Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Oystering In Kent Narrows, Maryland, A. Clayton Schofield

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Kent Narrows is one of the many small fishing areas located along the banks of the Chesapeake Bay. The fishing industry located there concentrates on the harvesting and canning of Chesapeake Bay shellfish, specifically oysters, crabs, and clams. This study is concerned with the collection of the traditional elements of the three occupations comprising the oyster harvest at Kent Narrows: (a) handtonging, (b) oyster shucking, and (c) blacksmithing of the oystermen's tools. Although the Kent Narrows oyster industry has developed since the 1930s, many of the traditional tools and work situations were borrowed from other fishing areas of the Bay. …

A Folkloristic Approach To Storytelling Performances By A Contemporary Librarian, Victoria Middleswarth

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The subject of this study is Thelma Freeman, the children's librarian at the Bowling Green Public Library. Mrs. Freeman has worked for the library for fourteen years, beginning in 1964 as a bookmobile driver and later transferring into the library building as children's librarian. The story hour on which this study centers was instituted in 1967 when Mrs. Freeman became the Bowling Green Library's first children's librarian. Although she probably acquired her storytelling art through observation and adoption of her mother's storytelling technique and through experience with her children and grandchildren, Mrs. Freeman also took an undergraduate-level library science course …

“They Made Us Dance In The Pig Trough!” Mrs. Blanche Story’S Oral Accounts Of Dating, Courtship, Marriage And Sexual Attitudes In Northcentral Nebraska, 1885-1910, Gayle Waggoner

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Oral recollections concerning dating, courtship, marriage and related attitudes were collected from a single informant, Mrs. Blanche Story of Butte, Nebraska. Through in-depth questioning during twelve tape-recorded interview sessions, value- and attitude-oriented accounts were secured for the years 1885 to 1910, the late frontier period in northcentral Nebraska. These detailed reminiscences focus on common life experiences related to interpersonal relationships and the institutions related to them, resulting in a personal or folk history. The single greatest problem in research was the lack of documentation for the attitudinal content of the texts. Corroboration of both specific information and broad patterns of …

The Price Of Folk: The Progression Of Two Decoy Makers’ Work From Folk To Non-Folk, Benjamin Vincent

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Applying the standards for delineating folkcraft developed by Japanese scholar Soetsu Yanagi to the work of two Maryland decoy makers, Lem and Steve Ward, revealed that the Wards’ work followed a progression from folk to non-folk. A Hearst newspaper chain article on the two carvers plus winning first place at the New York Decoy Show brought publicity far beyond that usually encountered by the average folk craftsman. These events also exposed the two brothers to a range of wealthy collectors. When the Wards began to experiment with ornately carved birds, they had a waiting, and financially capable market. The extremely …

Fandom Is A Way Of Life: A Folkloristic Ethnography Of Science Fiction Fandom, David Axler

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A science fiction (“sf”) fan is an individual whose interest in this literary genre has extended past reading into involvement in such things as local science fiction clubs, fan magazines (“fanzines”), and sf conventions (“cons”). Science fiction fandom is the loosely-structured, geographically-dispersed organization of these fans. Drawing on both written sources and field interviews with eight informants, the history, composition and structure of sf fandom is examined from a folkloristic viewpoint. The forms of folklore which serve to bind the individual fan to the larger social entity of fandom are detailed.

Despite its literary orientation, fandom is primarily a social …

Traditional Elements In The Selected Columns Of Allan M. Trout, J. Vaughn Webb

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The first and last three months of Allan M. Trout's newspaper column "Greetings" were analyzed to show Trout's use of traditional material in that feature. An overview of previous scholarship concerning folklore in literature revealed a lack of study of the modern newspaper as a transmitter of folk items. The type of feature which Trout wrote was shown to have developed from pre-Civil War journalism. Trout's conception of folklore as a rural, kinetic process was presented through quotations from his books and columns, and "Greetings" was defined as a part of that process rather than as a static literary work. …

A Folkloric Perspective On Traditional Auctioneering, Daniel Steed Jr.

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

To date, the auction as a type of folklore performance has not been adequately researched. In order to place auctions in perspective as folklore, chapter one of this thesis reviews the history of auctions in the United States. Chapter one further presents the idea of the auctioneer as a folk occupational specialist. The second chapter is concerned with the skills of an active Kentucky auctioneer, who offers, during a series of interviews, insights concerning his performance skills. The third, and final, chapter attempts to construct a theoretical base for researching auctions as folklore performance. The criteria by which any given …