Abstracts for Individual Presentations 1999 AFS Annual Meeting

TAMAYAMA, Tomoyo (Utah State University) "THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN POLLUTION, "KEGARE," IN JAPANESE BURAKUMIN." Japanese Burakumin are people who have been historically placed at the very bottom of the social order. At the beginning of the 17^th century (early in the Tokugawa era) particular districts were formed by settlements of people restricted by the political, economic, and social derogatory terms, "Eta," (extreme filth) and "Hinin" (non-human), and on them were imposed specific occupations by the ruling classes. Their work consisted of disposing of cattle and horses, tanning hides, sweeping the shrines and crafting bamboo. The Kegare concept determined the concrete caste system of the Tokugawa era, as well as it brought severe discrimination against Eta and Hinin. This paper will discuss the caste system in feudal times, and finally how this concept still exists in today’s Japan. (8-4)

TAUSSIG-LUX, Karen and CLOVER, Deborah (New York Folklore Society) THE FOLK ARCHIVES PROJECT: POLICY AND PRACTICE. For eight years the New York Folklore Society’s Folk Archives Project has brought folklorists and archivists together to address the issues of protecting the state’s folklore collections and making them publicly accessible. This interaction had raised folklorists’ awareness of archival issues, while allowing them to impact archival practice and policy at the state and national level. This presentation considers how the two fields have influenced each other and presents our latest projects: the manual, Folklore in Archive and the Community Scholars and Archives Project. (3-1)

THATCHER, Elaine (Heritage Arts Services) FOLKLORISTS IN PRIVATE CONSULTING: ISSUES OF TRAINING, PROFESSIONALISM, AND CRASS SELF-PROMOTION. I will discuss the convergence of public sector work and private sector issues that occur when a folklorist hangs our his or her own shingle. As folklorists in state jobs find their time increasingly devoted to administrative tasks, independent consultants will be in demand for handling things that state people have less time for. Contrary to what some folklorists may believe, becoming a player in the free market is not incompatible with being a folklorist or with serving communities. (4-1)

THOMAS, Jeannie B. (Utah State University) RIDE ‘EM BARBIE GIRL: COMMODIFYING FOLKLORE, PLACE, AND THE EXOTIC. In 1959 Ruth Handler of Mattel–inspired by paper dolls and a German sex doll–created an adult doll for little girls and named her "Barbie." Today, two Barbies sell every second somewhere in the world: Barbie is a sales success. In this paper, I look at one aspect used in selling Barbie: the marketing of folkloric themes. Some of the folkloric currents utilized in Barbie merchandising include rites of passage, holidays, place, ethnicity, and fairy tales. This paper focuses on the use of place–especially the American West and its folk and popular association–in the marketing of Barbie. (6-7)

THOMPSON, Jennifer Jo Kuhn (Indiana University) VISION QUEST: THE EXTENDED EFFICACY OF AN AMERICAN TRADITION. American wilderness rites of passage, in which individuals engage wilderness and emerge transformed, draw upon America’s historic, symbolic, and spiritual relationship with wilderness. This is true of the Vision Quests held by members of a Midwestern multi-ethnic spiritual community guided by a Native elder. This presentation addresses how one community’s tradition relates to the American romantic legacy of wilderness and the Native American tradition of Vision Quest. I also explore how this ritual has affected several participants’ understandings of spirituality, humanity, and nature, and how it remains potent in their daily lives. (7-6)

THOMPSON, Tok (University of California-Berkeley) UNPRINTABLE FOLKLORE: REPORTS FROM THE ARCHIVES. In the course of working at the University of California-Berkeley’s Folklore Archives, I came across several folders that deal with topics not often covered by academic journals. While undeniably folklore, sexual items, particularly taboo of nature, can still evoke censorship, even self-censorship. This is understandable, but, in my opinion, unacceptable for scholarly research. In the spirit of Gershon Legman’s unabashed inquiry into sexual matters, I will attempt to subject several of these items, such as male children’s sexual initiatory games, to analysis, arguing for the inclusion of such items as valuable foci of folklore studies. (7-5)

THURSBY, Jacqueline (Brigham Young University) LITERATURE AND FOLKLORIC DISCUSSION IN THE SECONDARY CLASSROOM. As part of the Education Section’s forum discussion on the use of folklore in the classroom, I would like to present a lesson plan/unit discussing the use of folkloric techniques for use in secondary classroom oral and written literary discourse. Similar to "Reader Response," but developed with folklore elements in mind, this technique is "designed to force the student to enter into and engage meaningfully with the text" (Burke 1999: 102). The method is based, in part, on Richard M. Dorson’s discussion of folklore and literature in American Folklore and the Historian, (1971), Chapters 11 and 12. (8-8)

TIDMORE, Stacy (Indiana University) KITSCH FOR A KING: SOUVENIRS AND THE FINE ART OF COLLECTION. The heart of the Elvis phenomenon no longer exists only at Elvis’ house, but is today found reworked in the homes of fans. Souvenir related fan traditions once prolific at Graceland have moved to its periphery; into the nearby neighborhoods where fans make their homes and create their Elvis souvenir collections. Such collections are creative acts of narrative production and when contextualized through related fan traditions demonstrate how souvenirs enable community formation and individual self-identifications as "True Fan". (6-7)

TOELKEN, Barre (Utah State University) BEYOND PERFORMANCE AND RESPONSE THEORY: PROACTIVE GLEANING IN FOLKLORE. Borrowing a Northern Athabascan term which describes a listening audience as actively gleaning meaning from a performance, this paper proposes a fuller interactive model for oral tradition that has hitherto been suggested in terms like "performance", "immanent art", "conduit theory", "audience response theory". Arguing that the traditional audience brings not only its shared cultural constructs to the act of listening, but its own talents and experiences in articulating the entertaining, the paper demonstrates the active way in which shared meaning is generated and appreciated, using examples from Native American, Jewish, and Mormon folklore. (2-5)

TSCHOFEN, Berhard (University of Vienna, Austria) EXTENDED ALPS: THE EUROPEAN LONGING FOR TIBETAN NATURE AND CULTURE. There is a long tradition of yearning for Himalayan culture in Europe. In recent years, as part of the worldwide discovery of Far Eastern spirituality and the healing arts, as well as in the context of the pacifist and political environment in pursuit of a "Free Tibet", Tibet has become a part of everyday life. Using the example of the elective affinity of Austria and Tibet, the flow of ethnographic knowledge in the overlapping discourses of the everyday life, scholarship and media will be examined. The paper will focus on the "culturalization" of nature and the "naturalizing" of culture. (5-9)

TUOHY, Sue (Indiana University) BUTTERFLIES IN A CHINESE ROOM: POLITICS OF SCIENCE AND CULTURE. This paper combines the analysis of recent English-language narratives of science of Chinese twentieth-century cultural debates (including recent Chinese theories of mind and nature) to explore representations of science and culture. New science rhetoric of "connectedness" is sprinkled with quotes from the Daodejing–science read through Daoism. Before Chaos, however, it seems the butterfly was trapped, for other narratives of Western science read Chinese thought through a particular brand of science, one China is said to have lacked. These stories illustrate a politics of science phrased in terms of Chinese and Western, old and New, mental plurality and cultural openness. (2-9)

VANDERFORD, Audrey (University of Oregon) PIONEERS AND PAGANS: CELEBRATING THE SUMMER SOLSTICE IN CASPER, WYOMING. Each June, hundreds of the residents of Casper, Wyoming celebrate Midsummer’s Eve on Casper Mountain. They gather at Crimson Dawn, originally the homestead of Elizabeth "Neal" Forsling. Forsling founded the event in 1930, basing it on European summer solstice celebrations, but including her own tales and rituals. On Midsummer’s Eve, attendees hear her stories of witches and forest spirits that once inhabited the mountain. While this pagan celebration seems incongruous to the conservative, cowboy culture of Wyoming, the people who attend the annual event find little such contradiction. This paper will examine the varied interpretations of this local tradition, exploring its attraction on both a personal and community level. (1-6)

VAUGHAN, Theresa (University of Central Oklahoma) A MIDDLE CLASS AESTHETIC: IMPLICATIONS FOR FOLKLORE. The relationship between middle-class Americans and art is complex, and is frequently neglected by folklorists and art historians alike. The middle-class aesthetic goes beyond "kitsch", and offers insight into folkloristic debates about the nature of folk art versus fine art. Using a community arts center in Oklahoma as an ethnographic site, the author will present findings on aspiring middle class artists with varying degrees of academic training, demonstrating that a middle-class aesthetic does exist, and encompasses elements typically associated with both fine and folk art. (2-8)

VIRTANEN, Leila (University of Helsinki) DISCURSIVE TENSIONS: THE QUEST FOR AN IMAGINED PAST AND HERITAGE TOURISM. A key site of Finland’s imagined traditional past resides across the Finnish-Russian border, in Viena Karelia. In this paper, I explore the discursive strategies of a few cultural institutions devoted to the revitalization of the Viena Karelian "folklore villages", particularly their involvement in heritage tourism. The texts produced by the cultural foundations reveal the conceptual tensions between tradition and modernity, "Finnishness" and "Russianness". The texts will be examined in light of scholarly discussions about authenticity, anti-conquest and the invention of tradition. (3-6)

VLACH, John Michael (George Washington University) THE GENTEEL PLANTATION: STEREOTYPES OF SLAVERY IN THE LITHOGRAPHS OF CURRIER AND IVES. In the aftermath of the Civil War there was great curiosity about the defeated southern region and Currier and Ives sought to capitalize on this interest. In 1867 they offered the public an image of a generic plantation by Frances Palmer entitled "Low Water" in the Mississippi in which she rendered slaves not at work but engaged in a pleasant domestic moment singing and dancing. The image deflects attention from the coercion, intimidation, and brutality that epitomized chattel slavery. A thoroughly positive statement, the image, nevertheless, performed therapeutic tasks for both whites and blacks. (4-6)

WALDEN, Eleanor (University of California-Berkeley) TEXT AND MEANING IN SOME AMERICAN FESTIVALS. Festivals, as structured days of recreation by which everything returns to normal by first being turned down, are no longer significant in the lives of Americans. A standardized "folk festival" form exists having many variations. Many are produced by municipalities to advocate a safe form of multi-culturalism and to promote regional commerce. Others are designed to provide a space in which political business can take place. I will contrast Folklife Festivals with the Bohemian Grove retreat in Occidental, CA for comparisons in text and meaning. (6-8)

WALDENBERGER, Suzanne (Central Arizona College) BARRIO GARDENS: THE ARRANGEMENT OF A WOMAN’S SPACE. The traditional southwestern city garden, open to the elements and the earth but shielded from public view, is a woman’s space. Here Mexican-American women combine cultural ideas of womanhood, individual expression and negotiation with a demanding natural world in a living assemblage. The elements that make a barrio garden, including the plants, shrines, paths, and furniture, all work together to create a space that is simultaneously utilitarian, sacred, aesthetic and communal. The barrio garden is a multifaceted space, where ideas of women are negotiated anew every spring. (4-3)

WARE, Carolyn E. (University of Southern Mississippi) PUBLIC AND PRIVATE FACES OF MARDI GRAS PLAY. This paper looks at the shifting audiences and changing dynamics of Cajun Mardi Gras runs. These community-based celebrations are attracting wider scrutiny as tourists seek them out and festivals re-stage themselves. Focusing on two communities confronted with public image issues, the paper addresses questions of ownership and accommodation of tradition. (7-3)

WATERS, Alan (University of Massachusetts-Boston) THE SUPPRESSION AND RE-EMERGENCE OF DRUMMING WITHIN THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSICAL TRADITION. This paper discusses the historical, ethnomusicological and literary evidence for the suppression of drums and drumming within the cultural context of North American slave society. Musical examples are used to show that we can understand the centrality of drums and drumming within modern African-American expressive culture during the twentieth century only with reference to the prolonged historical suppression of this vital musical resource during the earlier period. Musical examples are drawn from gospel music, work songs, the fife-and-drum tradition, and from early jazz recordings. (9-5)

WEBBER, Sabra J. (Ohio State University) FOLKLORE THEORY, NARRATIVE THEORY, AND THE STORY OF A DREAM. Lyotard considers local narratives as importantly oppositional. Rorty argues for local narratives as a space for redescriptions of the social and political (though he is referring to Freud’s and Proust’s narratives, not to folk narratives). The explosion of interest in (and broadening definition of) narrative by scholars in disparate fields can be exploited to focus attention on the need for social scientists to attend to folk narratives and folklore theory. Drawing on one man’s story of a dream and its consequences in the marketplace, we see how complexly a good storyteller can argue for a local, oppositional perspective on history. El-Bedoui, the taleteller, literally in(corp)orates his listener into his dream/story, this reinventing and revitalizing his community in ways both familiar and strange to outsiders. (2-5)

WELCH, Wendy (Memorial University of Newfoundland) PETE SHEPHEARD: UNSUNG HERO OF THE SCOTTISH FOLKSONG REVIVAL. Pete Shepheard became involved in this folksong revival as a founder of the St. Andrews folkclub in the early 1960s. As a young man, he helped found the Traditional Music and Song Association of Scotland, collected songs, and took up the squeezebox. Forty years later he runs Springthyme Records and continues to play at local festivals. This paper is descriptive rather than an analytical, discussing Pete and others like him who did what they did for the love of the thing that they did. (6-5)

WESTERMAN, William (International Institute of New Jersey) FOLKLORE AND CRITICAL RACE THEORY: AN INTRODUCTION. A jurisprudential theory called Critical Legal Studies analyzes the law as an instrument of protecting class interests. Critical Race Theory show the law reaffirming racial privilege and inequality. After an overview of Mari Matsuda’s analysis of accent discrimination, the paper focuses on cases in which the analysis of folklore by government agencies promotes racial oppression. Is there any application for Critical Race Theory within folkloristics? How does our analysis of folklore contribute to a better understanding of racial politics in America (let alone promoter racial justice)? (4-10)

WILLIAMS, Clover (Indiana University) SIGNIFYING WOMAN: DRAG AND THE BODY POLITIC. Most articulations of drag within the drag world fall along two superficially contradictory categories–real and camp, bridged by glamour. What unites these is that drag necessarily "goes meta" with femininity in order to perform it. Most queens who frame themselves in terms of "realism" strive for a "realer-than-real"-istic distillation. Camp articulates gender constructs even further–to logical extremes which expose its constructedness and illogic. Because the cultural signifiers amplified by drag both can and cannot be separated from women, the genre remains fittingly ambiguous. (3-11)

WILSON, Tracie L. (Indiana University) PIT BULL PEOPLE: REDEEMING AMERICA’S HELL HOUNDS (FOUR-LEGGED FOLK: CROSSING THE SPECIES BOUNDARY). In the on-going struggle to improve the lives of animals, there are some groups or individuals who rally behind particular breeds. Breed rescue volunteers step in to save unwanted Dalmatians, Shelties, or Shar Peis from euthanasia and attempt to find new homes for them. Among such breed rescue organizations there are several groups and individuals dedicated to helping a particularly notorious breed–the Pit Bull. Many Pit Bull enthusiasts insist that the breed has been unjustly maligned, that the problem lies with an increase in irresponsible breeders and owners–an unfortunate result of any breed’s increase in popularity. In this paper I will examine how Pit Bull rescue volunteers reconcile competing images of these dogs, and how their attempts to restore the breed’s image are complicated by the fact that there are people who continue to use the breed for fighting contests. (9-9)

WINICK, Stephen D. (University of Pennsylvania) FOLKLORE AND NON-FOLKLORE VARIATION IN THE MASS MEDIA. Variation has long been considered a defining characteristic of folklore, and some folklorists still use types and variants as indexes of the folkloric. But variation is not exclusive to folklore; it exists at all levels of culture, particularly popular culture. Many tales, like Cyrano De Bergerac, Twelve Angry Men and "The Vanishing Hitchhiker" are "types," existing in variant TV episodes, movies and songs. This paper examines variation in folk and non-folk materials, arguing that folklorists, as experts on variation, can profitable examine a range of cultural forms. (8-9)

WOJCIK, Daniel Noel (University of Oregon) Y2K AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF APOCALYPTIC TRADITIONS. At the turn of the millennium, end-times enthusiasts draw upon a diversity of traditions as well as personal experiences and popular culture sources to formulate apocalyptic belief systems. Illustrated with visual examples, this presentation analyzes how believers modify and update eschatological ideas to make them relevant. Special focus is given to emergent beliefs about the role of a Y2K computer crisis in various doomsday scenarios, the religious and psychological meanings of such beliefs, and the ways that faith and fatalism are interwoven into the fabric of apocalyptic thought. (6-4)

WOLFORD, John B. (Missouri Historical Society/University of Missouri-St. Louis) PUBLIC HISTORIAN, ACADEMIC ANTHROPOLOGIST, ALIEN FOLKLORIST. Trained as an academic folklorist, I was hired in a joint position to be an anthropologist in a university’s anthropology department and an historian in an historical society’s research division. The tensions between the academic and the public sector are the same in these other disciplines as in folklore. I will discuss the negotiation of interdisciplinary as well as interfield identity and politics relative to my position. (7-1)

WOOD, Chris (University of California-Los Angeles) TRIBAL MILLENIALISM, WESTERN MILLENIALISM, AND THE CONCEPT OF HISTORICAL TIME. Throughout the history of the colonial encounter, a great variety of millenarian movements has arisen among indigenous tribal peoples in response to European incursion. These movements are easy to dismiss as thinly disguised Christian syncretisms or as desperate strategies of religious revitalization. Closer examination reveals their character as radical cultural innovations in response to crisis, and as potential charters for new modes of resistance and cultural self-preservation. Eschatological concepts are typically recast into local cultural forms, reexpressed through coherent sets of transformations of existing myth, ritual, and religious agency. The remaking of tribal culture in the service of millennialism demonstrates the fluidity and contingency of the concepts of myth and history, and may provide some insight into Western forms of millennialism. (5-4)

WOOD, Roger (Houston Community College-Central) LIGHTNIN’ RECALLED: NEIGHBORHOOD MEMORIES OF A LEGENDARY TEXAS BLUESMAN. Lightnin’ Hopkins’ legacy as a folk-blues icon is formally established in scholarship and cultural history. But how is he remembered by common folks back home in Houston’s Third Ward? What does Lightnin’ mean to his old neighborhood today? Based on fieldwork collecting oral histories among elderly African-Americans in Houston, I will show how community memory about this remarkable artist exists and evolves in relative isolation from his mediated public image. (8-7)

WOODGER, Mary Jane (Brigham Young University) LATTER-DAY SAINT PROPOSAL AND ENGAGEMENT PATTERNS 1960-1998. The Brigham Young University Folklore Archives has documented anecdotes and stories related to the mate selection process. This research shows that Latter-Day Saints have unique models of proposing marriage and engagement documenting the phenomena of creative proposals among active Latter-Day Saint couples that have been collected, summarized, analyzed, and documented into a useable form. The patterns, customs, and beliefs in relationship to proposing marriage and engagement are related in this documentation as practiced in LDS cultural contexts. (2-7)

WORKMAN, Mark E. (University of North Florida) JEALOUSY AND ALCHEMY. Jealousy leads us backwards in time to a time we did not experience, a vacancy that no amount of investigative work can fill. But the victim of jealousy is not without certain avenues of redress beyond mere wonderment, and while these options ultimately might not provide an end to epistemological uncertainty, they can result in actions that provide some degree of relief from the suppurating wound of betrayal; and in narratives that mark an attainment of compensation in return for what otherwise persist as self-consuming feelings of loss. Such compensatory accounts–compensatory twice over, both by virtue of what they recount and by virtue of simply being available for recounting–may range from the predictable to the surprising. (7-10)

YIP, Leo Shing (Ohio State University) DISOWNING THE SCHOLARSHIP, DISCOVERING THE BODY: ACTING THE THEORIES IN A JAPANESE NOH DRAMA TRAINING WORKSHOP IN PENNSYLVANIA. Being aware of and challenging the distinctive functions of the written documents and the performances are imperative in the study of most oral traditions. True understanding of any oral tradition requires accesses through various perspectives from the standpoints of the author, the performer, and the audience. Based on my participation in a Noh drama training workshop, I will verify, in the form of a "Noh-like" performance, how I, a member of the academe, was convinced to let go of the "theories" and recognized the importance of the body and discovered its power in the training, performing, and study of Noh drama. (9-3)

YOCUM, Margaret (George Mason University) TEXT AND COMMUNITY. With discussion leader Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and co-moderator Polly Stewart, I will help facilitate a conversation about Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s 1998 Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage as well as a companion text (Karal Ann Marling, Graceland: Going Home With Elvis) and a contrastive text (to be chosen). This seminar-like session welcomes all who would like to talk about issues raised by the readings: exhibitions, display and representation, heritage discourse, and more. (Please try to read texts in advance.) Come and plan for next year’s text. (6-1)

YOUNG, M. Jane (University of New Mexico) "PURO OLLAS": ANGLO-AMERICAN INFLUENCE ON THE POTTERS OF MATA ORTIZ, NORTHERN MEXICO. Twenty-eight years ago, Juan Quezada, a resident of a small mestizo village in Northern Mexico, invented the process of potterymaking, inspired solely by ancient potsherds he found in the area. When Juan was "discovered" by an Anglo-American pottery enthusiast, his work and that of his students was commissioned by dealers and collectors in the United States. Consequently, ceramic production increased dramatically in Mata Ortiz, as did outside influence on pottery technique, design, and form. This paper focuses on such interactions, discussing issues of authenticity, innovation, and tradition. (4-8)

ZHANG, Juwan (University of Pennsylvania) CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN THE STUDIES OF CHINESE FOLKLORE. Through examination of Chinese folklore scholarship in the US and in China, a distorted image emerges from each side. Considering folklore in historical, ethnic and nationalistic contexts, this paper proposes a China-centered approach to the studies of Chinese folklore in order to establish a healthy folkloristic discourse. Rather than insisting on discourses of differences from a common ideology and replacing one model with another, this approach suggests discourses on the bases of cultural differences and the diversity of human culture. (1-5)

ZIMDARS-SWARTZ, Sandra L. (University of Kansas) THE SAINT AND THE MILLENNIUM: THE ROLE OF HOLY PERSONS IN THE ENDTIMES. Within the devotional Catholicism of the late twentieth century, visionaries of the Virgin Mary and stigmatics, persons who claim to bear the wounds of Christ on their bodies, are the heirs of a long-standing tradition of millennialist expectations. These persons are perceived through the lens of the folk tradition of holy persons. Graced with the ability to mediate between the mundane and the divine, they are also mediators of the ages, standing at the liminal space between a dying world and impending spiritual transformation. Using contemporary American apparitions as case studies, this paper will examine the tradition of the holy person as it has been adapted to recent American millennialist expectations. (6-4)

ZWOLINSKI, A. (RCCA: The Arts Center) LEARNING FROM AMSTERDAM: A CASE STUDY ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RELATIONSHIP IN FOLK ARTS PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT. Beginning with a fledgling Latin Festival in the parking lot of a vacant city mall, Centro Civico of Amsterdam, Inc., directed by Ladan Munoz and Mary Zwolinski, Folk Arts Program Director of RCCA of Troy, New York developed a relationship that addresses issues of integrating folk arts programs and research into a social service organization. This presentation is about the evolution of that relationship, the obstacles faced and the opportunities the relationship had brought to their work as an important community organization and my work as a professional folklorist. (3-1)