighborhoods. As an urban folk art, painted screens flourished in Baltimore, though they did not originate there--precursors date to early eighteenth-century London. They were a fixture on fine homes and businesses in Europe and America throughout the Victorian era. But as the handmade screen yielded to industrial production, the whimsical artifact of the elite classes was suddenly transformed into an item for mass consumption. Historic examples are now a rarity, but in Baltimore the folk art is still very much alive.

Authors Elaine Eff and Carol Silverman will present their central arguments and discuss their works. Discussant Carolyn Ware will synthesize, contextualize, and assess the authors’ collective contributions to the field. Solimar Otero and Debra Lattanzi Shutika will chair an open discussion with an eye toward identifying advances in folklore scholarship.

Readings

  1. Carol Silverman, Chapter 10, " Esma Redzepova: 'Queen of Gypsy Music," from Romani Routes: Cultural Politics and Balkan Music in Diaspora (2014), Oxford University Press, pp. 201 -219.
  2. Elain Eff, " "Introduction" and Chapter 1, "A Baltimore Tradition," from The Painted Screens of Baltimore (2013), University Press of Mississippi, pp. 17 - 33.

Panel: Advances in Folklore Scholarship: Diaspora and Belonging
2013 Annual meeting of the American Folklore Society
Saturday, October 19, 2013
2:00pm-4:00pm

Contact Lisa Gabbert at lisa.gabbert@usu.edu for more information about this pane.

Set up as a conversation about recently published work in a particular area or concerning a particular theme, this forum will feature ten minute presentations by two invited authors, followed by 15-20 minute commentary (syntheses/contextualizations/applications) from two discussants who have records of publication in the area, before opening the floor to the audience. A chapter from each of the featured authors will be made available electronically in advance of the meeting, so that attendees may acquaint themselves with the work under discussion. Initiated as an annual panel last year, this year's Advances in Folklore Scholarship Forum is dedicated to studies of community construction, displacement, and belonging by migrant and repatriated peoples.

The following authors will draw on their recently published books to illuminate the directions, concerns and achievements in this area by folklorists: Debra Lattanzi Shutika, author of Beyond the Borderlands: Migration and Belonging in the United States and Mexico (University of California Press, 2011), and Solimar Otero, author of Afro-Cuban Diasporas in the Atlantic World (University of Rochester Press, 2010). Professors John McDowell and Olga Najera-Ramirez will act as discussants, and Lisa Gabbert and Lisa Gilman will chair the session. Our hope is that in addition to identifying creative synergies and fruitful points of comparison among the featured intellectual projects, our conversation might discern the outlines of new paradigms, identify areas in need of focused research, and take stock of where ideas about community construction, belonging, and displacement are going.

Debra Lattanzi Shutika's Beyond the Borderlands: Migration and Belonging in the United States and Mexico explores issues of belonging and displacement among Mexican migrants living in communities far from the US/Mexico border. Her case study is Kennett Square, a farming village in Pennsylvania and she traces out these issues not only in Pennsylvania, but offers insight into what happens when migrants return to their hometown in Mexico. Beyond the Borderlands was the winner of the 2012 Chicago Folklore Prize. In addition, Dr. Shutika will briefly talk about her forthcoming book.

Solimar Otero's Afro-Cuban Diasporas in the Atlantic World examines how constructions of home and belonging among the Aguda in Nigeria draw strongly on nostalgic rememberings of their Latino heritage as Cuban slaves as a resource for community reinvention. Dr. Otero additionally will discuss briefly her edited volume on Yemoja gender and sexuality, to be published in fall 2013.

Sponsored by the Women's Section, the Chicano and Chicana Section, and the Folklore Latino, Latinoamericano, y Caribeño Section, the Advances in Folklore Scholarship Forum is designed to foreground new work by women and other under-represented groups in order to actively promote equity in the reception of and engagement with recently published scholarship of significance to large sectors of the American Folklore Society.

Readings

Panel: Advances in Folklore Scholarship: Festival
2012 Annual Meeting of the American Folklore Society
Thursday, October 25, 2012
10:15am-12:15pm

Contact Katey Borland at borland.19@osu.edu for more information about this panel.

Set up as a conversation about recently published work in a particular area or concerning a particular theme, this forum will feature ten minute presentations by three invited authors, followed by 15-20 minute commentary (syntheses/contextualizations/applications) from two discussants with a record of publication in the area, before opening the floor to the audience. A chapter from each of the featured authors will be made available electronically in advance of the meeting, so that attendees may acquaint themselves with the work under discussion. In honor of our host city of New Orleans, the inaugural Advances in Folklore Scholarship Forum will be dedicated to three recent studies of festival that attend to the interplay of power, politics, and performance.

Authors Lisa Gabbert, Lisa Gilman and Riki Saltzman will draw on their recently published books to illuminate the directions, concerns and achievements of 21st century festival scholarship by folklorists. Gabbert's Winter Carnival in a Western Town (Utah State Univ. Press, 2011) examines how the planning, organization, and performance of an annual chamber of commerce-sponsored Winter Carnival constitutes an ongoing discourse about local identity, the meaning of community, and communal good within the context of tourism. Gilman's The Dance of Politics: Gender, Performance, and Democratization in Malawi (Temple Univ. Press, 2009) explores intersections between gender, class, and politics in Malawi. The poor women who dance contribute significantly to the political sphere, yet the practice perpetuates a political culture in which poor women are largely restricted to the least powerful positions while the mostly male politicians dominate. Saltzman's A Lark for the Sake of their Country: The 1926 General Strike Volunteers in Folklore and Memory (Manchester Univ.Press, 2012) examines how the upper and middle-class 'volunteers' in Great Britain's 1926 General Strike repurposed their play traditions to transform a potential workers' revolution into a festive public display of Englishness.Decades later, collective memories about the event continue to shape the discourse about British identity.

Dorothy Noyes, author of Fire in the Plaça: Catalan Festival Politics After Franco (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) and Patricia Sawin, author of "Transparent Masks: The Ideology and Practice of Disguise in Contemporary Cajun Mardi Gras" JAF 114.452, 2001) will act as discussants, and Katherine Borland, author of Unmasking Class, Gender and Sexuality in Nicaraguan Festival (Univ. of Arizona Press, 2006) will chair the session. In addition to identifying creative synergies and fruitful points of comparison among the featured projects, our conversation might discern the outlines of new paradigms, identify areas in need of focused research, and take stock of where festival scholarship is going.

Sponsored by the Women's and Public Programs Sections, the Advances in Folklore Scholarship Forum is designed to foreground new work by women and under-represented groups in order to actively promote equity in the reception of and engagement with recently published scholarship of significance to large sectors of the American Folklore Society.

Readings for Discussion

Readings for Context