Bringing Back the Spirits: Two Folkloric Christian Modes of Translating Piety

the cover of Rabelais's Carnival
October 10, 2010
All Day
Science and Engineering Library, Room 090

SAMUEL C. KINSER

(Distinguished Research Professor of History, Emeritus,Northern Illinois University)

Bringing Back the Spirits: Two Folkloric Christian Modes of Translating Piety

Presented by CFS and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Friday, October 15, 2010
2:30 pm
Science and Engineering Library, Room 090

Samuel C. Kinser is the author of Rabelais’s Carnival(Berkeley: U. Cal. Press, 1990) and Carnival American Style, Mardi Gras at New Orleans and Mobile (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1990), among other books. His publications discuss festive culture in Western Europe and the Americas of both official (e.g., princely entries and presidential inaugurations) and unofficial kinds (e.g., Carnival, Saint James Day), accenting carnivalesque elements. Kinser is the founder and director of the Center for Research on Festive Culture at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

The Utley lecture is an annual collaboration between the Center for Folklore Studies and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in honor of the scholar who established both fields of study at Ohio State. Every year we look for a speaker whose expertise bridges these fields, as Utley’s did. Past Utley lecturers include David Whitford (United Theological Seminary), John D. Niles (Wisconsin), and Samuel Armistead (UC-Davis). We are proud to possess Utley’s research papers in the Folklore Archives: for an inventory of these rich holdings on the Bible in comparative oral tradition, English-language folksong, American dialectology, and other topics please see the register.