Whom do folklorists study?

This course's concluding module begins with an 11-minute "guest lecture" by our textbook's author, Lynne McNeill. She argues

the work of folklorists is as significant today as it was back in the days of the Brothers Grimm (why?),
folklorists need to study internet and social media... (why?)

But a takeaway from today's lecture is that, any individual you study shares informal culture with more than one group. Just like multiple motifs in a story pointed to multiple meanings and functions (remember Modules 3 and 4?), so also multiple group connections point to multiple identities.

Back in Module 1, a question about context seemed so simple: Who is performing this item of folklore, to whom? But these people's multiple identities require that our answers be complex.

Watch (11 min): Lynn McNeill, “Folklore doesn’t meme what you think it memes” (2015),

Reading

In our textbook, Lynn McNeill expands her description of "digital groups," and points out that there are many more kinds of groups out there. Also occupational groups, religious groups, children, and students on university campuses... The reading assignment adds two more: ethnic groups, and families. And the list could go on and on...

Overviews of each group's most typical traditions offer a quick starting point, a checklist to consider when studying somebody in that group;
The list of groups also reminds us to engage multiple groups (plural!) in which any individual participates. How does their identity shift as they perform different items of folklore in their repertoire?

Lecture 27.1 — Estimated time to read: ~40 minutes

Lynne McNeill (2013). Chapter 4 "Types of Folk Groups" in Folklore Rules, pages 65-88

UW Library : Folkore Rules

Guntis Šmidchens, (1989). “Immigrant & Ethnic folklore,” in The Emergence of Folklore in Everyday Life: A Fieldguide and Sourcebook. Edited by G. Shoemaker, pages 133-141.

[pdf copy] (I wrote this chapter before the Internet was invented! I'll be updating it soon, of course)

Steven Zeitlin, (2016). “Chapter 2. Intimacy in Language: Poetry in Family Expressions” The Poetry of Everyday Life: Storytelling and the Art of Awareness, pages 35-44.

UW Library : The Poetry of Everyday Life

Rationale: Identify groups (not just one group) with whom the person you study shares folklore.

Lecture

While listening to Lecture 27, keep the following question in mind, as a starting point for tomorow's Lecture 28:

How does folklore help understand who is more inside a group, or less?
How do we folklorists, select what individuals and traditions represent a group?

Bonus Case Study: Representing Black American Identities at Smithsonian Folklife 1976

In 1976, Wlliam Wiggins helped organize events to celebrate Black American folklore at the Smithsonian Folklife festival. Among the performers he brought to Washington DC were the performers of "In the Rapture," which he documented in this earlier ethnographic video and interpretive analysis. What are some of this group's verbal, customary, material and belief traditions? How did/do these traditions represent Black American identity / identities in the 1970s or today?

In the Rapture (60 min)

(Scroll down to also find two essays by William Wiggins)

In The Rapture: The Black Aesthetic and Folk Drama by William H. Wiggins, Jr.

“On Making the Film In The Rapture” by William H. Wiggins, Jr.

Bonus Case Study: Norwegian Folklore and Identity in the Pacific Northwest Today

Read pages 10-28 and 96-101 in Henning Sehmsdorf's book, Continuity of Norwegian Tradition in the Pacific Northwest (2020). Can Sehmsdorf's ideas about Norwegian-American traditions also help describe folklore in a current ethnic or racial community that you know?

Have some thoughts or questions? Why not join the conversation... People Studying People forum