ICS WHC 391 – Folklore
and Oral Culture
Fall 2004
Dr. Phillip McArthur
Office: McKay 108B
Phone: 293-3907
Course
Objective:
Folklore is
often viewed as trite, lies, pure fantasy, inconsequential, without academic
significance, or at best, just mere entertainment. The study of folklore itself emerged in the
19th century when Europeans viewed Enlightenment and industrial man
as removed from his illiterate past. We
still live with the great dichotomies proposed by the thinkers of that
age: modern vs. traditional, civilized
vs. primitive, literate vs. illiterate, written vs. oral, industrial vs.
agrarian, science vs. belief. Folklore
and oral culture was that “stuff” and a study of what contemporary man had left
behind through capitalist modernization.
And, whether viewed positively or negatively, folklore, if not salvaged,
would disappear with the inevitable progress of man. Now, in an age of expanded technologies and
communications one would hardly think that folklore has much of a future. In this course, however, we will explore the
foundational place of oral culture in the past, today, and across
cultures. We will attend specifically
how the study of folklore addresses critical issues in cultural studies. I hope you will find that folkloristics provides
a salient vantage point to address how historical, cultural, and individual
meanings are constituted, and that it explains much about the nature of
knowledge, social relations, and communication itself.
Required Texts
Jan H. Brunvand The Vanishing Hitchhiker:
American Urban Legends and Their Meanings
Alan Dundes Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore
William Wilson On Being Human:
The Folklore of Mormon Missionaries
Jack Zipes Fairy Tale as Myth, Myth as Fairy Tale
**The majority of the reading includes
articles placed on blackboard
Course Requirements
1.
Two
Exams
I
will give one mid-term and a final.
Actually, they are more like two unit exams, however on the second I
will give one comprehensive question. . These exams will be in the form of short
essays that will you will take home to complete. The questions will come from both classroom
discussions and the readings. The
materials I am providing you this semester are interesting enough to encourage
you to read them, but just to make sure you take it seriously, questions will
be found on the exams that were not covered in class.
2.
Term
Paper
Your
are required to produce a 8-10 page term paper in which you present a body of
folklore materials and apply principles we will cover to interpret it. This means you will be working with primary
sources (folklore materials) and utilize secondary sources to interpret and
explain the primary sources.
Midterm Exam à 30%
Final Exam à 35%
Term Paper à 35%
Special Needs
Brigham Young University-Hawai'i is committed to providing a
working and learning atmosphere, which reasonably accommodates qualified
persons with disabilities. If you have
any disability that may impair your ability to complete this course
successfully, please contact the students with Special Need Coordinator,
Leilani A'una at 293-3518. Reasonable academic accommodations are reviewed for
all students who have qualified documented disabilities. If you need assistance or if you feel you have
been unlawfully discriminated against on the basis of disability, you may seek
resolution through established grievance policy and procedures. You should contact the Human Resource
Services at 780-8875.
Preventing Sexual Harassment
Title
IX of the education amendments of 1972 prohibits sex discrimination against any
participant in an educational program or activity that receives federal funds,
including Federal loans and grants.
Title IX also covers student-to-student sexual harassment. If you encounter unlawful sexual harassment
or gender-based discrimination, please contact the Human Resource Services at
780-8875 (24 hours).
Unit I
“Introduction: Basic Concepts of Folkloristics” (George
Schoemaker)
·
Holy
Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore (Alan Dundes)
·
“Folklore
and History: Fact Amid the Legend” (William Wilson)
·
“The
Origins of the Fairytale” (Jack Zipes) in Fairy Tale as Myth, Myth as Fairy
Tale
·
“Cosmogonic
Myth and ‘Sacred History’” (Mircea Eliade)
·
“Structural
Typologies in Native American Indian Folktales” (Alan Dundes)
·
“The
Story of Asdiwal” (Claude Levi-Strauss)
·
Selection
from “The Folklore Process” (BarreToelken)
·
“Sympathetic
Magic” (Sir James Frazer)
·
“Transformations: The Fantasy of the Wicked Stepmother”
(Bruno
Bettelheim)
·
“The
Earth Diver: Creation of the Mythopoeic Male (Alan Dundes)
·
“The
Role of Myth in Life” (Branislaw Malinowski)
·
“Four
Functions of Folklore” (Willam Bascom)
·
The
Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings
(Jan
H. Brunvand)
·
“Oral
Patterns of Performance: Story and Song” from The Anguish of Snails: Native
American Folklore in the West (Barre
Toelken)
·
“Defining
Identity Through Folklore” (Alan Dundes)
·
“Family
Misfortune Stories in American Folklore” (
·
On
Being Human: The Folklore of Mormon Missionaries (Willam Wilson)
·
“Differential
Identity and The Social Base of Folklore” (Richard Bauman)
·
“The
Problem of Identity in a Changing Culture: Popular Expression of Culture Conflict along the
·
“Tourist
Folklore of Pele: Encounters with the Other”
(Joyce Hammond)
·
“Narrating
to the
·
“Feminism
and Fairytales” (Karen Rowe)
·
“Rumpelstiltskin
and the Decline of Female Productivity” (Jach Zipes) in Fairy Tale as Myth,
Myth as Fairy Tale
·
“Spreading Myths
about Iron John” (Jack Zipes) in Fairy Tale as Myth…
·
“Breaking the Disney Spell” (Jack Zipes) in Fairy
Tale as Myth…
·
“Beauty,
Wealth, and Power: Career Choices for Women in Folktales, Fairytales, and
Modern Media” (Linda Degh)
·
“Magic
for
·
“Baseball Magic” (George Gmelch)
·
“The
Making of the Frontier Myth: Folklore
Process in a Modern Nation” (Beverly Stoeltje)
·
“The
Fabrication of Fakelore” (Alan Dundes)
·
“Tradition,
Genuine or Spurious” (Richard Handler
and Jocelyn Linnekin)
·
“Narrative,
Cosmos and Nation: Intertextuality and Power in the