Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Regional Folk Beliefs, Edward D. Ives

Dr. Edward D. Ives Papers

This accession contains over 4,000 folk beliefs organized on individual, 4x6-inch index cards. A majority of the belief cards were collected by students participating during the 1960s as part of the American Folklore course taught by Dr. Edward D. “Sandy” Ives. Folk beliefs originate primarily from Maine and the Maritimes, but occasionally extend into other areas. Each download contains a copy of the 1965 syllabus for American Folklore, explaining the assignment given to students.

Please Note: A significant number of these cards are handwritten and are not currently available as typed transcriptions. The belief cards are organized into categories noted …

Hunting In Maine, Elizabeth Tibbetts

Honors College

Hunting remains a common practice for many people in the state of Maine. While the stories and traditions held by hunters differ from person to person and family to family. There are commonalities that aid in building the sense of community between hunters in the state of Maine. This hunting community is strengthened through the sharing of stories and the common traditions shared by many. These communities remain strong even as the Maine landscape and hunting legislation changes over time. Here a number of questions regarding hunting are explored through the lens of one family spanning multiple generations through oral …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 21, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

The University of Maine celebrated its 150th anniversary as Maine's Land Grant Institution throughout 2015. The Folk and Tradition Arts area reflected the University of Maine's special milestone with programming provided by students, faculty and staff from several departments on campus.

Culturefest 2015, University Of Maine Office Of International Programs

Cultural Affairs Distinguished Lecture Series

Culturefest is an annual event hosted by the International Student Association and the Office of International Programs. US students from multicultural backgrounds take part and celebrate their families' heritage. The best part of Culturefest is the food court which will offer a variety of food from around the globe.

Maine Folklife, Vol. 20, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

The Penobscot Dictionary Project is well underway. It is a project that brings together Native culture, linguistics and digital humanities. On the one hand, we are engaged in on-going discussions with members of the Penobscot Language committee on Indian Island to make sure that our work helps their work in teaching and sustaining their language program. On the other hand, we are building a digital file with all of the linguistic information that we can incorporate into the dictonary. Working with a part of the dictionary that was digitally entered onto 5 1/4 inch floppy disks in the 1980s, the …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 19, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

Bobby Ives was honored at a brunch held by the University of Maine Foundation to launch the new Sandy and Bobby Ives Fund on Oct. 19, 2014. David Taylor and LeeEllen Friedland established the fund, the purpose of which is to support undergraduate students doing ethnographic and/or oral history research who have had formal training and/or a mentor at UMaine and/or by attending field schools. Students Hilary Warner-Evans and Taylor Cunningham, currently minoring in folklore studies, attended the event and talked about their research.

Maine Folklife, Vol. 18, Iss. 1-3, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

When we began developing the Maine Song and Story Sampler, our graduate assistant, Josh Parda, worked on the project as his primary task at the Folklife Center. Folks who follow us on Facebook or check our website frequently have seen the occasional posts of a song here or a story there that is relevant to some holiday or other event(s) going on in the wider world. And, thanks to our Archives Manager, Katrina Wynn, the full Sampler is available through Digital Commons. However, we went a full year without actually adding material to the Sampler.

Oral History, Working Class Culture, And Local, Pauleena M. Macdougall

Publications

Stories of factory closings from many industries throughout the latter part of the twentieth century are common and numerous studies have documented the economic impact of these unfortunate events. In this case study of Brewer, Maine, oral histories with former workers at the primary source of local employment, Eastern Corporation, illuminate the nature of management-worker interactions at the mill. Eastern’s former employee narratives reveal a surprisingly unified perspective regarding the closing of the mill that does not reflect the public narrative put forward by management and business leaders.

Maine Folklife, Vol. 17, Iss. 1-2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

The Maine Folklife Center has embarked on an ambitious project to digitize the entire collection of the Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History. To that end, the University of Maine has contracted with George Blood L.P. of Philadelphia to provide audio digitization services to create a digital preservation master of each of our sound files for the Library of Congress and the University of Maine from our original copies of analog tapes (reel to reel, cassettes, and VHS). George Blood L.P. was chosen from a group of companies who responded to a request for proposals because his company was …

Msss Curriculum Connection Series - Lesson Number: 06, Geoff Wingard

Maine Song and Story Sampler: Curriculum Connections Series

Political events can impact citizens across borders and through time. Folklore is powerful because it provides a vehicle for cross-cultural connections.

Msss Curriculum Connection Series - Lesson Number: 03, Geoff Wingard

Maine Song and Story Sampler: Curriculum Connections Series

Students are social actors. As young citizens they can make their voices heard and promote ideas, causes and issues they hold dear. In this exercise students will have the opportunity to see how historic and imaginary characters have promoted their ideals (or the ideals ascribed to them).

Msss Curriculum Connection Series - Lesson Number: 05, Geoff Wingard

Maine Song and Story Sampler: Curriculum Connections Series

Citizens participate in government, exercise their rights and fulfill their responsibilities in formal and informal ways. The history of citizen governance in Maine is robust. Maine’s people have articulated the republican virtues of local governance, citizen advocacy and educated participation for nearly two centuries. Maine’s democratic tradition spans generations and has crossed regional and class boundaries. In this exercise students will have the opportunity to learn how citizens in Maine’s working class communities have seized the opportunity to make change and fulfilled their obligations as community leaders.

Msss Curriculum Connection Series - Lesson Number: 04, Geoff Wingard

Maine Song and Story Sampler: Curriculum Connections Series

Citizens participate in government, exercise their rights and fulfill their responsibilities in formal and informal ways. An important part of civics education is the study of citizens’ motivations and the types of expressions these motives have given rise to in public discourse. The Maine folklore tradition celebrates the various ways that Maine citizens, particularly Maine’s poor and working-class population, have made their voices heard in the public forum.

Msss Curriculum Connection Series - Lesson Number: 02, Geoff Wingard

Maine Song and Story Sampler: Curriculum Connections Series

Citizens participate in government, exercise their rights and fulfill their responsibilities in formal and informal ways. The history of citizen governance in Maine is robust. Maine’s people have articulated the republican virtues of local governance, citizen advocacy and educated participation for nearly two centuries. Maine’s democratic tradition spans generations and has crossed regional and class boundaries. In this exercise students will have the opportunity to learn how citizens in Maine’s working class communities have seized the opportunity to make change and fulfilled their obligations as community leaders.

Msss Curriculum Connection Series - Lesson Number: 08, Geoff Wingard

Maine Song and Story Sampler: Curriculum Connections Series

Citizens participate in markets in formal and informal ways. Public commercial transactions and private economic exchanges have historically been important to Maine’s economic viability. Students should be aware of the diversity of economic activity in Maine.

Msss Curriculum Connection Series - Lesson Number: 10, Geoff Wingard

Maine Song and Story Sampler: Curriculum Connections Series

Maine’s diverse geography has created a diverse folkloric tradition. Students should be able to identify characteristics of Maine regional diversity in its folklore.

Msss Curriculum Connection Series - Lesson Number: 09, Geoff Wingard

Maine Song and Story Sampler: Curriculum Connections Series

Maine’s physical environment is comprised of diverse regions, micro-climes and landforms. This diversity is reflected in various economic, social and cultural developments across the region.

Msss Curriculum Connection Series - Lesson Number: 11, Geoff Wingard

Maine Song and Story Sampler: Curriculum Connections Series

Historical analysis is an essential component of folklore studies. Folklore is best understood in historical context. Furthermore, the process of change and evolution – central to the development of folksongs and stories – can only be assessed in light of other social/cultural changes.

Msss Curriculum Connection Series - Lesson Number: 07, Geoff Wingard

Maine Song and Story Sampler: Curriculum Connections Series

Maine’s economy has historically been based upon resource extraction and use. Furthermore, Maine’s has historically contained only a very small middle class. Most Mainers could reasonably be described as working class while a small population of upper class elites (known variously as Great Proprietors, owners or sports) has provided structure and capital to Maine industry.

Msss Curriculum Connection Series - Lesson Number: 12, Geoff Wingard

Maine Song and Story Sampler: Curriculum Connections Series

Students are the historical actors of the future. Their actions, attitudes and artifacts are the stuff future historians will collect and analyze in order to understand our time. Although we may not consider our lives “historic” to historians of the future they may be. Likewise, the actions, attitudes and artifacts collected in the Maine Song and Story Sampler may not have been considered historic by their creators, but are worthy of our consideration today. In this exercise students will have the opportunity to analyze one artifact from the MS&SS website from the perspective of a professional archivist to determine its …

Msss Curriculum Connection Series - Lesson Number: 13, Geoff Wingard

Maine Song and Story Sampler: Curriculum Connections Series

The study of folklore is a useful pedagogical tool across the Social Studies. As students develop skills and expertise in historical methods, civics, economics, geography and history they can draw upon Maine’s rich folk tradition to illustrate social phenomena. The Maine Song and Story Sampler has been designed to allow citizens access to Maine’s rich folk tradition.

Msss Curriculum Connection Series - Lesson Number: 01, Geoff Wingard

Maine Song and Story Sampler: Curriculum Connections Series

Contemporary social issues are not divorced from the past and arise from specific historical, economic and cultural conditions. In this exercise students will have the opportunity to develop a position on an issue of current concern in their community with an understanding of its cultural context and relevance.

Maine Folklife, Vol. 17, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

A new collaboration between the Library of Congress' American Folklife Center and the University of Maine will preserve a unique archival collection that documents the history and traditions of Maine, other New England states the Canada's Maritime Provinces. That collection, the entire holdings of the Northeast Archives of Folklore and History, is part of UMaine's Folklife Center.

The library will acquire the entire collection, preserve it at its state-of-the art facilities and serve it online and in person to researchers from around the world. Digital copies will remain accessible at UMaine's Maine Folklife Center.

The folklife center will contract with …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 16, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

British Ballads from Maine, edited by Phillips Barry, Fannie Hardy Eckstorm and Mary Winslow Smyth was published by Yale University Press in 1929. It is an academic collection of Child ballads that the authors collected from singers in Maine. Each ballad is listed with Child numbers with variants used to illustrate the sources and dates of the collection. The authors hoped to demonstrate the richness of New England as a ballad area, to prove that many American ballad texts are old compared with those printed in the Child collection, and to provide a handbook for fieldworkers who might wish to …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 15, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

In April, 2010 we launched our Drive Dull Care Away campaign to raise the Sandy Ives Endowment fund to $1 million. Folklorist Nick Spitzer, who produces and hosts American Routes on NPR agreed to be our honorary chair of the campaign and came to Maine to speak at the University in support of the Maine Folklife Center and preserving the legacy of its founder, Edward D. "Sandy" Ives. The Ives legacy of teaching, fieldwork, publishing and public programming has come under threat due to University budget cuts. First the academic position was cut (teaching), then the archivist's position was cut …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 15, Special Issue, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

Some day in the not-too-distant future, the Maine Folklife Center will have a self-supporting endowment. As a result, staff will continue to produce local cultural events, conduct folklife research, and care for the archives, without worrying about the Center's financial future. To make this dream a reality, the Folklife Center recently launched the Sandy Ives Endowment Campaign, through which the Center hopes to increase its endowment by $1 million. Income generated from the campaign will help support the Center's ongoing mission in light of recent unusual budget cuts at the University of Maine.

Maine Folklife, Vol. 10, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

Four thousand years ago, Archaic period peoples hunted swordfish in the Gulf of Maine. In addition to fauna remains, archaeologists have recovered stone representations of the distinctive sword-shaped bill, suggesting that these animals had a cultural significance that went beyond their dietary value. What archaeologists don't know is precisely where and how the fish were taken. In our own time, swordfish rarely come inshore. Commercial operators, both harpooners and long-liners, fish the eastern side of Brown's and George's Banks and points farther along the continental shelf. Even if hunters of the Archaic period could travel that distance, it would have …

Maine Folklife, Vol. 10, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

The Northeast Archives is proud to announce that we have completed reprocessing and preservation work on two major collections, the Aroostook County Collection and the Maine State Federated Labor Council Collection. Our graduate assistants made preservation master and CD copies of each tape and expanded the descriptions of the tape contents to better assist researchers in finding the information they need. This work has been supported by grants from the Maine Historical Records Advisory Board.

Maine Folklife, Vol. 9, Iss. 2, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

Once again, folklorist Edward D. Sandy Ives has been recognized by his peers for his outstanding work. This time he received the Kenneth Goldstein Award for Lifetime Academic Leadership at the American Folklore Society meetings in New Mexico October, 2003. In presenting the award to Sandy Ives, Lee Haring remarked that he had known both Sandy and Kenny Goldstein for many years. He imagined what Kenny would have said if he'd been told an award was to be given to Sandy. He concluded that Kenny would have shouted, at the top of his lungs, "OF COURSE!"

Maine Folklife, Vol. 9, Iss. 1, Maine Folklife Center

Maine Folklife Center Newsletter

It may not be the most dignified of nautical customs, but it's certainly one of the oldest and most widely observed. When a vessel approaches the Equator, crew members who are crossing for the first time must appear before King Neptune and his court to demonstrate their worthiness as subjects of the sea. Proof is exacted through tests and punishments that can range from the mildly embarrassing-singing a song or reciting a nonsensical rhyme-to much more grueling treatments: running the gauntlet, tarring and feathering, or crawling through slops. The custom earns the sailor or passenger little more than a certificate …