Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Intermountain West Lgbtq+ Oral History Project: The Folklorization Of Queer Theory, John Priegnitz

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Following the passing of a friend who witnessed firsthand the transformation of Salt Lake City’s Queer community from the 1950s to 2020, I created the Intermountain West LGBTQ+ Oral History Project to document the queer experience within the Intermountain West. Since beginning the project in 2020, I have documented several diverse stories that intersect class, race, sexuality, gender, faith, and politics. By documenting the queer experience, a marginalized community will have their voices heard and preserved for the enlightenment of future generations. This presentation provides an overview of my project and its preliminary findings.

The Monster Theory Of Relativity: Triggering Supernatural Monsters, Maggie Mercil

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Current monster scholarship examines monstrous bodies, how they represent our cultural fears, anxieties, or forbidden desires, and how monsters can guard, break, or blur the boundaries between us and Other. While examining the monsters themselves can provide a better understanding of ourselves and our culture, it is just as important to consider the conditions in which these monsters were able to manifest in the first place. This paper argues that it is through our own actions, whether intentional or not, that we effectively “trigger” the monsters into our narratives. There are three categories of “triggers” that this paper will explore: …

Making The Old New: The Recontextualization And Traditionalization Of Tree Spirits In Video Games, Alexandria Ziegler

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Folklorists study the active rituals between humans and deities, as well as the inactive participation between them in narrative. However, they do not study the active participation that comes in the form of video games between them, though with shifts in society, this new way of engaging through digital forms is widespread and accessible. In my research, I studied Russian and Japanese tree spirits in a variety of video games to understand this new form of engagement with ancient deities. These video games are Okami, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Black Book, and The Witcher 3: The …

In The Presence Of Evil: Demonic Perception Narratives, Victoria Jaye

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

I offer a new classification system for organizing, understanding, and validating the inhuman demonic encounter by organizing it through the senses the experience is activating. A demonic or inhuman spirit, which can be used interchangeably, is a spirit in that they exist without bodies, possess abilities greater than that of humans (rendering them inhuman), are hyperintelligent, react negatively to Christian religious iconography, and are malevolent in their behavior towards humans.

The system I have created is organized by the sensory perceptions of the narrative (i.e. sight, sound, smell, and feeling of the demonic presence) then is divided further by the …

The Sacred Circle: Ostension In Native American Hoop Dancing, Emma George

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This thesis examines the role of the semiotic concept ostension in folk dance, specifically in Native American hoop dance. Although the discipline of folklore is well-versed in ostension, folk dance has not been examined through this lens. I argue that dance is a form of ostension, of demonstrating a narrative, and this is especially apparent within Native American hoop dancing. I begin with a brief history of Native Americans in North America before discussing the origins of powwows, intertribal culture, and hoop dance. I then look at both the sacred nature and material culture of the modern hoop dance before …

Called To Serve: Understanding The Role Of The Woman’S Mission Decision Narrative In Latter-Day Saint Culture And Belief, Rachel Ross

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In my thesis I explore the role of mission decision narratives of women in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Before 2012, women could not serve missions until age 21. Once the minimum age was changed to 19 in October of 2012, many more women were able to serve on mission as the opportunity was less likely to disrupt their education or romantic relationships. In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, missions are seen as a priesthood duty for men but a matter of choice for women. This ability to choose and the narrative that follows …

Metal Storytellers: Reflections Of War Culture In Silverplate B-29 Nose Art From The 509th Composite Group, Terri Wesemann

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Most people are familiar with the Enola Gay—the B-29 that dropped Little Boy, the first atomic bomb, over the city of Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. Less known are the fifteen Silverplate B-29 airplanes that trained for the mission, that were named and later adorned with nose art. However, in recorded history, the atomic mission overshadowed the occupational folklore of this group. Because the abundance of planes were scrapped in the decade after World War II and most WWII veterans have passed on, all that remains of their occupational folklore are photographs, oral and written histories, some books, …

Licentious Legends: A Folklore Podcast, Alexandra L. Haynes

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Licentious Legends was created out of a need to both understand and educate about sexual contemporary legends; not just what they are and what defines them, but the effect that they have on those who experience them. The purpose of this podcast is not to shame, but to take what has been found and educate about the joys and dangers of these legends. These legends range from the everyday (such as "The Hook"), to legends about a young man killing himself with a plunger. In an effort to gather as many examples as they could, Faye interviewed several of their …

Death Ends A Life Not A Relationship: The Embodied Mourning And Memorializing Of Pets Through Material Culture, Gemma N. Koontz

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Many individuals develop strong bonds with their pets, viewing them as close “furry” friends or family. When these beloved companions die, both their relational and physical absences are deeply felt. Lacking socially recognized rituals to mourn and memorialize their pets, owners turn to and adapt traditional “human practices,” primarily that of keeping meaningful or significant items of the deceased.

Using both personal experiences and perspectives from multiple fields, this thesis discusses the life-cycle of the human-animal bond, examines the types of items owners keep or create, and how these are used to facilitate both mourning (the outward expression of grief) …

Hellhounds And Helpful Ghost Dogs: Conflicting Perceptions Of “Man’S Best Friend” Encoded In Supernatural Narrative, Kiersten Carr

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Black dogs are a type of spectral entity that, according to legend, have been haunting the British Isles for centuries. While the legends have many regional variations, the common feature remains a large black dog, often with eyes “large as saucers” or sometimes, flaming, who appears and then disappears, often without a trace. In many of the legends, the black dog is malevolent: assaulting travelers, frightening livestock to death, attacking other dogs, haunting graveyards and gibbets, and heralding death or disaster. In other versions, however, the black dog acts as a protector to those in need, warding off disaster with …

Constraints Of Haunted Heritage Tourism In Logan, Utah, Kylie Schroeder

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

It has become common in Salem, Savannah, New Orleans, Edinburg, or Gettysburg, to witness groups of people being led through the darkened streets as part of a ghost tour or haunted history walk. An altered form of commercialized legend tripping, these companies offer guided tours, feature spooky stories, and often showcase local history. However, the trend of haunted heritage tourism, especially in the form of ghost walks and haunted history tours, has spread beyond places with national or international reputations for hauntings and is now growing in small towns whose stories are rarely shared beyond the local populace.

This thesis …

Allowing The Untellable To Visit: Investigating Digital Folklore, Ptsd And Stigma, Geneva Harline

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the introduction of 2012 issue of The Journal of Folklore Research, Diane Goldstein and Amy Shuman issue a “call to arms for folklorists … to concentrate on the vernacular experience of the stigmatized.” (Goldstein and Shuman, 2012:116). Drawing on this call to arms, this thesis investigates how Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is portrayed in social media through memes and captioned images. I argue that the genres of memes and captioned images in digital folklore work to help mitigate the stigma of PTSD because the veneer of anonymity in the digital world allows people with PTSD to be willing …

2014 Fife Honor Lecture, Peggy Bulger

Fife Honor Lecture

No abstract provided.

Life Change Narratives: When The Road Diverges, Bernadene J. Ryan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Transformation events can be a change in a person's work, a change in philosophy, a sudden insight, or a break in a relationship. According to David Hufford and Marilyn Motz, narrating these experiences are ways in which people perform, construct, and communicate belief systems. The narrators within the context of this thesis experience their transformation through a career transformation. The narrators rediscover their initial passion and transform that desire into actions that results in a shift of career. Sometimes seen as inexplicable, nevertheless the narrators provide analysis and reflection on the influences that led to their change. Some of the …

Ordinary Spirits In An Extraordinary Town: Finding Identity In Personal Images And Resurrected Memories In Lily Dale, New York, Mary Catherine Gaydos Gabriel

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Every summer, Lily Dale, New York, a community founded on spiritualist beliefs and steeped in an eccentric explosive past, hosts thousands of visitors seeking to communicate with dead friends and relatives, while the residents lead ordinary lives in the midst of the supernatural hype permeating their town. Their stories are considered by most to be secondary to the illustrious trappings of the community in which they occurred. My research employs oral histories prompted by personal photographs to showcase the residents' everyday experiences amidst the town's infamy, illuminating the undervalued individual experience of those living in communities of such extraordinary repute. …

Can The "Peasant" Speak? Forging Dialogues In A Nineteenth-Century Legend Collection, William Pooley

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The folklore collections amassed by Jean-François Bladé in nineteenth-century southwestern France are problematic for modern readers. Bladé's legacy includes a confusing combination of poorly received historical works and unimportant short stories as well as the large collections of proverbs, songs, and narratives that he collected in his native Gascony. No writer has ever attempted to study any of Bladé's informants in detail, not even his most famous narrator, the illiterate and "defiant" Guillaume Cazaux.

Rather than dismissing Bladé as a poor ethnographer whose transcripts do not reflect what his informant Cazaux said, I propose taking Bladé's own confusion about authenticity …

Exploring Local Communities: Conducting Ethnographic Research In Folklore Studies, Lisa Gabbert

English Faculty Publications

Cookie traditions? Family reunions? Snipe hunting? Jell-O recipes in Utah? Undergraduates’ folklore research projects cover an amazing variety of offbeat subjects. These topics may seem superficially unimportant to many scholars in other fields, and they usually are overlooked in the serious halls of academe (although undergraduate research in folklore often finds its way into professional books and publications as scholars use materials deposited in folklore archives, a recent example of which is Elizabeth Tucker’s 2007 book Haunted Halls).

Fairy Tale Films, Pauline Greenhill, Sidney Eve Matrix

All USU Press Publications

In this, the first collection of essays to address the development of fairy tale film as a genre, Pauline Greenhill and Sidney Eve Matrix stress, "the mirror of fairy-tale film reflects not so much what its audience members actually are but how they see themselves and their potential to develop (or, likewise, to regress)." As Jack Zipes says further in the foreword, “Folk and fairy tales pervade our lives constantly through television soap operas and commercials, in comic books and cartoons, in school plays and storytelling performances, in our superstitions and prayers for miracles, and in our dreams and daydreams. …

Exploring Desert Stone, Steven K. Madsen

All USU Press Publications

The confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers, now in Canyonlands National Park, near popular tourist destination Moab, still cannot be reached or viewed easily. Much of the surrounding region remained remote and rarely visited for decades after settlement of other parts of the West. The first U.S. government expedition to explore the canyon country and the Four Corners area was led by John Macomb of the army's topographical engineers. The soldiers and scientists followed in part the Old Spanish Trail, whose location they documented and verified. Seeking to find the confluence of the Colorado and the Green and looking …

Review Of ‘Competitive Irish Dance: Art, Sport, Duty’, Christie L. Fox

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Japanese Demon Lore, Noriko T. Reider

All USU Press Publications

Oni, ubiquitous supernatural figures in Japanese literature, lore, art, and religion, usually appear as demons or ogres. Characteristically threatening, monstrous creatures with ugly features and fearful habits, including cannibalism, they also can be harbingers of prosperity, beautiful and sexual, and especially in modern contexts, even cute and lovable. There has been much ambiguity in their character and identity over their long history. Usually male, their female manifestations convey distinctivly gendered social and cultural meanings.

Oni appear frequently in various arts and media, from Noh theater and picture scrolls to modern fiction and political propaganda, They remain common figures in popular …

Folklore And The Internet: Vernacular Expression In A Digital World, Trevor J. Blank

All USU Press Publications

Folklore and the Internet is a pioneering examination of the folkloric qualities of the World Wide Web, e-mail, and related digital media. It shows that folk culture, sustained by a new and evolving vernacular, has been a key, since the Internetýs beginnings, to language, practice, and interaction online. Users of many sorts continue to develop the Internet as a significant medium for generating, transmitting, documenting, and preserving folklore. In a set of new, insightful essays, contributors Trevor J. Blank, Simon J. Bronner, Robert Dobler, Russell Frank, Gregory Hansen, Robert Glenn Howard, Lynne S. McNeill, Elizabeth Tucker, and William Westerman showcase …

The Fierce Tribe, Mickey Weems

All USU Press Publications

In this ethnography that documents the folk nature of popular culture, Mickey Weems applies interdisciplinary interpretation to a subject that demands such a breakdown of intellectual boundaries. The Circuit, an expression of gay culture, comprises large dance events—gatherings, celebrations, communions, festivals. Music and dance drive complex, shared performances—electronic house music played by professional DJs and mass ecstatic dancing that engenders communitas. Other performances, from drag queens and concerts to contests, theatrics, and the individual display of muscular bodies are part of the festivities.

Body sculpting through muscle building is strongly associated with the Circuit, and masculine aggression is both displayed …

The Folklore Muse, Frank De Caro

All USU Press Publications

Folklore—the inherently creative expression, transmission, and performance of cultural traditions—has always provided a deep well of material for writers, musicians, and artists of all sorts. Folklorists usually employ descriptive and analytical prose, but they, like scholars in other social sciences, have increasingly sought new, creative and reflexive modes of discourse. Many folklorists are also creative writers, some well known as such, and the folk traditions they research often provide shape and substance to their work. This collection of creative writing grounded in folklore and its study brings together some of the best examples of such writing.

Contributors to this collection …

Breaking Forms: The Shift To Performance In Late Twentieth-Century Irish Drama, Christie L. Fox

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The People Of Bear Hunter Speak: Oral Histories Of The Cache Valley Shoshones Regarding The Bear River Massacre, Aaron L. Crawford

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Cache Valley Shoshone are the survivors of the Bear River Massacre, where a battle between a group of US. volunteer troops from California and a Shoshone village degenerated into the worst Indian massacre in US. history, resulting in the deaths of over 200 Shoshones. The massacre occurred due to increasing tensions over land use between the Shoshones and the Mormon settlers. Following the massacre, the Shoshones attempted settling in several different locations in Box Elder County, eventually finding a home in Washakie, Utah. However, the LDS Church sold the land where the city of Washakie sat, forcing the Shoshones …

Haunting Experiences: Ghosts In Contemporary Folklore, Diane E. Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, Jeannie B. Thomas

All USU Press Publications

Ghosts and the supernatural appear throughout modern culture, in any number of entertainment, commercial, and other contexts. Popular media's commodified representations of ghosts can be quite different from what people believe about them, based on tradition or direct experience. Belief and tradition and the popular or commercial nevertheless continually feed off each other. They frequently share space in how people think about the supernatural. In Haunting Experiences, three well-known folklorists broaden the discussion of ghost lore by examining it from multiple angles in various modern contexts. Diane E. Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, and Jeannie Banks Thomas take ghosts seriously. They …

Folklore/Cinema: Popular Film As Vernacular Culture, Sharon R. Sherman, Mikel J. Koven

All USU Press Publications

Interest in the conjunctions of film and folklore is stronger and more diverse than ever. Documentaries on folk life and expression remain a vital genre, but scholars such as Sharon Sherman and Mikel Koven also are exploring how folklore elements appear in, and merge with, popular cinema. They look at how movies, a popular culture medium, can as well be both a medium and type of folklore, playing cultural roles and conveying meanings customarily found in other folkloric forms. They thus use the methodology of folklore studies to analyze films made for commercial distribution. The contributors to this book look …

The Meaning Of Folklore, Simon J. Bronner

All USU Press Publications

The essays of Alan Dundes virtually created the meaning of folklore as an American academic discipline. Yet many of them went quickly out of print after their initial publication in far-flung journals. Brought together for the first time in this volume compiled and edited by Simon Bronner, the selection surveys Dundes's major ideas and emphases, and is introduced by Bronner with a thorough analysis of Dundes's long career, his interpretations, and his inestimable contribution to folklore studies.

The Marrow Of Human Experience, William A. Wilson

All USU Press Publications

Composed over several decades, the essays here are remarkably fresh and relevant. They offer instruction for the student just beginning the study of folklore as well as repeated value for the many established scholars who continue to wrestle with issues that Wilson has addressed. As his work has long offered insight on critical mattersn--nationalism, genre, belief, the relationship of folklore to other disciplines in the humanities and arts, the currency of legend, the significance of humor as a cultural expression, and so forth--so his recent writing, in its reflexive approach to narrative and storytelling, illuminates today's paradigms. Its notable autobiographical …