Folklore Courses Spring 2025

(3 credits)

• Lecture: TR 3:30 – 4:20 pm
• Discussion 1: W 8:50 – 9:40 am
• Discussion 2: W 3:30 – 4:20 pm
• Discussion 3: R 8:50 – 9:40 am
• Discussion 4: R 9:55 – 10:45 am
• Discussion 5: F 8:50 – 9:40 am
• Discussion 6: F 3:30 – 4:20 pm
• Discussion 7: W 2:25 – 3:15 pm
• Discussion 8: F 9:55 – 10:45 am
• Discussion 9: M 4:35 – 5:25 pm
• Discussion 10: T 7:45 – 8:35 am

Instructor: Lowell Brower

Course Description: This course serves as an introduction to folklore; that is, the arts, beliefs, stories, sayings, customs, and ways of communication we engage with in our everyday lives. We’ll be examining a variety of folklore genres, while also learning about and employing the methods and practices of folklore scholars. Because this is a practical as well as theoretical course, we will be conducting fieldwork in the region as part of a semester-long folklore project. By the end of the term, you will be able to better understand what folklore is, how and why it functions, and the many and often hidden ways that it is a part of our everyday lives. You’ll learn about ethnographic methods and techniques and how to use interviews, photography, and videography to document various genres of folklore. You’ll better understand what culture is, how it affects our everyday lives, and how it is transmitted, changed, created and re-created, lost, found, and reclaimed.

(Fulfills General Education, Communications Part B requirement.)

(3 credits)

Instructor: Lisa Ho

(3 credits)

Instructor: Nathan Gibson

(3 credits)

(3 credits)

• TR 11:00 am – 12:15 pm

Instructor: Scott Mellor

Course Description: Horror has been a popular genre of storytelling since time immemorial. The horror expressed in story is often representative of fear and anxiety, sometimes personal, other times more representative of our communities. Through the oral tradition, we tell ghost stories, abduction stories and more to express the angst we feel the world around us. Since the advent of the novel, those fears have found their way into our literature and more recently our movies, television shows and more. This course will look at representations of social angst as they express themselves in horror stories, mostly in a European and North American context. In this class is will look social issues expressed in horror. Students will have an opportunity to express their opinions about the social issues expressed in the horror movies, synthesize, and relate them to their experiences outside the classroom through class discussion and weekly written discussions.

Prerequisites: Open to first-year students.

(3 credits)

Instructor: Peggy Choy

(3 credits)

Instructor: Anna Rue

(3 credits)

• Lecture: TR 2:25 – 3:15 pm
• Discussion 1: W 3:30 – 4:20 pm
• Discussion 2: W 4:35 – 5:25 pm
• Discussion 3: W 5:40 – 6:30 pm
• Discussion 4: R 1:20 – 2:10 pm
• Discussion 5: R 12:05 – 12:55 pm
• Discussion 6: R 3:30 – 4:20 pm
• Discussion 7: F 11:00 11:50 am
• Discussion 8: F 12:05 – 12:55 pm
• Discussion 9: F 1:20 – 2:10 pm

Instructor: Benjamin Mier-Cruz

Course Description: Explores the development of the vampire legend in folklore, rumor, literature, cinema, television, and popular culture and in relation to topics such as colonization, race, gender, sexuality, and class.

Prerequisites: Sophomore standing

(3 credits)

• TR 9:30 – 10:45 am

Instructor: Leonie Schulte

Course Description: The course explores central issues and debates within anthropological approaches to key social, economic and political processes that are (re)shaping European cultures and societies. European identity and citizenship, gender, ethnicity, and class, colonialism, migration and borders, languages and linguistic practices in Europe, the EU and European integration, and the shifting cultural politics of nationhood and nation-building.

The course pays close and critical attention to the ways in which approaches to and methodologies within the Anthropology of Europe have evolved, as well as the new directions the field is taking.

The course is open to undergraduate and graduate students. Majors and non-majors are welcome, regardless of prior knowledge or coursework (cap of 30 students). It is a 3 credit, face-to-face course that meets for two 1-hour 15-minute class periods each week and carries the expectation that students will work on course learning activities (viewing lectures, reading, writing, studying, etc.) for at least 4 hours out of classroom for every class period, for a total of 135 hours. Each course session generally involves two core readings [often a chapter of an ethnography + a research article], some days there will be three readings [this only happens when at least one of the texts is short]. The semester’s readings build on each other, with topics and concepts cross-cutting across sections, meaning we often return to core themes in different weeks.

Prerequisites: sophomore or higher

(3 credits)

• TR 1:00 – 2:15 pm

Instructor: Scott Mellor

Course Description: Telling stories is as old as time. Folk storytelling, which originate in the distant past, has often been scorned by the literary establishment, but the fact that they survived through centuries of oral transmission until they were finally recorded in the fairly recent past testifies to their lasting existential appeal. The stories these texts tell are dashingly entertaining and often deeply disturbing: they may offer a profoundly fatalistic view of existence, but they may also voice an angry and, at the same time, humorous protest against oppression. When this narrative type was discovered by scholars and the societal elite about 1800, it inspired many first-rank Nordic authors, e.g., Hans Christian Andersen, Henrik Ibsen, Selma Lagerlöf; and in the 20th century it has cast its spell over Isak Dinesen, Villy Sørensen, and Pär Lagerkvist and its influence has moved from literary to other media today. The course examines both the original folktales, its modern “imitations” and literature as well as gives an introduction to the critical methodologies that have recently been developed to deal with this seemingly simple, but in reality, highly sophisticated, narrative.

Prerequisites: Sophomore or higher

(3 credits)

• TR 9:30 – 10:45 am

Instructor: Marcus Cederström

Course Description: Topics in American Folklore-Ethnic Studies: Topics in historical or contemporary folklore and folklife pertaining to persistently marginalized racial or ethnic groups in the United States.

The story of the Upper Midwest is one of indigeneity and immigration. Long inhabited by Indigenous communities, the region has been subjected to continuous colonization since the 1600s. Europeans and Yankees alike moved to the region and today make up a large percentage of what we often stereotype as the Midwest. But the communities of the Upper Midwest are diverse and ever changing. The Upper Midwest is made up of rural and urban, old migrant communities and new, Indigenous and immigrant, and a host of other identities that are constantly in contact, changing and adapting. We’ll be examining the lived experiences and folklore of some of these communities, by looking at first-person accounts, reading histories of the region, watching films about the many unique traditions in the area, and discussing our own expertise and experiences about immigration and indigeneity. By learning more about the complicated intersections of immigration and indigeneity, we can better understand the history and vernacular expressions of the people who call the Upper Midwest home. This is a practical as well as theoretical course, so class projects will incorporate ways in which you can (and will) make your research available to the public.

Prerequisites: No pre-req

(3 credits)

• TR 11:00 am – 12:15 pm

Instructor: Langston Collin Wilkins

Course Description: This course investigates the role and function of folklife among African Americans in the Midwestern United States. Each week, we will explore spaces and places of Midwestern African American folk production, focusing on multiple genres of expression. Class discussions will interrogate the ways in which these selected folk practices build upon earlier forms, their complex relationships with each other, and their function within the communities of origin. We will also critically examine how these practices intersect with important societal phenomenon- namely issues of race, class, gender, power, and migration. The goal of this course is to use the lens of African American folklife to gain a better understanding of the dynamic and multi-faceted nature of contemporary African American life in the Midwest.

Prerequisites: None

(Intermediate Class)

(3 credits)

• W 2:25 – 4:55 pm

Instructor: Lowell Brower

Course Description: “In folklore as in all other forms of human behavior, the world is a great big old serving platter and all the localities are like eating-plates. All of the plates get helped with food from the platter, but each plate seasons to suit itself on the plate, and that is what is known as originality” — Zora Neale Hurston

Digging into the myriad roles that foods and foodways play in human societies across time and space—reflecting cultural values and spiritual beliefs; revealing ethno-ecological relationships and historical encounters; shaping productive activities and social structures; determining individual health and communal wellbeing; symbolizing ethnic heritage and regional identity; illustrating class distinctions and gender hierarchies; illuminating political power dynamics and economic systems; facilitating connections and sparking conflicts; enabling creative communication and artistic performance; expressing joy and materializing love; keeping us alive and, sometimes, making life delicious—we’ll intellectually feast on the idea that perhaps, indeed, ‘we are what we eat.’

Class activities will include ethnographic research into local foods and foodways, folkloristic documentation of culinary traditions that matter to you, experiential learning with hands-on cooking demonstrations/tutorials, historical research into various culinary cultures, engagement with local foodways experts and special guests, and plenty of eating, drinking, and scholarly merriment during class potlucks!

(3 credits)

• W 2:25 – 5:25 pm

Instructor: Scott Mellor

Course Description: What are epics?  What is Orally composed story? Scholars over the past one hundred years have looked at why we like to listen to story and how these stories were put together and how narratives like Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are often viewed as oral epics that have been transposed into writing. The mode of transmission may change but some components of storytelling remain remarkable the same. The American scholars Milman Parry and Albert B Lord recorded epics in Yugoslavia performed by guslari, and described them as having certain features, like formulaic expressions and mythic patterns that influence the way in which we tell story to this day. In this class we will look at epic through the ages, including Gilgamesh, the Odyssey, Beowulf, The Song of Roland, Daredevils of Sassoun, The Ballads of Marko Kraljević, and Star Wars to name a few. This course approaches the Folk Epics along theoretical lines, with a look at the oral nature, structure, performance traditions, and epic ideology, from various world areas and what may have taken the place of the oral epic in our own society.

(Meets-with Scand St. 901.)

(3 credits)

• R 1:00 – 3:30 pm