Current Folklore Course Offerings

**Updated 10/31/2023. Listings are subject to change. All courses are 3 credit hours unless otherwise noted. Students, confirm meeting arrangements in BuckeyeLink when enrolling**

SPRING 2024 COURSES

GRADUATE LEVEL

In this course we’ll look at different methodologies for the study of myth, starting with older theories such as the ‘myth and ritual’ approach in order to develop a feeling for the roots of myth studies, and move by the middle of the semester to methods in use today (narratological, a reboot of the myth and ritual approach, new versions of structuralism, etc.). Although the primary materials for examination will be Greek myths, comparativism underlies all my own work and I warmly welcome students whose focus is on the myths or sacred stories of other cultures. Contact me (johnston.2@osu.edu) for more info!

Prereq: Not open to students with credit for Classics 870. Repeatable to a maximum of 9 cr hrs

This course is a graduate-level introduction to ethnography that is rooted in the perspectives and practices of folklore, sociolinguistics, and linguistic anthropology. Students will conduct semester-long mini-ethnographies on a topic of their choosing. You will develop skills in approaching members of a community, observing social interaction while participating in it, developing research questions, conducting interviews, and, ultimately, analyzing the discourse you’ve observed, participated in, and recorded using the tools of ethnography of communication. We’ll talk about concrete and conceptual issues critical to conducting ethnography, including research ethics, collaboration and working relationships with community members, navigating tense situations, writing and using fieldnotes, and thinking through ethnographer positionality. In the second half of the class, we’ll read foundational and contemporary ethnographies of communication, considering such issues as the politics of representation, the interplay of language and context in meaning making, speech genres and styles, and language ideologies. Your mini-ethnography will culminate in the preparation of a conference paper.

How does this class differ from the Ohio Field School?

The Center for Folklore Studies’ field school is a graduate/undergraduate class and practicum in which students conduct a collaborative ethnography project, working with grassroots community organizations to explore how Appalachian Ohioans are responding to economic, environmental and cultural change through their everyday practices and expressive culture. Sustainability and archiving are central objects of inquiry, with more specific research questions developed collaboratively among students and community members each semester. There is also often a strong focus on material culture and environment, and each semester’s project culminates in a public exhibit.

Prereq: Grad standing, or permission of instructor. Not open to students with credit for 770.02, 770.03, English 6751.02, 6751.22, 770.02, or 770.03. Cross-listed with ENGLISH 6751.02.

The Comparative Studies Interdisciplinary Learning Laboratories are two-part year-long courses that seek to give participants opportunities to engage in sustained interdisciplinary research, to workshop their research projects in conversation with one another, and to share their projects with broader publics. Taken in conjunction with CompStd 8100.

Prereq or concur: 8100. Repeatable to a maximum of 18 cr hrs.

This interdisciplinary graduate seminar begins with the proposition that all politics are a politics of the body. We will therefore set out to examine how (human) bodies are framed and deployed for political functions, how they circulate or are constrained, and how people choose to put their bodies on the line as testimony of their political
investments. We will draw from multiple fields of inquiry, including performance studies, critical cultural theory, political philosophy, as well as theater and dance performance. We will further consider how political and performing bodies negotiate identities, display themselves or are displayed for others, protest social inequality, and experience pain--even death. We will bring a choreographic lens to bear on each of these topics, along with a set of of analytical tools attuned to the perils of having one's body on the line.

Prereq: Grad standing or permission of instructor. Not open to students with credit for 760.03, 860.01. VSP Admis Cond course.

Methods for generating and interpreting field data; contested history and ethical challenges of fieldwork in human geography.

How do we generate evidence to address our research questions? What are the advantages and pitfalls of specific approaches? This course is designed to explore these and other questions relating to how we create and interpret data in/from the "field" - that complex social, environmental and political space in which we learn firsthand about the world. Students will critique and practice a 'mixed methods' approach, including ethnographic strategies, visual techniques, surveys, archival research, landscape interpretation and more. We will discuss overarching themes such as reflexivity, representation, power, ethics and activist research.

Graduate students in any field who are planning to conduct primary research on human/social/natural phenomena are welcome.

Prereq: Not open to students with credit for 800.01 or 870.01. Credit Hours 3.0

GRADUATE/UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL

Students learn to study anthropological problems through hands on experience with ethnographic methods, critical discussion of issues in ethnographic research and design of an ethnographic study.

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

Readings:

Jeffrey Cohen, Eating Soup without a Spoon: Anthropological Theory and Method in the Real World, University of Texas Press, 2015.
Kimberley Kirner & Jan Mills, Introduction to Ethnographic Research: A Guide for Anthropology. Sage, 2020.
Kiner and Mills, Doing Ethnographic Research: Activities and Exercises. Sage, 2020.
Andrea Ballestero and Brit Ross Winthereik, Experimenting with Ethnography: A Companion to Analysis, Duke University Press. This book is available as a pdf on our carmen site. You can also find copies online to download.
H. Russel Bernard, Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches, Sixth Edition (all editions are exceptional). This book is only required for graduate students.
Additional materials are available as pdfs on our class carmen site.

Prereq: 2202 (202), or permission of instructor. Not open to students with credit for 650

CH 5400 covers topics in the rich and exciting panorama of oral and oral-connected performance traditions of CHINA and a bit of SOMEWHAT BEYOND (Mongolia, Myanmar, NE India). The focus is on a mix of local traditions that, at the instructor’s discretion, may include professional storytelling, epic singing, folksongs, ritual, folk dance, puppet shows, and local drama of local cultures and ethnic groups from China, and a few traditions from the borderlands. Content will be explored from an interdisciplinary/intersectional perspective that will be based in folkloristics theory (the primary orientation), and include ideas from performance studies, material culture studies, ethnopoetics, trans-indigenous studies, eco-criticism, etc. The implications of Intangible Cultural Heritage projects and ethnic tourism will be addressed, as well as translation studies. Taking a multi-ethnic/multi-cultural 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 (and sometimes without) the modern borders of China. The course is not a comprehensive coverage of the hundreds of local traditions, but it will alert students to the variety and nature of this vast corpus, of which much remains to be explored and documented.

Prereq: 2231, 2232, 2451, 2452, EALL 1231, Japanse 2231, 2451, 2452, Korean 2231, 2451, or permission of instructor. Not open to students with credit for 600.

The Ohio Field School course offers an introduction to collaborative ethnographic field methods (participant-observation, field notes, photographic documentation, audio interviews), archiving, and the public exhibition of research for both undergraduates and graduate students. Students will contribute to a team-based, immersive, field research project designed to document the ways that diverse communities express and pre-serve a sense of place in the face of economic, environmental, and cultural change in Southeastern Ohio. Throughout the semester, students will practice skills necessary to construct a permanent record of local expressive culture accessible to future researchers and community members. Attendance at an information session and application is required for registration. For more information, visit https://cfs.osu.edu/archives/collections/ohio-field-school

Prereq: Permission of instructor. Repeatable to a maximum of 12 cr hrs.

What does it mean when you're told to "use your common sense"? This course examines the idiom of common sense in relation to debates over the authority of knowledge, the value of practical experience, and what should be shared or shareable in social life. Our interdisciplinary exploration will start with folklore: how children (and artists) play at the border of sense and nonsense, how proverbs and other kinds of pedagogic discourse produce everyday "good sense," and how leftover formulations continue to circulate as clichés or "commonplaces," often with disruptive social consequences. Then we'll look at debates on the relation of the senses to knowledge and the communicability of experience across sociocultural divides, thinking about consensus and dissensus as socially accomplished. We'll read about the history of common sense as a democratic, sometimes populist, political ideal that interacts with the rise of secular modernity, professionalization and expertise, race ideology, American nationalism, and technocratic politics. This will bring us to the present: division and mistrust in the age of social media, "fake news," and AI; questions about the possibility of shared understandings when social worlds fragment, interests diverge, and structures discriminate; and new imaginings of commonality (or separation) in social justice projects.

This is a graduate/undergraduate course that benefits from heterogeneity: students at all stages and with any focus are encouraged! You'll write a personal essay about your own socialization and a final paper on the "common sense" of some current issue. No exams, but active participation is expected in discussion and short writings.

Prereq: Not open to students with maximum qtr cr hrs for 651. Repeatable to a maximum of 12 cr hrs.

This class offers an introduction to the Old Irish language, a key Indo-European language that was spoken in Ireland from c. 600 – 900 CE and is the ancestor of Modern Irish and Scots Gaelic. It is also a vehicle for exploring a rich and interesting folklore tradition.

This course is a blend of a language class and a linguistics-of-that-language class, with the target language being Old Irish. We plan to spend time each week explaining the grammar and vocabulary of the language, based on the reading of authentic texts, and also presenting selected topics in the linguistic development of Old Irish.

This class is open to all interested parties, undergraduates as well as graduate students. No prior knowledge of Irish or of linguistics is needed, as long as students keep an open mind and are willing to work on this fascinating language.

Questions? Contact Prof. Collins at collins.232@osu.edu and/or Prof. Joseph at joseph.1@osu.edu.

Prereq: Grad standing, or permission of instructor. Repeatable to a maximum of 6 cr hrs.

UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL

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?

Though this is a hybrid class, it requires a high degree of participation and engagement with your classmates as well as reading. You will be reading as much as 50 pages of text per week, and additionally will be asked to engage in digital exhibits and media. This course works a little differently than others you may have encountered, as we will hold one synchronous class via CarmenZoom and one class in-person each week. For your efforts, you will develop insights with your peers and with me as you practice your analytical and communication skills to gain higher levels of awareness and aptitude that will serve you throughout your life.

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.

This section of 2367.05 is designed to employ the core concepts and methods of the field of folklore as the basis for reading assignments and writing projects. Because the theme of this course is the U.S. Folk Experience, we will begin with a brief introduction to basic concepts of American folklore and ethnography, including folk groups, tradition, and fieldwork methodology, focusing on how these concepts and methodologies contribute to the development of critical reading, writing, and thinking skills. Along the way, we will explore the diversity of experiences of different groups in the U.S. both through course readings and through your writing assignments and projects.

Prereq: 1110. GE writing and comm: level 2 and diversity soc div in the US course. GE theme lived environments course.

Rumors and spooky stories, superstitions and conspiracy theories, fake news and folk belief, UFOs and elves: folklorists study all these things and more as legendry, the genre in which societies work through their most pressing fears, beliefs, and doubts. Take this course for a deep dive into how legend crystalizes cultural anxieties and how people use legend in ongoing debates about the nature of our world.

Potential Texts: Lynne McNeill, Folklore Rules: A Fun, Quick, and Useful Introduction to the Field of Academic Folklore Studies; Reidar Christiansen, ed., Folktales of Norway.

Potential Assignments: Collection project, short writings

Questions: What happens at the edge of narrative credibility?

Prereq: 10 qtr cr hrs or 6 cr hrs of English at 2000-3000 level, or permission of instructor. 5 qtr cr hrs in 367 or 3 cr hrs in 2367 in any subject is acceptable towards the 6 cr hrs. Not open to students with 10 qtr cr hrs for 577.02. Repeatable to a maximum of 6 cr hrs.

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.

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.

Autumn 2023 Courses

GRAD COURSES

ENGLISH 6751.01/.11: Intro to Graduate Study in Folklore: The Philology of the Vernacular
Merrill Kaplan
Thursday 12:40 - 3:40 PM

How do we interpret traditional forms and the cultural practices that create them? How can we read informal cultural expression as text within the context of its performance? How can we get our hands around the multiple existence and variation of this slippery object of study?

This course provides a lightning introduction to folklore and the intellectual wellsprings of folkloristics. It then moves on through several genres of traditional expression such as festival, work song, legend, memes, verbal dueling, and costume with an eye towards developing the tools necessary for their interpretation.

COMPSTD 8100 / Interdisciplinary Learning Laboratory: Folklore and Archives
Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth and Katey Borland
Monday 9:15-12:00 PM

The Comparative Studies Interdisciplinary Learning Laboratories are two-part courses that seek to give participants opportunities to engage in sustained interdisciplinary research, to workshop their research projects in conversation with one another, and to share their projects with broader publics. Expect to enroll in CompStd 8200 subsequent to this course. Repeatable to a maximum of 18 cr hrs.

UNDERGRAD COURSES

COMPSTD 2350 - Introduction to Folklore
Daisy Ahlstone
Monday / Wednesday 3:55 - 5:15 PM

COMPSTDU 2350H (2270H) - Introduction to Folklore
Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth
Wednesday/ Friday 9:35 - 10:55 AM
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.

COMPSTDU 2322 - Introduction to Latinx Studies
Mintzi Martinez Rivera
Tuesday/ Thursday 9:35-10:55 AM
The history, politics, and cultural production of Latinx communities in the U.S. and its borderlands. Prereq: Completion of GE Foundation Writing and Information Literacy course, or permission of instructor. Not open to students with credit for Spanish 2242. GE cultures and ideas and diversity soc div in the US course. GE foundation historical and cultural studies and race, ethnicity and gender div course. Cross-listed in Spanish 2242.

COMPSTD 4597.03 - 10 Global Folklore
Katherine Borland
Wednesday / Friday 11:10 - 12:30 PM
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.

NELC 3667 Messages from the Beyond
Tuesday / Thursday 2:20 - 3:40 PM
Messages from the Beyond (NELC/RELSTDS 3667) is a new cross-listed course between NELC and Religious Studies that fulfills the undergraduate Lived Environments GE Theme. It is a course in human behavior in which students will explore how people from antiquity to our time have sought to find meaning in the complexity and uncertainty around their physical and social environment to access meaning in what they perceived to be hidden realms. A majority of the world’s people believe in a reality beyond our observable mundane existence. The effects of this worldview are all around us, from preachers and prophets who claim to speak the word of God to daily horoscopes in newspapers and the Internet. Messages from the Beyond is a course in human behavior.

NELC 5568/CompStd 5668 Seminar Studies in Orality and Literacy
Michael Swartz
Wednesday 3:55 - 6:30 PM
Studies in Orality and Literacy (NELC 5568/CompStd 5668) is a seminar that explores the nature of oral traditions, what it means for a culture to have a primarily oral literature, and the complex relationships between orality and literacy. This course can be taken by undergraduates, and it also fulfills a requirement for MA and PhD students. Before people wrote texts, they told stories, said prayers, learned lore from their parents and teachers, and carried out their culture and religion—all without writing. But even with the invention of writing and the production of books, the oral dimension of language has been predominant in most societies. What does it mean for a culture to rely on oral transmission? How does a civilization change when writing becomes part of the culture? What is the meaning of authorship? In this seminar, we will explore the nature of oral traditions, what it means for a culture to have a primarily oral literature, and the complex relationships between orality and literacy. We will look at theories of orality and literacy from the disciplines of folklore, anthropology, the history of religion, and comparative literature.

SPA/MUS 2208.22/7780.22 Andean Music Ensemble (1 cr. course. No language or music experience necessary)
Michelle Wibbelsman
Monday 5:30 - 7:35 PM
This course is specifically designed to use performance as pedagogy—in this case, music making as an entry point into learning about language and culture. Students learn how to play and perform music from Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile and Argentina; sing in Spanish, Quechua and Aymara; explore Andean musical and performance aesthetics; and learn about the cultural background and social significance of the songs.We will explore various genres including the Peruvian huayno, the Ecuadorian sanjuanito, Bolivian sikuriadas (panpipes ensemble tunes) and tarkeadas (wooden flute ensemble tunes), and a variety of other Andean genres. We will all have a chance to experience instruments including zampoñas or sikuris (Andean panpipes), tarkas (Bolivian festival flutes), quenas/kenas (notched mouthpiece flutes), charangos (Andean syncretic string instruments), guitars, bombo (Andean bass drum), and chakchas (Goat hooves rattles).

No auditions and no requirements for prior musical experience or language proficiency. Our repertoire changes each semester. You can repeat enrollment in this 1 cr/hr. course up to a maximum of 10 credit hours. This course counts toward the ensemble requirement within certain degree programs in the School of Music, toward the interdisciplinary Minor in Andean and Amazonian Studies, the Quechua FLAS Fellowship course requirement, and as pre-major GE level courses in support of the major program for the LatinX major concentration. *Please be sure to sign up for 1 credit hour. Learn more about the Andean Music Ensemble at OSU, see videos and listen to our recordings on the SPPO website [http://This course is specifically designed to use performance as pedagogy—in this case, music making as an entry point into learning about language and culture. Students learn how to play and perform music from Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile and Argentina; sing in Spanish, Quechua and Aymara; explore Andean musical and performance aesthetics; and learn about the cultural background and social significance of the songs.We will explore various genres including the Peruvian huayno, the Ecuadorian sanjuanito, Bolivian sikuriadas (panpipes ensemble tunes) and tarkeadas (wooden flute ensemble tunes), and a variety of other Andean genres. We will all have a chance to experience instruments including zampoñas or sikuris (Andean panpipes), tarkas (Bolivian festival flutes), quenas/kenas (notched mouthpiece flutes), charangos (Andean syncretic string instruments), guitars, bombo (Andean bass drum), and chakchas (Goat hooves rattles).No auditions and no requirements for prior musical experience or language proficiency. Our repertoire changes each semester. You can repeat enrollment in this course up to a maximum of 10 credit hours. This course counts toward the ensemble requirement within certain degree programs in the School of Music, toward the interdisciplinary Minor in Andean and Amazonian Studies, the Quechua FLAS Fellowship course requirement, and as pre-major GE level courses in support of the major program for the LatinX major concentration. *Please be sure to sign up for 1 credit hour.Learn more about the Andean Music Ensemble at OSU, see videos and listen to our recordings on the SPPO website https://sppo.osu.edu/undergraduate/andean-music-ensemble.]https://sppo.osu.edu/undergraduate/andean-music-ensemble.

SPA 4515 Andean Art, Culture and Society (taught in English)
Michelle Wibblesman
Tuesday / Thursday 2:20 - 3:40 PM
This course on Andean and Amazonian art, culture and society will give you an informed perspective on the variety and diversity of artistic traditions in the Andes and Amazonian from Pre-Columbian times to Contemporary era. We will explore the role art plays in the historical and contemporary formation of the Latin American societies; how art contributes critical social commentary about cultural, social, economic and political reality at the local, regional, national and transnational levels; and how artists, artisans and artistic movements have influenced their respective societies in important ways. We will begin with broad questions about art; art categories and how they speak to power; issues of appropriation, collection, representation and revalorization of artistic traditions. After that the course will progress along a historical timeline, beginning with a study and appreciation of Pre-Columbian art; Conquest, contact and colonial context; the power of artistic images in the period of nation-building; resurgence of indigenous art; contemporary Andean and Amazonian societies and artists.

We will touch on tri-ethnic artistic heritage; artistic expression, aesthetics and identity; art and culture; symbolism; artistic syncretism; the politics of representation including aspects of museum studies and curatorial practices; art as political and social force; art as alternative literacy and historiography; migration and cosmopolitanism; social change and globalization. Over the course of the semester we will develop an ability to appreciate and analyze Andean and Amazonian artistic traditions in their cultural and historical context.

Scandinavian 5251: Icelandic Saga
Merrill Kaplan
Tuesday / Thursday 9:35 - 10:55 AM
Revenge is the engine of Iceland’s most famous literature: the Sagas. These medieval texts describe a Viking Age society on the western edge of Europe, just beyond the reach of kings, in which honor is the main currency and insult can have deadly consequences. Unforgettable characters clash in these intricately plotted stories, and a pithy verse or a legal stratagem may overmatch even a steel axe. The class will consider the workings and failings of blood feud as a violence limiting system, the oblique influence of women in a male-dominated society, the lean literary art of Saga prose, and more. Students will get to know a distant society with unexpected relevance to our own and learn how to analyze, interpret, and enjoy Saga literature.

There are no prerequisites. Taught in English.

Spring 2023 Courses

GRAD COURSES

ENGLISH 7350.01-0010 (crosslisted with COMPSTD) Theorizing Folklore 1: Tradition and Transmission (Seminar)
Dorothy Noyes
Wednesday 12:40 - 3:40
DE 435

This course examines the transmission of cultural forms through time and space across social networks. Reviewing some of the principal approaches in folklore and related disciplines, we pay special attention to the tensions between conservation and innovation, fixity and process, property and mobility. We look also at the interplay of conscious intentions and valuations with more inattentive or habitual forms of practice. As an extension of this dynamic, we look at the concept of tradition itself as a keyword of Western modernity, which circulates between general and scholarly usage and picks up ever more ideological baggage in the process. (We will do this first in order to clarify the stakes involved in speaking of tradition at all.) Finally, we'll run through a quick history of the "traditional" in modernity: its proliferations, codifications, reifications, revitalizations, and appropriations.

Readings include theoretical texts as well as ethnographic case studies from a variety of cultural and social settings. They are intended to open up avenues of inquiry for you rather than to give you mastery of a particular theoretical tradition. Students will share in sustaining discussion and write a research paper on a topic relevant to their own interests. This course fulfills the core theory requirement of the Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Folklore.

GRAD/UNDERGRAD

Chinese 5400 Performance Traditions in China
Mark Bender
Credit: 3
Tuesday / Thursday 2:20-3:40
Enarson Classroom Building 218
28775

Chinese 5400 covers topics in the rich and exciting panorama of oral performance traditions of CHINA and a bit of somewhat beyond (Mongolia, Myanmar, NE India). Genres: storytelling, epic singing, folksongs, ritual, folk dance, puppet shows, local drama, and tourist extravaganzas of select local cultures and ethnic groups in China and borders. Themes: Means of performance, orality and writing, narrative and lyric, tradition, local, ecology, embodiment, genealogy, ethnicity, representation, ICH, and gender.

UNDERGRAD COURSES

CS4597.03. Global Folklore
Katherine Borland
Monday / Wednesday 9:35-10:55

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 a practices, 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.

Fulfills NGE in Migration, Mobility and Immobility Theme; OGE Cross-disciplinary Seminar and Global Studies.

SLAVIC 2230.01 Vampires, Monstrosity, and Evil: From Slavic Myth to Twilight
Daniel Enright Collins
Tuesday / Thursday 11:10- 12:30
Pomerene 150

and- Online with Diana Sacilowski

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.

COMPSTD 2350-0020 (35528) / ENGLISH 2270-0020 (35531) Introduction to Folklore
Daisy Ahlstone
Monday / Wednesday 2:20 - 3:40PM
Hybrid/Mendenhall Lab 173

“Wait, you can study that?” Folklore isn’t only fairy tales. It’s also everyday culture from rumors and memes to holiday recipes and Bloody Mary in the mirror. All of it is meaningful and communicates messages about the identity and values of groups and individuals. Take this course to learn about how to think about the familiar in unfamiliar ways, see the artistry in the everyday, and discover the fascinating culture that is already yours.

COMPSTD 2350/ENGLISH 2270-0010 Intro to Folklore 27341
Zahra Abedinezhad
Tuesday/Thursday 11:10-12:30

Introduction to Folklore offers theories of folklore studies and core related concepts such as narrative, context, performance, and folklore genres. We examine major genres of folklore such as oral traditions, material culture, and customary traditions. The main theme of this course is to demonstrate that we all are folks and folklore exists as part of our everyday lives across various communities and cultures. The general purpose of this course is for students to broaden their perspectives, think critically, learn how to analyze communities’ traditions and performances, and challenge stereotypical Western understanding of other cultures. Students will analyze the constructs of gender, race, and ethnicity through folklore research methods and materials. The class will be an interdisciplinary survey, drawing primarily on folklore supplemented by anthropology, art, race and gender studies, and other fields. Students will be motivated to apply class materials to their own lived experiences. Whatever students learn in the classroom space should lead them to think about how they can apply those lessons/theories in practice or in connection to real life. The course is organized around themes of group, tradition, context, performance, religion, art, ethnicity, gender but will also focus on matters of methodology-- particularly ethnography--and presentation of various genres of folklore. We will scrutinize examples and approaches to major folklore genres, but also will complicate, add to, and problematize the concept of genre as we engage in discussions that are ongoing in the discipline. Lectures and discussions will be supplemented with films, documentaries, and other activities in class.

COMPSTD 2350H/ENG2270H Introduction to Folklore (Honors)
Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth
Tuesday / Thursday 11:10 - 12:30PM
Enarson Classroom Building 018

This class explores forms of traditional, vernacular culture: memes, calendar customs, material culture, urban legends, and more! We will discuss the aesthetics of everyday culture used by folk groups (regional, ethnic, occupational, interest based, etc) to construct identity, communicate with others, and create (or tear apart) communities. Students will be introduced to various interpretive, theoretical approaches to examples of folklore and folklife. Throughout the class, we will examine the intellectual underpinnings of collection processes and category creation, asking ourselves how genres affect our interpretations of the world. Students will use these foundations to conduct their own folklore collecting project. Students will interview people from campus or their hometown for stories and other oral forms, and will document cultural practices through photographs, drawings and fieldnotes. Final collecting projects will be accessioned in the Student Ethnographic Collection at the Center for Folklore Studies Archives.

Prereq: English 1110 (110) or equiv. Not open to students with credit for English 2270 (270), or 2350H. GE cultures and ideas course. Cross-listed in English 2270.

ENGLISH 2367.05 - Eco-Fairytales
Mary Hufford
Tuesday / Thursday 12:45-2:05

This undergraduate writing seminar will engage you in a project that began more than five centuries ago, with the rise of the nation state: the repurposing of fairy tales. You will encounter afresh a literary form known to you, perhaps, from as far back as you can remember. Over the course of the semester we will look at sources and revisions of six classic fairy tale types: the Kind and Unkind Girls, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, and Hansel and Gretel. We will examine the origins of particular tales, their cross-cultural manifestations, and the motives for and consequences of fairy tale revisions. From the patriarchal capitalist motives of 18th century writers to the illumination of patriarchal capitalist norms by recent feminist and ecocritical revisionists, we will explore shifting contexts for the transformative power of fairy tales. Writing exercises, research, and class discussion will help you to locate yourself in, and chart your own course through, the world of Fairy Tale. On the way, you’ll become acquainted with tools indispensable to folk tale scholars and fairy tale revisionists: motif and tale-type indexes. Your term project – either a criticism of a fairy tale revision or an original, well-annotated revision of your own -- will contribute to an unfolding, unfinalizable conversation on the fate and fortunes of happily ever after. Fulfills second writing requirement and diversity.

Scandinavian 4250 Scandinavian Folklore of the Supernatural (Masterpieces of Scandinavian Literature)
Merrill Kaplan
Tuesday / Thursday 9:35-10:55
Derby Hall 049

If you know one creature from Scandinavian folklore, it is the Troll, but there’s a lot more in the archive than just one cranky monster under a bridge. This course is an introduction to the folklore of Scandinavia and the Nordic area with emphasis on narratives and beliefs about the supernatural – trolldom – not just trolls but witches, water horses, the Hidden Folk, and the people in the next village who just aren’t right. We’ll read texts translated from Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, Finnish, Sámi, and Greenlandic. Students will learn to interpret folklore as a reflection of the society that created it and of the interests of the scholars who collect it.

ENGLISH 4577.02 Folklore II: Legend, Rumor, Folk Belief, and Superstition (Genres, Form, Meaning, and Use)
Merrill Kaplan
Tuesday / Thursday 2:20-3:40
Cockins 228

Rumors and spooky stories, superstitions and conspiracy theories, fake news and folk belief, UFOs and elves: folklorists study all these things and more as legendry, the genre in which societies work through their most pressing fears, beliefs, and doubts. Take this course for a deep dive into how legend crystalizes cultural anxieties and how people use legend in ongoing debates about the nature of our world.

Music 5194 Performing and Listening With Sonic Archives
Brian Harnetty
Tuesday / Thursday 12:45-2:05 pm

Flyer for performing sonic archives3.57 MB

Click the pdf for course information.

AUTUMN 2022 Courses

GRAD COURSES

Comparative Studies 8100
Interdisciplinary Learning Laboratory 1: Gentrification in Columbus
Miranda Martinez and Katherine Borland
Wednesday 2:15-5 PM
Hagerty Hall 451

The first in a two-course sequence, we will explore the debate about the causes and consequences of gentrification, using Columbus as our laboratory. We will review the literature in sociology and heritage studies on neighborhood change, consult with OSU colleagues currently conducting research on Columbus neighborhoods, and we will conduct several site visits to areas experiencing change in Columbus, in order to identify potential projects for ethnographic documentation during spring term 2023. An ideal opportunity for students interested in gaining ethnographic experience and learning more about Columbus’ diverse communities. Enrollment in Spring 2023 8200 is encouraged but not required for students outside Comparative Studies.

English/CS 8858 PLAY: an interdisciplinary approach to aesthetics and culture
Amy Shuman
Tues 1:50-4:50

The study of play is fundamentally interdisciplinary as it pushes, stretches, and dissolves the edges of art, literature, culture, science, math, linguistics, semiotics, economics, etc. This is a course about interstices and the in-between places where meaning is made and negotiated. We will revisit the classic theories of play (Vygotsky, Bateson, Huizinga, and others), which establish the foundations of thinking about play as a model for understanding embodied, everyday experience. We will explore anthropological studies of play as culturally situated and will pay particular attention to Susan Stewart’s work, from her book Nonsense to her more recent work on aesthetics. All students are welcome. No previous work in folklore or anthropology is required.

MUSIC 7789 “African Music: Ideas, Forms, Trajectories”
Ryan Skinner
Wed/Fri, 2:20-3:40pm

What is African music? What is African music? In a continent as large and varied as Africa, along with an expansive and diverse diaspora, discussions of an overarching “African” musical aesthetics appear, at best, overly ambitious and, at worst, grossly reductive. This course takes the manifest heterogeneity of African peoples, communities, and musics as an empirical point of departure. It acknowledges, however, that this diversity of musical practices has long been, and continues to be “Africanized” as an object of academic study, political debate, social movement, and cultural heritage; and it recognizes that African “music” (broadly defined) continues to be an important means of identity construction, in Africa and throughout its diaspora, as well as a discursive object of social and cultural difference – as an icon of African distinctiveness and difference in the world.

This course seeks to, first, introduce students to a broad range of arguments about African identity, collectivity, and music. To this end, we will take several weeks to explore the disciplinary history of African(ist) (ethno)musicology, from its comparativist beginnings to its multi-disciplinary present. Second, this course will familiarize students with a select sampling of Africa’s diverse musical traditions, including diasporic music cultures, as presented in historical, anthropological, and musicological texts and related audiovisual media.

UNDERGRAD COURSES

Comparative Studies 2350/English 2270 Introduction to Folklore
Zahra Abedi
Tu/Th 11:10AM - 12:30PM

English/ COMPSTD 2350H - Introduction to Folklore
Merrill Kaplan
TTh 2:20-3:40

ENGLISH 3372 - Special Topics in Science Fiction or Fantasy
Amelia Mathews- Pett
Asynchronous

The content of this course inhabits a space between science fiction and fantasy. In it, we will explore what some of the most common supernatural threats in literature and popular culture at large can tell us about human anxieties. To this end, we will dip our toes into the world of monsters, exploring formerly-human entities, humans with special powers, and human-made creatures. Our exploration will cover folklore, literature, and film to discuss how people use the idea of monsters to explain the unexplainable and create possibilities for interpreting human experience. While this course is neither strictly science fiction or strictly fantasy, by tracing some of the most common supernatural entities in American popular culture we can consider how monsters are made across those and related genres, juxtaposing critical differences between magical and scientific worldbuilding. At the core of each week’s content will be one central question: “What do monsters tell us about ourselves?”

SLAVIC 2230.01 - Vampires, Monstrosity, and Evil: From Slavic Myth to Twilight
Daniel Collins
TuTh 12:45PM - 2:05PM

and SLAVIC 2230.99
Diana Sacilowski
Online

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.

Scandinavian 3350 - Norse Mythology and Medieval Culture
Merrill Kaplan
TuTh 9:35AM - 10:55AM

What do we know about Thor and Odin, and how do we know it? This course examines the myths of the Old Norse gods and the sources in which those myths are recorded. Students will gain insight into the world view and beliefs of the medieval North by reading (in English translation) the most important textual sources on Scandinavia's pre-Christian mythology. Place-name, archaeological, and other evidence will also be discussed. Students intrigued by the Viking Age, medieval Northern Europe, or the interpretation of myth will find much of interest.

Comparative Studies - 4597.02 Global Culture
Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth
TuTh 12:45-2:05
Mendenhall Lab 175

Examine contemporary global cultural flows, the concepts useful in analyzing them, and the questions they raise about power and cultural change. Prereq: Completion of second writing course. Not open to students with credit for 597.02. GE diversity global studies and cross-disciplinary seminar course.

MDRNGRK 2680 - Folklore of Contemporary Greece
Georgios Anagnostou
TuTh 12:45PM - 2:05PM

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

NELC 2194: Virtual Education Abroad in Istanbul, Turkey
TBD
4 credits
Danielle Schoon

This Global Education Group Studies 4-credit on-line course offers a virtual education abroad experience in Istanbul, Turkey, that includes immersive opportunities such as virtual reality visits to important sites in Istanbul, on-line discussions and collaborative projects with students at a university in Istanbul, and workshops and demonstrations with Turkish scholars and artists in cooking, music and dance, language, and more. Our forays into the food, music, literature, politics, religions, architecture, design, and cultures of Istanbul will provide insights into Turkey's place at the crossroads between Europe and Asia.

GERMAN 2254 - 010 Grimms' Fairy Tales and their Afterlives
Kevin Richards
TuTh 3:55PM - 5:15PM

In this DL course, you will explore the many sides of the Grimms’ fairy tales from the classics to the lesser-known, tracing their development from mythic, folkloric, Italian, and French sources up through their modern politicization and popularization by Disney in Germany and beyond. Working to understand the meaning and the enduring appeal of one of Germany's greatest successes in the realm of cultural exportation - the Grimms' fairy tales, a book whose circulation figures are exceeded in Western culture only by those of the Bible. To explore their reach, we will also compare them to their adaptations in literature and film, from dark to Disney.
GE lit course.

All works in English translation; taught in English

MUSIC 4555.08, “African Music: Ideas, Forms, Trajectories”
Ryan Skinner
Wed/Fri, 2:20-3:40pm

SPRING 2024 COURSES

GRADUATE LEVEL

GRADUATE/UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL

UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL

Autumn 2023 Courses

GRAD COURSES

UNDERGRAD COURSES

Spring 2023 Courses

GRAD COURSES

UNDERGRAD COURSES

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AUTUMN 2022 Courses

GRAD COURSES

UNDERGRAD COURSES