Current Folklore Course Offerings | Center for Folklore Studies

**Updated 3/27/2025. Listings are subject to change. All courses are 3 credit hours unless otherwise noted. Students, confirm meeting arrangements in BuckeyeLink when enrolling**

AUTUMN 2025 COURSES

GRADUATE LEVEL

Performance has a heightened mode of communication characteristic of vernacular cultural process, studies in the context of ongoing social interaction.

Prereq: Grad standing, or permission of instructor. Not open to students with credit for 792 or English 870. Cross-listed in English.

Performance has a heightened mode of communication characteristic of vernacular cultural process, studies in the context of ongoing social interaction. Folklore GIS course.

Prereq: Grad standing, or permission of instructor. Not open to students with credit for 7350.22, 870, or CompStd 7350.02 (892) Cross-listed in CompStd.

GRADUATE/UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL

Ethnographic texts can focus on everyday life experiences, or on political, social, economic structures/practices. Ethnographic texts can also vary, from a written text that mixes creative and “scientific” writing, to photography, film, and music. Engaging with canonical and contemporary texts on ethnographic research and writing, students will learn about how the Latinx community has been imagined and created through ethnographic texts. We will discuss the challenges and limitations of ethnographic writing, and what happens when Latinx scholars start writing their own ethnographies/stories. This class can be of interest to students interested in writing, anthropology, sociology, history, folklore, and Ethnic Studies, among other fields - no prerequisites required!

UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL

Students will understand how culture and social organization help us define the living, the dead and the undead in the contemporary and archaeological record, and how we create social categories that organize our world and our place.

Personalities and attributes of the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, their mythology and its influence on Western culture. GE lit and diversity global studies course. GE foundation lit, vis and performing arts course.

A general study of the field of folklore including basic approaches and a survey of primary folk materials: folktales, legends, folksongs, ballads, and folk beliefs. Prereq: Honors standing, and English 1110 or equiv. Not open to students with credit for 2350, English 2270, or 2270H. GE cultures and ideas course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies and race, ethnicity and gender div course. Cross-listed in English 2270.

Examines contemporary folklore around the world; introduces students to key concepts tin folklore scholarship; focuses on transmission and transformation of cultural knowledge and practice, particularly in situations of conflict or upheaval. Prereq: Jr. standing, or permission of instructor. GE diversity global studies and cross-disciplinary seminar course. GE theme migration, mobility, and immobility course.

A general study of the folklore including basic approaches and a survey of primary folk materials: folktales, legends, folksongs, ballads, and folk beliefs.

Prereq: GE foundation writing and info literacy course. Not open to students with credit for 2270H, CompStd 2350, or 2350H. GE cultures and ideas course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies and race, ethnicity and gender div course. Cross-listed in CompStd 2350.

A general study of the field of folklore including basic approaches and a survey of primary folk materials: folktales, legends, folksongs, ballads, and folk beliefs. Prereq: Honors standing, and English 1110 or equiv. Not open to students with credit for 2270, CompStd 2350, or 2350H. GE cultures and ideas course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies and race, ethnicity and gender div course. Cross-listed in CompStd 2350H.

Given that the Latinx community in the U.S. is culturally, racially, ethnically, linguistically, economically, and politically diverse, this course offers students the opportunity to explore one or more aspects of the Latinx experience in the U.S. in the contemporary world, and to analyze different cultural practices using the intersectional study of race, ethnicity and gender as its cornerstones. GE foundation race, ethnicity and gender div course. GE Foundation: Race, Ethnicity & Gender Diversity.

An introductory comparative survey of the mythology of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Prereq: English 1110, or GE foundation writing and info literacy course. GE cultures and ideas and diversity global studies course. GE theme lived environments course.

An intersectional study of race, ethnicity, and gender diversity, this course focuses on the histories, cultures, and politics of often neglected Indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Arctic, and to puts them in a comparative perspective with North America and the global context. GE foundation race, ethnicity and gender div course.

Changing approaches to evil as embodied in vampires in East European folk belief & European & American pop culture; function of vampire and monster tales in cultural context, including peasant world and West from Enlightenment to now. Taught in English.

Prereq: Not open to students with credit for 2230 or 2230.99. GE cultures and ideas and diversity global studies course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies course.

Prereq: Not open to students with credit for 2230 or 2230.99. GE cultures and ideas and diversity global studies course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies course.

Prereq: Not open to students with credit for 2230 or 2230.01. GE cultures and ideas and diversity global studies course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies course.

**Updated 2/14/2025. Listings are subject to change. All courses are 3 credit hours unless otherwise noted. Students, confirm meeting arrangements in BuckeyeLink when enrolling**

SUMMER 2025 COURSES

UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL

This course explores the intersecting political, artistic, and intellectual currents and practices that have shaped contemporary Arab cultures. It is organized as a survey of different cultural phenomena in Arab societies and diasporas including: the Arabic language and its varieties, music, poetry, law, television & cinema, and more.

GE culture and ideas and diversity global studies course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies and race, ethnicity and gender div course.

Personalities and attributes of the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, their mythology and its influence on Western culture.

GE lit and diversity global studies course. GE foundation lit, vis and performing arts course.

An introductory comparative survey of the mythology of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Prereq: English 1110, or GE foundation writing and info literacy course. GE cultures and ideas and diversity global studies course. GE theme lived environments course.

Changing approaches to evil as embodied in vampires in East European folk belief & European & American pop culture; function of vampire & monster tales in cultural context, including peasant world & West from Enlightenment to now. Taught in English.

Prereq: Not open to students with credit for 2230 or 2230.99. GE cultures and ideas and diversity global studies course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies course.

SPRING 2025 COURSES

GRADUATE LEVEL

Full Title: Conversation and Discourse Analysis

While many researchers look at discourse in terms of what people say (the content), linguistically-based discourse analysis attends to the structure of discourse -- how people say what they say, how the components of language are put together, what patterns emerge, and what effects those patterns have on the way that we understand and evaluate what's being said. This class considers discourse from both a structural linguistics perspective – as language above the sentence level – and a critical discourse analysis perspective – as language that shapes perspectives and ideology. Drawing from subfields including interactional sociolinguistics, pragmatics, conversation analysis, ethnography of communication, and critical discourse analysis, we will explore the dialogic relationship between discourse and social context.

The approach that we will take is a micro-level one, focusing on how the details of linguistic structure convey social and political meaning. You’ll gain facility with the major schools of discourse analysis, their history, major scholars and their relation to each other, and the relation of linguistically-based discourse analysis to other fields including (but not limited to!) folklore, geography, anthropology, digital media, and medicine. You’ll learn how to collect discourse data and transcribe it to comprehensively represent features of spoken language in written form, and to identify and analyze linguistic, paralinguistic, and interactional patterns in various genres of speech and writing.

The course is suitable both for linguistics students and students with no linguistic training who are seeking tools for analyzing discourse as part of a larger project in other fields of study.

GRADUATE/UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL

Office hours, Smith, 4022: Mondays and Wednesdays 11:30-1:00 and by appointment.

Through lectures, discussions, and hands-on experiments you will learn the tools that anthropologists use in the conduct of ethnographic field research.

Full Title: The Dire Sisterhood – Women of Norse Myth and Legend

Goddesses. Prophetesses. Wronged lovers. Patrons of war. Meet the ladies of Norse mythology and heroic legend in the medieval Icelandic poetry and prose that tells their tales. Students will read lays from the 13^th-century Poetic Edda to learn about the distaff side of the Old Norse mytho-legendary tradition, focusing on the poems that let queens, valkyries, ogresses, and other women speak for themselves. Students will also engage with peer-reviewed scholarship and develop their own research paper topics.

All readings in English.

Prereq: 6 credit hours in MedRen at the 2000 level or above

Examination of 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. Not open to students with credit for 648 or CompStd 5668 (648).

UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL

Personalities and attributes of the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, their mythology and its influence on Western culture.

Prereq: Honors standing, or permission of department or instructor. Not open to students with credit for 2220. GE lit and diversity global studies course. GE foundation lit, vis and performing arts course.

Personalities and attributes of the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, their mythology and its influence on Western culture.

An introduction to the theory and practice of magic in the ancient Mediterranean, how people viewed it, and how it survived in later epochs. GE cultures and ideas and diversity global studies course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies course.

Folklore is the culture that people make for themselves. Not all of us are specialists, but all of us tell stories and cultivate communities. This class explores everyday expressive forms including stories, customs, objects and digital forms shared in informal contexts. Recurring central issues will include the dynamics of tradition, the nature of creativity and artistic expression, and the construction of group identities. We will consider various interpretive approaches to these examples of folklore and folklife and will investigate the history of folklore studies through readings and an independent collecting project in which students will gather folklore from the field, document it and interpret it for meaning. Under-read and represented texts in the field of folklore were intentionally chosen as readings for this course. By the end of this course, students should gain a basic orientation towards thinking through the power and significance behind the everyday creative expressions of their communities.

Guiding questions: How do people express themselves in traditional forms? How are social concerns articulated in stories, jokes, memes and other genres? How does human creativity burble up in everyday life?

The creation of the syllabus for this iteration of COMPSTD 2350 comes in part from the combination of the recent push to represent underrepresented authors, subjects, and fields of study and the groundwork laid by the American Folklore Society for an accessible revitalization of introduction to American folklore courses. The instructor is grateful for the work already done to bring the less heard voices to the front of the stage when it comes to representing the discipline of folklore to new students.

Prereq: English 1110 (110) or equiv. Not open to students with credit for English 2270 (270), or 2350H.

This Honors version of COMPSTD 2350 provides a general study of the field of folklore including basic approaches and a survey of primary folk materials: folktales, legends, folksongs, ballads, and folk beliefs.

Prereq: Honors standing, and English 1110 (110) or equiv. Not open to students with credit for 2350, English 2270 (270), or 2270H. GE cultures and ideas course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies course.

Prereq: English 1110 (110) or equiv. Not open to students with credit for English 2270 (270), or 2350H.

Introduction to Latinx Literature and Culture

Topic: Latinx Folklore

Latinx communities in the United States are as culturally rich and diverse as their countries of origin. The United States provides a platform for the proliferation, transformation, and adaptation of migrant groups’ cultural practices. Therefore, the study of Latinx folklore in the United States offers an important opportunity to analyze how communities are maintained even when they are in constant fluctuation, and how cultural expressions play a central part in the continuity and transformation of community.

Using a wide array of resources, in this course we will study of a wide array of cultural manifestations—oral traditions, music, festivals, dance, material culture, healing and spirituality— practiced by the US Latinx community, while also paying attention to wider debates concerning migration, gender, nationalism, and identity. The course will begin with an overview of the study of Folklore and of Latinx Studies. The remainder of the course will be divided into five main areas of inquiry: Oral Narratives, Music and Performance, Material Culture, Rituals and Festivals, and World View and Spirituality. We will also pay attention to five main themes—migration, gender, nationalism, and identity and the interrelation between them—and how different cultural practices and traditional expressive forms help express, negotiate, transform, and maintain Latinx communities in the United States.

Prereq: English 1110 (110), or equiv. Not open to students with 10 qtr cr hrs in 544 or 588 or 6 sem cr hrs in English 4588. Repeatable to a maximum of 6 cr hrs.

An introductory comparative survey of the mythology of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Prereq: English 1110, or GE foundation writing and info literacy course. GE cultures and ideas and diversity global studies course. GE theme lived environments course.

This course will explore how the end of the world-generally understood to be preceded by enormous wars and disasters as well as the judgment of people and a reckoning of their deeds-was imagined over two millennia by Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The course will cover primary and secondary historical works, as well as fictional bestsellers, about the apocalypse from around the world.

Prereq or concur: English 1110.xx, or completion of GE Foundation Writing and Information Literacy Course, or permission of instructor. Not open to students with credit for History 2680. GE historical study and diversity global studies course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies and lit, vis and performing arts course. Cross-listed in History.

Prereq: Not open to students with credit for 2230 or 2230.99. GE cultures and ideas and diversity global studies course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies course.

By its very existence the Urban Forest challenges the nature/culture binary that locates nature outside of our everyday life, outside of industrial sacrifice zones, outside of modernity. Instead of thinking of nature as something over there or back then, we will encounter nature in the urban environment and examine how it works to stabilize our city, materially, psychically, healthfully, equitably, aesthetically, and in other important ways. In this course, we will make work (theatre, movement, performance pieces) that contribute to the environmental justice campaigns underway in Columbus. Working with community partners, we will imagine, design, rehearse and perform the critical importance of the urban forest.

OBJECTIVES

Introduce students to theatrical devising technique for creating work that moves and potentially involves an audience in performance
Use our bodies, voices and imaginations to address critical issues affecting our community
Engage in deep reflection about what we know (and don't know) about our natural environment
Work with community partners in a way that centers their needs
Discover and articulate how the arts impact everyday life
Have fun, build community across and beyond campus.

** A note about our schedule. Total hours expected outside class per University guidelines for a 3 credit class is 6 hrs. Since our in-class hours are greater than a regularly scheduled class, we will reduce expectations for independent work to 3 hours.

AUTUMN 2024 COURSES

GRADUATE LEVEL

In this course, and moving among, besides, and beyond the Western Folklore Studies canon, we will explore the history of how "the folk" (as an object of study) was imagined and theorized. The first part of the semester will provide a historical overview of how the field of folklore constructed "the folk," while the second part will provide current theorizations grounded in Critical Race and Ethnic studies, Queer studies, Disability Studies, and Decolonization approaches.

Prereq: Grad standing, or permission of instructor. Not open to students with credit for 792 or English 870. Cross-listed in English.

This course offers a multi-disciplinary introduction to Disability Studies (DS) as a field and theoretical frame. We will examine its emergence from the disability rights movement, focusing particularly on ways that DS's history intersects with movements in civil rights and human rights. Although the course covers a wide range of disciplinary perspectives on disability, our primary focus will be ethnographic, anthropological, and folkloristic approaches. We will review the primary theories of disability studies, especially as they intersect with gender, religion, race, and culture.

Prereq: Not open to students with credit for ArtsSci 6700 (700).

Prereq: Grad standing, or permission of instructor. Not open to students with credit for 870 or CompStd 7350.03 (792). Cross-listed in CompStd.

GRADUATE/UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL

This course considers circulations of material culture through everyday patterns of use in craft and waste. From the expansive commodity chains flowing through global processes to the minutia of artisanal labor and the seemingly mundane practices of creating garbage, students in this course will gain novel theoretical frames, practical tools, and diverse methodologies. The course will teach students how to analyze the world of material culture by following circulations of things through diverse scales, agencies, and ways of being.

Prereq: 2350, 2350H, English 2270 (270), or 2270H. Not open to students with maximum qtr cr hrs for 677.03 and 677.04. Repeatable to a maximum of 6 cr hrs.

UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL

Study of relationships among politics, society, and literature; analysis of social and political elements of literature and film from diverse cultures and historical periods.

Prereq: Honors standing, and English 1110 (110) or equiv. Not open to students with credit for 2101 (201, 201H). GE lit and diversity global studies. GE foundation lit, vis and performing arts course.

A general study of the field of folklore including basic approaches and a survey of primary folk materials: folktales, legends, folksongs, ballads, and folk beliefs.

Prereq: English 1110 or equiv. Not open to students with credit for 2350H, English 2270, or 2270H. GE cultures and ideas course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies and race, ethnicity and gender div course. Cross-listed with ENGLISH 2270.

A general study of the field of folklore including basic approaches and a survey of primary folk materials: folktales, legends, folksongs, ballads, and folk beliefs.

A general study of the field of folklore including basic approaches and a survey of primary folk materials: folktales, legends, folksongs, ballads, and folk beliefs.

Prereq: Honors standing, and English 1110 or equiv. Not open to students with credit for 2350, English 2270, or 2270H. GE cultures and ideas course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies and race, ethnicity and gender div course. Cross-listed with ENGLISH 2270H.

Introduction to interdisciplinary field of cultural studies; emphasis on relation of cultural production to power, knowledge, and authority, globally and locally.

Prereq: English 1110 (110) or equiv. Not open to students with credit for 274. GE cultures and ideas course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies course.

Introduces comparative studies majors to theoretical tools, methods of investigation, and key concepts in comparative studies research and scholarship.

Prereq: English 1110 (110) or equiv. CompStd major, or permission of instructor. Not open to students with credit for 398.

This course provides an exploration of the dynamics of folklore in a global environment. We will interrogate how culture becomes rooted in place (immobility), how it circulates (mobility) and how it moves from one group to another, one context to another (migration), producing a variety of consequences. How do people from all walks of life create meaning and beauty in their everyday lives? How do communities and groups maintain a collective sense of themselves that distinguishes them from other communities/groups, particularly in a period of rapid globalization? What does it mean to respect and conserve cultural diversity? And what do patterns of cultural circulation tell us about relations between individuals and groups, institutions and groups, as well as among nations. Students will begin by learning key concepts of folklore scholarship: culture, place, tradition, performance, genre, the local/global distinction, the folk/popular divide, the interplay of the customary and innovative in folklore production. Students will develop an expansive definition of folklore as the means by which groups both distinguish themselves from as well as fashion bridges with diverse communities. We will look at the ways folklore moves through a range of concepts spanning everything from sacred ritual to touristic display. We will focus on the transmission and transformation of cultural knowledge and practice in situations of want and plenty, peace and conflict, mobility and rootedness attending to the relations of power operating in and through traditional culture.

Prereq: Jr standing, or permission of the instructor. GE diversity global studies and cross-disciplinary seminar course. GE theme migration, mobility, and immobility course.

A general study of the field of folklore including basic approaches and a survey of primary folk materials: folktales, legends, folksongs, ballads, and folk beliefs.

Prereq: 1110.01 or equiv. Not open to students with credit for 2270H, CompStd 2350, or 2350H. GE cultures and ideas course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies and race, ethnicity and gender div course. Cross-listed with COMPSTD 2350.

A general study of the field of folklore including basic approaches and a survey of primary folk materials: folktales, legends, folksongs, ballads, and folk beliefs.

A general study of the field of folklore including basic approaches and a survey of primary folk materials: folktales, legends, folksongs, ballads, and folk beliefs.

Prereq: Honors standing, and English 1110 or equiv. Not open to students with credit for 2270, CompStd 2350, or 2350H. GE cultures and ideas course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies and race, ethnicity and gender div course. Cross-listed with COMPSTD 2350H.

A general survey of socio-cultural trends and issues in modern Greece through close examination of ethnographies and other folk expressions.

Prereq: Not open to students with credit for 268. GE VPA and diversity global studies course. GE foundation lit, vis and performing arts course.

The myths of the Old Norse gods and the worldview and beliefs of pagan Scandinavia.

Prereq: Not open to students with credit for Scandnav 222. GE lit and diversity global studies course.