Abstracts for Individual Presentations 1999 AFS Annual Meeting

CAMITTA, Miriam (Independent Consultant) THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF "ENVIRONMENT". This paper discusses the data of several studies I conducted in Philadelphia neighborhoods and the beliefs of their members about the "environment". At the heart of the discussion is the contention that "environment" is a term the meaning of which turns on variable aspects of context and use. I will propose that underlying the "missions" of community groups are mandates constituting philosophies of action. Documented by my research is the belief held by many community groups that environmentalism is a tool for achieving non-tangible goals of their organizational philosophies including fostering neighborhood morale, pride, and stewardship. (2-1)

CANTU, Norma E. (Texas A&M International University) MILAGROS, MANDAS, Y PROMESAS: FAITH AND TRADITION ON THE U.S. MEXICO BORDERLANDS. Los Matachines de la Santa Cruz dance on the feast of the Holy Cross in Laredo, Texas, as a testament to their faith in the Holy Cross which they hold is a miraculous artifact. This paper explores the survival of and the impact of the tradition by focusing on the mandas y promesas (vows and promises) made by the community and the milagros (miracles) attributed to the cross. The Matachines celebration, prayer made manifest-as evidenced in the vows made-allows a group to assert its mestizo cultural identity through religious practices in a context of other hybrid cultural expressions. (4-7)

CANTWELL, Robert (University of North Carolina) JUSTICE, PRACTICE AND PUBLIC FOLKLORE. Over the last generation, folklore theory has freed itself from the premodern in favor of abstract processes that reveal the ideal of folklore as a reflex of modernity. What was unproblematically a phenomenon of peasant societies or rural working-class culture has been understood as social performance, as a special process of cultural transmission, or strategy for preserving cultural memory. Folklore, as a primary instance of the cultural process, is deeply implicated in postmodernity. The role of the public folklorist as conservationist and advocate reflects a deepening sense of the folklorist’s social, political and environmental commitments. Public folklore practice must actively intervene whenever "development," "globalization" and the "information revolution" are dispersing or degrading the social medium of cultural life. (8-1)

CASTRO-GALVIN, Luciana (Skyline College) THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION AND ITS INFLUENCE IN PRESENT CHICANO/A FOLKLORE. Anonymous corrido authors, who are the majority, have always manifested their enthusiasm, pain and/or fear in both sides of the Mexico-United States border. Issues that stroke underprivileged men still torment Mexicans and Chicanos. Thus, the ongoing fight for justice continues in the dawn of the 21^st century through Chicano/a folklore. The purpose of this paper is to depict the influence that Mexican revolutionary corridos such as "Corrido, History and Death of General Pancho Villa" (1923) exerted on other Mexican, Mexican-American, Chicano/a and Latino/a artistic manifestations. (4-4)

CHAPPELL, Ben (University of Texas-Austin) "RACE," PLACE, PAINT AND CARS: CULTURAL RACISM AND THE OPPOSITIONAL POETICS OF LOWRIDERS. Lowrider style is a form of automobile customization that privileges Mexican American memory and identity, and thus serves as an oppositional, minority, urban sign in the performances of everyday traffic. For a view on the oppositional charge of lowrider style, this paper draws on recent critiques of "new cultural racisms" as emerging in discourses of a "culture of poverty," "gang culture," "drug culture," or "inner-city nihilism." Lowrider cars, displaying a style associated with stigmatized identities, constitute a material poetics in opposition to these formulations, positing an alternative to the liberal bourgeois order of things. (6-6)

CHIARITO MAZZARELLA, Jay C. J.(Musikwissenschaftliches Institut der Universität Hamburg) WHEN YOU ARE YOUR OWN SUBJECT: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL PROBLEMS OF NEGOTIATING & REPRESENTING YOUR CULTURE AND SELF IN PARTICIPANT/OBSERVER ETHNOGRAPHY. Based upon experiences as an ethnomusicology fieldworker investigating the music, poetry, and lore of North American hoboes, this paper deals with theoretical and practical issues of negotiating the role of participant/observer, balancing the representation of one’s self in narrative ethnographical writing, negotiating simultaneous roles of music-performer and fieldworker (participant/observer), and making (reconciling) the distinctions between "pollution" of and participation within the subject field. By incorporating fieldwork experiences and expanding upon pre-existing theoretical paradigms of participant/observer ethnography, this paper attempts to demonstrate practical and theoretical solutions toward the development and realization of a balanced, informative interpretation of participant/observer ethnography that includes one’s self and one’s culture as subjects. (8-3)

CLEMENTS, William M. (Arkansas State University) THE ATTRACTIONS OF ELOQUENCE. This presentation examines the appeal that depictions of Indians as effective manipulators of language, especially in the role of orator, exerted on Euroamerican commentators particularly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Special attention will be given to how rhetorical theory suggested a double-edged significance for the image of the "eloquent savage": as support for either a belief in the fundamental humanity of North American Natives or an argument for their depravity. (9-7)

CONGDON, Kristin (University of Central Florida) TEACHING ABOUT OFRENDAS AND SHRINES. In the early 1990s, two Central Florida artists of Mexican descent, Catalina Delgado-Truck and Marva Lopez, began plans to educate their community about Day of the Dead ofrendas by exhibiting them in a variety of public spaces. With each installation, as more people became interested and involved, the artistic and educational approaches varied. In order to relate to other cultural traditions, ofrenda-making expanded to include shrine-making. Based on these artists’ experiences, educational guidelines will be suggested. (3-2)

CONRAD, Jo Ann (University of California-Berkeley) NARRATIVIZED SPACES: MAPS, MEMORY AND IDENTITY POLITICS IN SAMILAND. The field of indigenous politics in northern Norway today is a struggle for position and voice in which Sami identity is articulated through narratives of space and place; constructing a symbolic "homeland." The apparent integrity of Sami identity at the political level is, however, undermined at the personal, where competing narratives are used to convert space into meaningful place. These "unofficial" narratives which circulate between the boundaries of the national and the local seek meaning in the interstices of day to day life. This article investigates these "small" narratives of space in contrast to those specifically employed within the ethno-political debate, on the assumption that political, regional, and ethnic boundaries are sites of rupture and flux, which are both destabilizing and productive for identity formation and transformation. (1-8)

CONWAY, Cece (Appalachian State University) LORE OF LADIES IN LEE SMITH’S ORAL HISTORY. Lee Smith has a good ear for folk and citified voices, and the title of Oral History, which she had to fight to keep, signals the novel’s construction with oral lore, songs, and histories. The tale of three generations of Cantrells captures their spirit in local legends and ghost stories and questions whether the family is cursed. The novel presents women at every life stage–ladies, mamas, and crones–and offers family history and other arts as resources for young women in and out of the novel. (7-10)

CRAVER, Amy (Alaska Native Science Commission) PATHWAYS FOR BRIDGING INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND WESTERN SCIENCE. As traditional knowledge begins to be included into Arctic research agendas and initiatives, there is a growing expectation on the part of Alaska natives that they will be full partners in setting future Arctic research agendas and their systems of knowledge will inform and enhance western science. Focusing on a project that uses talking circles to elicit traditional knowledge from Alaskan Native elders and hunters and gatherers, this paper will explore how traditional knowledge is interpreted, transformed, displayed, and negotiated to satisfy various local and global agendas. (2-10)

CRAWFORD, Deborah (Reader at the Huntington Library) MEDIEVAL LEGEND: A WORKING DEFINITION. This paper proposes a definition of legend appropriate to work with medieval sources. A legend is a story or an account with demonstrable continuity, retold over time. It is "unofficial" information, based in the cultures, communities or groups which ensure its continuity. It is told in a manner which suggests that it is factual or potentially factual, although its content is memorable through its unusual or even startling nature. It is the kind of account characteristically associated with oral communication, but may be transmitted through or conserved in non-oral media. The degree of development is not an issue. (2-11)

CRISWELL, Stephen (Benedict College) and MCCLUNEY-CRISWELL, Samantha (University of Southwestern Louisiana) RE-MEMBERING THE FAMILY: A DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN FAMILY REUNIONS. This paper examines African American reunions in southern Alabama and in the Carolinas. Drawing on studies of family folklore, foodways, and family celebrations, as well as anthropological and sociological studies of African American families, this paper will describe the typical Southern African American family reunion, paying specific attention to its structure, and analyze the significance of these reunions for their participants. Of particular importance will be the participants’ own comments on their reunions. (1-10)

CUNNINGHAM, Kathryn (Flagstaff, Arizona) USING EDUCATIONESE TO NIGYYSOB PEOPLE: FOLK SPEECH AMONG ELEMENTARY SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS IN ARIZONA. Every field has its jargon used both as insiders’ shorthand and as a way to keep outsiders in their place. Elementary school administrators’ folk speech draws on a variety of sources including agriculture, religion, and politics and is used to describe both situations and other people. This presentation examines the idioms of several Arizona elementary school administrators as they reveal attitudes toward who are "insiders’ and "outsiders". (1-2)

CUNNINGHAM, Keith K. (Northern Arizona University) WITNESSING GENRE OICOTYPIFICATION AND BEING TOLD "YOU ARE MY GRANDPA IN GOD’S WAY": WHY A COLLEGE PROFESSOR AND HIS WIFE SPENT TEN YEARS CONDUCTING FOLKLORE RESIDENCIES IN ARIZONA SCHOOLS. Much has been made of the distinction between academic and public sector folklore in America in recent years--quite possibly way too much. This presentation draws upon a folklore residency program my wife and I recently completed at Discovery Elementary School in Glendale, Arizona, and argues that the strict division between academic and public sector folklore is arbitrary and divisive and that academic folklorists have much to learn from, and in turn much to offer to, folklife in education programs. (2-2)

CURRANS, Elizabeth (University of California-Santa Barbara) CREATION, CONSTRUCTION AND NEGOTIATION: AN EXPLORATION IN QUEER WOMEN’S SPIRITUAL NARRATIVES. This paper will explore the performative aspects of narrative process and the personal construction of belief. The scholar’s role in the construction of meaning will also be examined. These processes will be examined in the spiritual belief narratives of three queer women from neo-pagan, Jewish and Buddhist traditions. The similarities and differences between these narratives will be discussed in relation to the importance ethnic, gender and sexual identities hold in their lives. (7-7)

DAVID, Dana A. (University of Southwestern Louisiana) TRADING TREATMENTS: SOCIAL NETWORKS OF CAJUN WOMEN TREATERS. Belief in treaters, individuals who treat ailments through prayer, has been relegated to a minority group’s belief in magico-religious healing. Challenging this perspective, I will analyze the role of women treaters to demonstrate that their practice of traditional medicine is central to Cajun culture. Besides her reproductive role and in spite of what outsiders might deem as her inferior social status, a woman treater exercises a central position within a relational network: she administers a needed medical service, centered in a non-capitalistic system of exchange which is the foundation of Cajun culture. (2-4)

DAVIS, Martha S. (University of California-Santa Barbara) THE BLACK VERNACULAR IN CHILDREN’S FOLKLORE. In this presentation I discuss an early black vernacular speech found in children’s folklore which currently appears in modified form. I maintain that the eradication of this dialect from such works is being done but at cost-a loss of appreciation for an early linguistic heritage. I will discuss the benefits as well as problems inherent in presenting what has become very sensitive material to a modern audience and suggest strategies for its presentation. And I will conclude by noting that the solution is not to avoid reading earlier versions of such literature, but to study and appreciate it as an important type of artistic expression that should not be lost from the collective memory. (8-11)

DAVIS, Susan G. (University of California-San Diego) COMMONS UNDER PRESSURE. In Southern California, the intense commodification of space places enormous pressure on existing uses and senses of place. I examine three cases of conflict over commons from San Diego County a popular beach area threatened by hotel expansion, a barrio scheduled for "rethemeing", and canyons occupied by immigrants and continually "cleaned up" by the city – to shed light on the variable ways suburban and urban commons are formed, defined and defended. (4-1)

DE CARO, Frank (Louisiana State University) "UNRIVALED CHARMS": FOLKLORE, NON-FICTION, AND LAFCADIO HEARN’S WEST INDIAN YEARS. When folklore appears in literary non-fiction, it cannot be analyzed in the same ways as in fiction or other imaginative literature. Lafcadio Hearn’s travel classic Two Years in the French West Indies, which includes much folk material, is a case in point. But, though Hearn was something of a folklorist, he does not simply describe or transcribe folklore in his book. Rather he uses it to communicate ideas of place and his discovery of and connection to place. (7-10)

DE LOS REYES, Guillermo (University of Pennsylvania) THE CROSSROADS OF MEXICAN FOLKLORE SCHOLARSHIP IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. The study of folklore in Mexico has been very limited during the last twenty years. Folklore in Mexico is frequently considered as a dependent of other disciplines such as Anthropology, Literature, Music, and Linguistics. There are no universities that offer a degree in folklore, not even small programs that offer folklore minors. Although some universities offer courses in folklore or have researchers in this field, they are rarely identified as part of folklore scholarship. This paper discusses the evolution of Mexican Folklore studies since the beginning of the Mexican Independence until today, putting special attention to the development of the discipline in the twentieth century. (7-11)

DECHADENEDES, Marcia (Museum of New Mexico) DRAWING FROM THE WELL. How does a cultural institution such as a museum promote the interest and action of preadolescents to rediscover their community’s oral history? The Museum of New Mexico’s Office of statewide Programs and Education outreach vehicle, the Van of Enchantment, has over the last year hosted an education program Drawing from the Well in the rural town of Peñasco, assisted by four local organizations. This program is a model of community activism, concern and celebration, facilitated by the extension of the museum’s mission, to collect and preserve the state’s cultural heritage. (2-2)

DEL GIUDICE, Luisa (University of California-Los Angeles) HEALING THE SPIDER’S ‘BITE’: TARANTISMO, NEO-TARANTISMO, AND FOLK REVIVAL IN THE SALENTO (PUGLIA). Tarantismo was a form of music-therapy practiced especially by young peasant women who had been "bitten" by a venomous spider (the "tarantola"), presumably while working in the fields. The antidote required dancing for several days to the music of tambourine (and other instruments) in the accelerating rhythms of the pizzica tarantata. Such healing rituals, once found throughout the Italian South, and perhaps a distant legacy of ancient Greek orgiastic cults, seem to have lasted longest in southern Puglia. The pizzica is currently undergoing a revival throughout the Salento and is beginning to capture the attention of world audiences. This paper examines the history and contexts of this music, as well as its meanings to contemporary Salentines, and to world music audiences. (9-5)

DEL NEGRO, Giovanna (Memorial University of Newfoundland) and BERGER, Harris M. (Texas A&M University) CONCEPT, ORACLE AND KINETIC SCULPTURE: BODY AND SOCIAL ORDER IN THE CENTRAL ITALIAN PASSEGGIATA. This paper examines how the residents of Sasso, a small town in central Italy, use bodily display to reflect upon and negotiate the issues of gender, class and age. A spectator sport, the promenade is a vehicle for people watching and boisterous displays, an arena for seeing and being seen. The paper will discuss how Sassani interpret bodily presentation in the promenade and unearth the ideology of "bodily divination" that undergirds this event. In this kinetic sculpture of village society, the townsfolk physically and symbolically stake out a place for themselves in Sasso’s collective self-representation. (9-3)

DEMIRER, Yucel (Ohio State University) HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE "VOLUNTEER STATE": A KURDISH IMMIGRANT VIEW FROM THE ETHNIC FESTIVAL. The "volunteer state," Tennessee is traditionally known for its openness to immigrants. Today the city of Nashville hosts 5000 Kurdish immigrants. Immigrant Kurds working as food vendors at ethnic festivals throughout the state have experienced diversity in a setting that has caused them to reflect on human rights conditions in the United States compared with both their early ideas about American democracy and their experiences back in Iraq and Turkey. (6-10)

DEWITT, Mark (Ohio State University) CATEGORIZATION IN ORAL TRADITION: TUNE VARIANTS, TUNES, AND TUNE FAMILIES RECONSIDERED. I approach the tune as a unit of analysis in oral tradition from two different viewpoints: from folkloristics, as an item and its variants; and from cognitive psychology, as a result of human categorization. Rather than analyze variants to arrive at an archetype of questionable historical validity, I reconsider tune variants as category members and tunes as prototypes, underlying mental representations for what psychologist sometimes call "natural categories" or "folk categories." Examples will be drawn from my own field research on Cajun music and the published work of Samuel Bayard, who himself wrote of "the minds of the singing people." (4-4)

DONLON, Jocelyn Hazelwood (Louisiana State University) and DONLON, Jon Griffin (Center for the Study of Controversial Leisure) LIGHT FOR THE DEAD: TOUSSAINT IN LACOMBE, LOUISIANA. This presentation discusses the cultural performance of "Toussaint", an All Saints’ Day celebration, in Lacombe, Louisiana. It covers the historical roots of the tradition; the syncretism of Christian and Choctaw religions; the issues of race and class which characterize the cultural performance; and--based on interviews with people in Lacombe--the functions of the tradition for the people who participate in it. Today the community is struggling to protect their tradition from outside influences, including those of the new priest of Lacombe. (1-6)

DRUMMOND, Barbara (Private Consultant) GRAY SQUIRRELS, GRAY MATTER AND GRAY AREAS IN CULTURE, HEALTH AND NUTRITION. I look at the tradition of squirrel hunting and eating among Anglo American men and women in Kentucky. As a traditional foodway, squirrel has symbolic meaning. Squirrel is hunted and eaten as an expression of identity as well as a delicious delicacy. Field interviews on eating squirrel and squirrel brains reveal contemporary views of health and nutrition which I examine as a social construct. Finally, I look at cultural resistance and what Roger Abrahams calls the "deep stereotype" in light of allegations that Creutzfelt-Jakob disease is associated with eating squirrel brains. (2-4)

DUBOIS, Thomas A. (University of Washington-Seattle) "WHEN THERE’S BETTER DAYS IN IRELAND": ONE MAN’S REPERTOIRE IN REGIONAL, NATIONAL, AND FAMILIAL CONTEXT. This paper examines the song repertoire of Michael Lyne, a traditional Kerry singer resettled since 1960 in Westmeath, Ireland. While Mr. Lyne’s repertoire reflects early life experiences as a fisher-farmer in the Kerry Gaeltacht, his commentary on the songs reveals their significance to him in his current context and in a rapidly changing Ireland, where negotiations with the North, prosperity in the South, and religious shifts on morals have called into questions many tenets of Irish identity. (5-2)

DUNCAN, Barbara R. (Museum of Cherokee Indian) COLLABORATING WITH THE CHEROKEE. Collaborating with the Cherokee on collecting and presenting their folklore promotes not only better understanding of this culture, but also better research by opening avenues for research and presentation. Examples include: a book on Cherokee storytelling, a museum exhibit, a documentary video, and a cultural heritage tourism project. These will be described with reference to the work of Barre Toelken and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. The story of folklore can be enriched intellectually as well as ethically by these kinds of collaborations. (1-5)

DWYER, Michelle (Arizona State University) ROOTWORKING AS RESISTANCE AND ITS POWER TO HEAL IN ALICE WALKER’S REVENGE OF HANNAH KEMHUFF. In Alice Walker’s short-story The Revenge of Hannah Kenhuff, rootworking has the power to not only allow a woman to die peacefully after years of a hard life, but also to bring a sense of justice to a racist crime committed years before. The main character’s act to see a rootworker to bring about justice is in itself an act of resistance: she has renounced, in a way, her belief that God will bring about justice, and instead finds that justice in a woman usually denounced by white society as a fraud and a phony. By putting her faith into rootworking, she puts her faith in her people, and so in herself, and this faith brings about her peace and healing. (7-10)

DYEN, Doris (Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area) and DEAFENBAUGH, Linda (Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area) "INSIDE-OUT" TOURS. Tourism can bring economic and social benefits to communities, but if mishandled, can cause residents to feel invaded and misrepresented. The key is to vest control of tour development within the communities who are the subject of the tours. This paper reports on work in progress in Pittsburgh’s Rivers of Steel region to develop community-based, "inside-out" cultural tours of industrial towns, in which local tradition-bearers and other residents work with Heritage Staff to plan the tour itineraries, develop scripts and train for jobs as guides to interpret their communities’ heritage to visitors. (1-1)

EDGETTE, J. Joseph (Widener University) LINGERING MEMORIES: DEATH SITES AS SPRINGBOARDS INTO LOCAL LEGEND. An increase in the number of fatalities involving adolescents seems apparent when perusing daily newspaper, local and national news channels, and weekly periodicals. Whether these catastrophes be accidental, natural, or violent, a phenomenon has made its presence known in many areas of this country. Death sites are being converted to mini-shrines to soon-to-be canonized local saints, even when the proposed ‘saints’ are anything by saintly. This paper examines the germination and birth of these modern local legends. Accompanying slides will document this recent but widely spreading trend. (3-10)

ELEUTERIO, Susan (Art Resources in Teaching) USING FOLKLIFE TO INSPIRE WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM. Lesson plans developed for the Chicago Area Writing Project to help teachers use folklife and folklore to inspire writing across the curriculum will be shared briefly. These lessons draw on naming traditions, ethnic and folk arts, and materials developed by the Michigan State Museum and 4-H leaders on family folklore and foodways to help teachers explore how to use folklore across various disciplines including language arts, social studies, math, and science. Practical needs such as tying lesson plans to local and state standards and goals, departmental and school curriculum units, and time limitations will be covered. (8-8)

ELIASON, Eric A. (Brigham Young University) THE JOKE AND LEGEND CYCLE OF J. GOLDEN KIMBALL–MORMON COWBOY PREACHER. J. Golden Kimball is an unlikely figure who rose from a profane cowboy background to become one of the most loved leaders in the history of the Latter-Day Saint people. His homily and cuss word-strewn sermons packed Church buildings and delighted Mormons during his life. Over 60 years after his death, the Mormon folk still maintain a popular memory of "Uncle Golden" through telling embellished tales of his words and deeds. Kimball is, according to folklorist William A. Morrison, Mormondom’s most significant folk hero and his is Mormon folklore’s best developed character legend cycle. (5-4)

ELLIS, Bill (Penn State-Hazleton) THE OGRE WITHIN: INTRINSIC GENRE AND MALE VERSIONS OF "THE HOOK." The adolescent contemporary legend "The Hook" has often been seen as expressing female fear of sexuality, but nearly half of collected versions were narrated by males. This paper will look at these performances, focusing on their "intrinsic genre," or the hints that the narrator and audience provide as to what type of story is being told. Sometimes narrators lead their audiences, however, and sometimes they misled them by playing with generic conventions. Both "straight" and "playful" versions will be examined to see "The Hook" as a narrative in which we meet the ogre, and he is us. (6-2)

ELLIS, Gregory S. (University of Texas-Austin) THE DISCOURSE OF WELFARE REFORM: RACE, GENDER, CLASS, VALUES, AND PUBLIC POLICY. Does social science research create dialogue across differences or does it tend to define differences in ways that reflect the biases of the researchers? A discourse-centered approach to interviews with welfare recipients in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas shows how perceived differences in culture, race, class, and gender enter in to social work research. The paper discusses how a focus on the centrality of power and context in interviews has implications for the uses of such research in informing public policies toward the poor. (4-10)

ELLIS, Larry (Arizona State University) MEDICINE, ALLIANCE, AND SURVIVAL IN CREEK INDIAN ORAL LITERATURE. The tribes of the Creek Confederacy of southeastern North America ingested herbal medicines in the performance of ritual and ceremony. In Creek oral narratives of origin and migration, the role of medicine plants gives literal and figurative expression to the initial alliances that were formed among the Confederacy tribes, and by extension to the cooperative dynamic that empowered the Creek Confederacy. (2-4)

ERET, Dylan (University of Pennsylvania) THE NUMBERED PEOPLE: POPULAR USES AND ABUSES OF THE ENNEAGRAM PERSONALITY-TYPING SYSTEM IN THE UNITED STATES. Borrowing from Sufi tradition, the Enneagram has recently emerged in the United States as a popular personality-typing system that is used to identify basic intellectual and emotional "energies" that individuals experience themselves or with other people. In this system, people are numbered into nine different personality types, all of whom exhibit their own character traits that can change according to personal or social pressures. This essay will critically examine how the Enneagram has developed historically and is practiced among groups today as a way of better understanding, yet perhaps oversimplifying, people’s psychological similarities and differences. (5-4)

ESTES, David C. (Loyola University-New Orleans) THE LEGENDARY MARIE LAVEAU: VOODOO AND THE LOUISIANA WRITERS PROJECT IN NEW ORLEANS. Marie Laveau (1783?-1881) has achieved enduring legendary status as a New Orleans voodoo leader. Newly discovered interviews in the archives of the Louisiana Writers Project (LWP) add to our understanding of both the Laveau legend and the complexities of New World African spirituality in this urban culture. Modeled after the WPA ex-slave interviews, they were used as source material for Voodoo in New Orleans (1946), dismissed as inaccurate by Zora Neale Hurston in a JAF review. Reading the interviews critically as products of the LWP methodology and ideology allows us to recover them as valuable documents for the study of folk legend and belief. (4-6)

EVANCHUK, Robin (University of California-Los Angeles) DANCING IN THE AISLES: THE RE-EMERGENCE OF LITURGICAL DANCE IN AMERICAN WORSHIP. Engaging the sacred through dance in not a new concept but the practice, largely ignored during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, re-emerged and flourished in the 1980s and 1990s, informally connected to the Charismatic movement. This paper examines the revival of liturgical dance in several denominations in the United States, exploring its structure, how individuals interpret its use and the liberal borrowing of dance customs from creeds and cultures that are considerable different, and often conflicting with their own. (8-5)

EVANS, Michael Robert (Indiana University) MAGNETIC NORTH: THE PERFORMANCE AND POLITICS OF INUIT VIDEO. In the tiny town of Igloolik, north of the Arctic Circle, two video groups carry on a cordial battle to the death. At the heart of the clash is a question, asked by such researchers as Faye Ginsburg and John Palattella: Do indigenous media represent a grass-roots movement toward self-representation and self-expression–or do they represent an insidious form of colonialism with a native face? The Inuit Broadcasting Corporation strives to maintain and enhance Inuit culture, but Igloolik Isuma Productions seeks to expose the IBC as fraudulent puppets of the South. (5-10)

EVANS, Timothy H. (Western Kentucky University) OVERCOMING INSTITUTIONAL BARRIERS TO PUBLIC-ACADEMIC DIALOGUE. With the expansion of public folklore institutions during the 1970s-90s, and the participation by academic folklorists in relatively specialized fields such as performance studies and cultural studies, public and academic folklorists increasingly go to separate meetings, use different vocabularies and have distinct goals. This is an inevitable result of having separate institutional bases and, therefore, differing expectations of professional folklorists. A dialogue between academic and public folklore can help to move beyond institutions and legitimizing concepts, to provide a fresh viewpoint on issues of concern to all folklorists. (7-1)

EYSTER, Kevin (Madonna University) COWTAIL SWITCH: THE STORYTELLING AND TEACHING OF GLORIA LAMB. Every March, I offer a weekend workshop in American folklore. An integral part of this workshop includes an interactive presentation by storyteller/educator Gloria Lamb, adjunct professor of children’s literature at Wayne State University and former president of the Detroit Association of Black Storytellers. Invariably, students connect with Gloria, enriched by her ability as a storyteller and by her knowledge of her subject matter. This paper showcases Lamb as an important tradition-bearer of African and African American storytelling throughout the metropolitan area. (2-2)

FELTAULT, Kelly (Independent Folklorist) "IT WAS A REFLECTION OF ME TO OTHERS": CONSTRUCTING SELF AND MEMORY IN COMMUNIST HUNGARY. As material manifestations of personal history the objects we collect and display in our homes emerge as resources for the construction of personal identity; embodying self through time, social poetics and performance. This paper focuses on the display objects used to create class and gender identity by a Hungarian gentry woman in 1950s Communist Hungary. It concludes that home interiors are emotionally charged autobiographies, political statements and performances that create a bricolage–an aesthetic arrangement of memories and identity from material pieces of the past. (6-10)

FERRELL, Ann (Western Kentucky University) BEYOND CELEBRATION: A CALL FOR THE STUDY OF TRADITIONS OF DOMINANCE. In this paper I will suggest that folklorists should begin to investigate traditions of dominance in our society, a shift in the folkloristic paradigm that involves value judgements. Folklorists have the skills necessary to not only celebrate the folklife of those who are in positions of marginalization, but also to bring to light the traditions that keep them there, traditions of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and so on. In this paper I will utilize ideas from feminist theory as it applies not only to women’s lives but the study of traditions of dominance in general. (6-10)

FINCHUM, Hilary V. (Indiana University) A GENEALOGY OF SOUTH KOREAN WOMEN: STATE-BUILDING DISCOURSE AND STATUS. Integral to South Korea’s emergence as a modern nation is the position of women within South Korean society. The competing ideologies of tradition and modernization affect the status and roles of women as members of the state. In this paper, the issue of women’s position in modern South Korean society will be examined in relation to the state-building discourses that have been used to legitimate the authority of the state. (6-10)

FINE, Gary Alan (Northwestern University) ECONOMICS AND IDENTITY IN THE "SELF-TAUGHT" ART MARKET. The traditional ideology of artistic production is that aesthetic value is inherent in the work or in responses to that work, but not in characteristics of the artist. This assumption can be a question in the light of the growth of interest in self-taught art. Two features have contributed to the growth of self-taught art in the past decades: identity politics and the economic structure of artworks. This research project is grounded on three years of ethnographic observations, textual analyses, archival data, and in-depth interviews. (2-8)

FISH, Lydia (Buffalo State College) TECHNOLOGY, INFORMAL COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS, POPULAR CULTURE AND FOLKLORE IN THE VIETNAM WAR. With the advent of Armed Forces Radio in the early years of World War II, the popular music of home became an increasingly important part of life in the combat zone. However, the controlled repertory of music and the censored news considered suitable by the authorities for troop listening and the availability of sophisticated communications equipment led to the rise of local networks run on field radios and eventually to pirate radio stations. Excellent recording equipment could easily be purchased and much of the occupational folk music reproduced in country circulated on an informal tape network. (7-4)

FRANK, Russell (Penn State University) STORIES WITHIN STORIES: JOURNALISM AND THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE NARRATIVE. "Storytelling" is a hot word in journalism right now. With the 24-hour news cycle there is little on the front page of the morning paper that one does not already know from having watched television or browsed the Internet the night before. The only thing newspapers can do better than the electronic media is tell stories. But when journalists assign the term "storytellers" to themselves, they give too little credit to their sources. This paper suggests that journalists would get in less ethical trouble if they took a more folkloristic approach to the art of the personal experience narrative. (9-10)

FREEDMAN, Jean R. (Independent Folklorist) AT THE CROSSROADS OF POLITICS AND NOSTALGIA: A LOOK AT THE FOLK REVIVAL. The folk revival was the starting point for many folklorists’ interest in folk culture, yet only recently has the folk revival been subject to scholarly scrutiny. I suggest that folklore studies and folk revivalism are inextricably interwoven and that viewing revivalism historically can uncover come of the common threads of both. In this paper, I shall examine the common attributes of folklore studies and folk revivalism, discuss the shared history of both entities, and suggest workable definitions that will be useful to future studies. (7-11)