Missouri Folklore Society Journal (Vols. 40-41)

Missouri Folklore Society Journal (Vols. 40-41) PDF

Author: Adam Davis

Publisher: Naciketas Press

Published: 2021-07-26

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9781952232596

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Emerging Folklorists showcases outstanding work done by Missouri college students from 2010-19. These projects came primarily from folklore courses and capstones; most were presented at Missouri Folklore Society conferences. These papers represent a range of topics and approaches, from rigorously quantitative analyses to humanistic studies that ask to be validated by the reader's recognition of sound insight and empathetic understanding. They include oral history, family history, structural linguistics, archival study and a great deal of fieldwork. Though the disciplines here range widely, we had in mind something comparable to The Apprentice Historian, a model which the discipline of history provides to showcase exceptional learners. So Emerging Folklorists opens with a pre-med student contextualizing lore from her Girl Scout camp. Next, an avid video gamer analyzes gamer language. The volume's seventeen essays include a linguistics student tackling the linguistic structures of "Yo Momma" jokes, and a student of A.I. using computer analysis to explore patterns of sounds and grammar in "Knock Knock" jokes. Another student uses brain- imaging data to analyze the way subjects processed the humor of memes. An extraordinarily gifted gay student collects, categorizes, and offers insight into "coming out" stories. Another researcher focuses on 1990s updates of the Bluebeard motif. A rural student (now a PhD in Literature) explores her county's history, including oral accounts of farms and a factory, a Civil War skirmish, the cultural artifacts of enslaved people. Another from southern Missouri collects stories from people of her grandparents' generation about racial confrontations in her home town. Many of the essays include appendices--data collected, transcriptions of interviews, etc., valuable in their own right. Some of these inquiries are in spots "naïve" in the sense art historians use the term--work that shows the marks of the newcomer, or that may not have the range of historical reference of more senior practitioners, but work which rides on a freshness and a freedom from the preconceptions which can mark professionals. These researchers are people still learning how to imagine their audience - they do not always know what needs to be explained and what does not. But in folklore they have found one of the places where an undergraduate can make genuine contributions to knowledge.

The Ballad Collectors of North America

The Ballad Collectors of North America PDF

Author: Scott B. Spencer

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 0810881551

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Much has been written about the songs gathered in North America in the first half of the 20th century. However, there is scant information on those individuals responsible for gathering these songs. The Ballad Collectors of North America: How Gathering Folksongs Transformed Academic Thought and American Identity fills this gap, documenting the efforts of those who transcribed and recorded North American folk songs. Both biographical and topical, this book chronicles not only the most influential of these "song catchers" but also examines the main schools of thought on the collection process, the leading proponents of those schools, and the projects that they shaped. Contributors also consider the role of technology--especially the phonograph--in the collection efforts. Chapters organized by region cover such areas as Appalachia, the West, and Canada, while others devoted to specialized topics from the cowboy tune and occupational song to the commercialization of folk music through song collections and anthologies. Ballad Collectors investigates the larger role of the ballad in the development of American identity, from the national appreciation of cowboy songs in popular culture to the use of Appalachian song forms in radio broadcasts to the role of dustbowl ballads in the urban folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s. Finally, this collection assesses the changing role of songs and song texts in the academic fields of folklore, anthropology, musicology, and ethnomusicology. Scholars and students of American cultural and social history, as well as fans of North American folk and popular music, will find The Ballad Collectors of North America a fascinating story of how the American folk tradition gained greater visibility, fueling the revolutions that would follow in the writing and performance of American music.

Ballad Hunting with Max Hunter

Ballad Hunting with Max Hunter PDF

Author: Sarah Nelson

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2023-01-24

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0252054040

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A traveling salesman with little formal education, Max Hunter gravitated to song catching and ballad hunting while on business trips in the Ozarks. Hunter recorded nearly 1600 traditional songs by more than 200 singers from the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s, all the while focused on preserving the music in its unaltered form. Sarah Jane Nelson chronicles Hunter’s song collecting adventures alongside portraits of the singers and mentors he met along the way. The guitar-strumming Hunter picked up the recording habit to expand his repertoire but almost immediately embraced the role of song preservationist. Being a local allowed Hunter to merge his native Ozark earthiness with sharp observational skills to connect--often more than once--with his singers. Hunter’s own ability to be present added to that sense of connection. Despite his painstaking approach, ballad collecting was also a source of pleasure for Hunter. Ultimately, his dedication to capturing Ozarks song culture in its natural state brought Hunter into contact with people like Vance Randolph, Mary Parler, and non-academic folklorists who shared his values.

Encyclopedia of Women's Folklore and Folklife [2 volumes]

Encyclopedia of Women's Folklore and Folklife [2 volumes] PDF

Author: Pauline Greenhill

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2008-12-08

Total Pages: 864

ISBN-13: 0313088136

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From the stone age to the cyber age, women and men have experienced the world differently. Out of a cosmos of goddesses and she-devils, earth mothers and madonnas, witches and queens, saints and whores, a vast body of women's folklore has come into bloom. International in scope and drawing on more than 130 expert contributors, this encyclopedia reviews the myths, traditions, and beliefs central to women's daily lives. More than 260 alphabetically arranged entries cover the lore of women across time, space, and life. Students of history, religion and spirituality, healing and traditional medicine, literature, and world cultures will value this encyclopedia as an indispensable guide to women's folklore. In addition, there are entries on women's folklore and folklife in 15 regions of the world, such as the Caribbean, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe. Entries provide cross-references and cite works for further reading, and the encyclopedia closes with a selected bibliography of print and electronic resources. Students learning about history, world cultures, religion and spirituality, healing and traditional medicine, and literature will welcome this companion to the daily life of women across time and continents.

Franco-American Identity, Community, and La Guiannée

Franco-American Identity, Community, and La Guiannée PDF

Author: Anna Servaes

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2015-04-10

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1626745587

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French traditions in America do not live solely in Louisiana. Franco-American Identity, Community, and La Guiannée travels to Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, and Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, to mark the Franco-American traditions still practiced in both these Midwestern towns. This Franco-American cultural identity has continued for over 250 years, surviving language loss, extreme sociopolitical pressures, and the American Midwest’s demands for conformity. Ethnic identity presents itself in many forms, including festivals and traditional celebrations, which take on an even more profound and visible role when language loss occurs. On New Year’s Eve, the guionneurs, revelers who participate in the celebration, disguise themselves in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century costume and travel throughout their town, singing and wishing New Year’s greetings to other members of the community. This celebration, like such others as Cajun Mardi Gras in Louisiana, Mumming in Ireland and Newfoundland, as well as the Carnaval de Binche, belongs to a category of begging quest festivals that have endured since the Medieval Age. These festivals may have also adapted or evolved from pre-Christian pagan rituals. Anna Servaes produces a historical context for both the development of French American culture as well as La Guiannée in order to understand contemporary identity. She analyzes the celebration, which affirms ethnic community, drawing upon theories by influential anthropologist Victor Turner. In addition, Servaes discusses cultural continuity and its relationship to language, revealing contemporary expressions of Franco-American identity.

A History of the Ozarks, Volume 2

A History of the Ozarks, Volume 2 PDF

Author: Brooks Blevins

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2019-09-30

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 0252051599

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The Ozarks of the mid-1800s was a land of divisions. The uplands and its people inhabited a geographic and cultural borderland straddling Midwest and west, North and South, frontier and civilization, and secessionist and Unionist. As civil war raged across the region, neighbor turned against neighbor, unleashing a generation of animus and violence that lasted long after 1865. The second volume of Brooks Blevins's history begins with the region's distinctive relationship to slavery. Largely unsuitable for plantation farming, the Ozarks used enslaved persons on a smaller scale or, in some places, not at all. Blevins moves on to the devastating Civil War years where the dehumanizing, personal nature of Ozark conflict was made uglier by the predations of marching armies and criminal gangs. Blending personal stories with a wide narrative scope, he examines how civilians and soldiers alike experienced the war, from brutal partisan warfare to ill-advised refugee policies to women's struggles to safeguard farms and stay alive in an atmosphere of constant danger. The war stunted the region's growth, delaying the development of Ozarks society and the processes of physical, economic, and social reconstruction. More and more, striving uplanders dedicated to modernization fought an image of the Ozarks as a land of mountaineers and hillbillies hostile to the idea of progress. Yet the dawn of the twentieth century saw the uplands emerge as an increasingly uniform culture forged, for better and worse, in the tumult of a conflicted era.

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