Down The Bay Oral History Project Newsletter - Winter 2024, Center For Archaeological Studies, Mccall Library

Down the Bay Oral History Project Newsletter

Public newsletter sharing information about progress and discoveries during the ongoing Down The Bay Project.

Alfred Russel Wallace Notes 26: Confessions Of A 'Wallace Enthusiast', Charles H. Smith

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

The author’s longstanding interest in the life and thought of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) is profiled in three ways, through: (1) a brief factual review of its history (2) a discussion of some problems with the way Wallace has been treated over the years, and (3) a consideration of the author’s personal experience with the paranormal, and how this has made him, if not always a full believer, more patient with divergent explanations of the type Wallace was famous for.

A United, Not A Divider: Community, Identity, Performance & The Tomato Krewe Parading Group Of East Nashville's Tomato Art Festival, Allison Cate

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis is an ethnographic study of the “Tomato Krewe,” a social group that participates in the parade of East Nashville’s annual Tomato Art Festival. Drawing on participant-observation, interviews, and my own experiences as a member of the krewe and resident of East Nashville, I examine krewe members’ narratives about the festival, the material culture that they create for the parade, and the levels of performance that they engage in while parading. Central to my analysis is how krewe members understand the Tomato Art Festival as an expression of East Nashville identity.

Down The Bay Oral History Project Newsletter - Spring 2023, Center For Archaeological Studies, Mccall Library

Down the Bay Oral History Project Newsletter

Public newsletter sharing information about progress and discoveries during the ongoing Down The Bay Project.

Cultural Heritage And Storytelling: The Role Of Mythology And Folklore In Popular Fictional Novels, Katrina Powers

A with Honors Projects

An ethnographic paper focusing on how mythology and folklore in popular fictional novels connects readers to cultural heritage.

Down The Bay Oral History Project Newsletter - Fall 2023, Center For Archaeological Studies, Mccall Library

Down the Bay Oral History Project Newsletter

Public newsletter sharing information about progress and discoveries during the ongoing Down The Bay Project.

Down The Bay Oral History Project Newsletter - Summer 2023, Center For Archaeological Studies, Mccall Library

Down the Bay Oral History Project Newsletter

Public newsletter sharing information about progress and discoveries during the ongoing Down The Bay Project.

Children Tell Landscape-Lore Among Perceptions Of Place: Relating Ecocultural Digital Stories In A Conscientizing/Decolonizing Exploration, Meredith Jean Bird Miller

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

We know that when children feel a sense-of-relation within local natural environments, they are more prone to feel concern for them, while nurturing well-being and resilience in themselves and in lands/waters they inhabit. Positive environmental behaviors often follow into adulthood. Our human capacities for creating sustainable solutions in response to growing repercussions of global warming and climate change may grow if more children feel a sense of belonging in the wild natural world. As educators, if we listen to and learn from students’ voices about how they engage in nature, we can create pedagogical experiences directly relevant to their lives. …

Alfred Russel Wallace Notes 21: Wallace & The Doorway To The Universe, Charles H. Smith

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

An important yet largely unrecognized theme in the thought of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823−1913) was his insistence that all dependably-reported phenomena, even those of aberrant nature, were worthy of a respectful kind of attention: that is, a kind which did not automatically banish difficult subjects to the realm of myth or superstition. In this work, Wallace’s philosophy in this direction is documented, and linked to the world of post-Age-of-Enlightenment revisionism.

2022 Iggad Conference Program, Charles Joyner Institute For Gullah And African Diaspora Studies

IGGAD Conference Programs

Program of the 2022 IGGAD Conference: Who Owns This? Communities, Heritage, and Preservation.

Understanding Religious Tolerance In Yongchang, China, Liming Gao

Honors Theses

The formation of China is a process of national integration and a fusion of different beliefs. However, under Chairman Mao (1949-1976) and specifically during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), people were reeducated to focus on Communism and expel remnants of traditional Chinese culture including the various religions. Although, after the Cultural Revolution, China reinstated its policy of religious freedom, there were still strict laws against religion. Despite such circumstances, Chinese people still practice their religious beliefs. The Yongchang area, located in Gansu Province in the northwest of China is a typical region of Chinese culture. At the same time, compared to …

Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Benefit To Climate-Displaced And Host Communities, Gül Aktürk, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Climate change is borderless, and its impacts are not shared equally by all communities. It causes an imbalance between people by creating a more desirable living environment for some societies while erasing settlements and shelters of some others. Due to floods, sea level rise, destructive storms, drought, and slow-onset factors such as salinization of water and soil, people lose their lands, homes, and natural resources. Catastrophic events force people to move voluntarily or involuntarily. The relocation of communities is a debatable climate adaptation measure which requires utmost care with human rights, ethics, and psychological well-being of individuals upon the issues …

Exploring Evidence Of Lost And Forgotten Irish Food Traditions In Irish Cookbooks 1980-2015, Diarmaid Murphy

Articles

A study by the Irish Food Board, Bord Bia, in 2008 outlined some lost and forgotten food traditions in Ireland based on the evidence from a pre-selected expert group. This paper explores the inclusion of traditional Irish foods within seventy-nine Irish cookbooks, published between 1980 to 2015. Extant academic and grey literature on food traditions and cookbooks, together with the content of the cookbooks, identified a gradual decline in the presence of certain traditional Irish foods, to the point where they could be deemed lost or forgotten. The study, however, also finds a re-emergence in the most recent period. A …

Alfred Russel Wallace Notes 13: Wallace On Prayer, Charles H. Smith

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823−1913) is known to most for his natural history explorations and theoretical biology, but he also developed thoughts on a number of subjects relatable to a wider appreciation of evolutionary cosmology. His adoption of spiritualism, for one, was attuned to this mission, and in turn his otherwise difficult-to-interpret two-sided position on prayer.

Passing Down The Rolling Pin: Lefse, Memory, And A Norwegian-American Identity, Rebecca Garbe

Scandinavian Studies Student Award

This paper explores the intersections between memory and food-making and how they inform a Norwegian-American cultural identity. Based on fieldwork done in June and July of 2019 in Fosston, Minnesota, I use lefse, a Norwegian potato-based flatbread, as a focal point, for analysis. I argue that lefse-making in Fosston acts as a medium through which residents engage with a collective memory of an immigrant heritage. This traditional food-making, I assert, relies on knowledge passed down through and across family lines allowing food-makers and eaters to experience an embodied connection to their cultural past. Investigating my own Norwegian heritage, I draw …

2020 Iggad Conference Program, Charles Joyner Institute For Gullah And African Diaspora Studies

IGGAD Conference Programs

Program of the 2020 IGGAD Conference: Without Borders: Tracing the Cultural, Archival, and Political African Diaspora.

The Tradition Of Cassava Rice Eating: Communication Patterns Of Sunda Wiwitan Indigenous Families In Cultural Heritage In Cireundeu Village, Cimahi City, West Java, Nanda Utaridah, Antar Venus, Atwar Bajari, Dadang Suganda

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Abstract

The people of Cireundeu Village are known to hold firm Sundanese wiwitan customs and traditions of ancestral heritage that contain local wisdom. The tradition of eating cassava rice has been carried out by indigenous peoples for a hundred years since 1918 for generations. The process of introducing and applying the tradition of eating cassava rice was started by this traditional family in carrying out the inheritance of giving culture to the village of Cireundeu.

This research uses a qualitative method with a case study approach to three indigenous families in Cireundeu village who have different beliefs and birthplaces. As …

Ferrell, Ann Katherine, B. 1972 (Fa 1381), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1381. Interview conducted on 11 December 2019 by Ann Ferrell with Michael Ann Williams, who discusses her education and academic career as a folklorist and vernacular architecture historian. From 1987-2018, Williams was a faculty member in the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology at Western Kentucky University.

White, Linda C. (Fa 1275), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1275. Student folk studies project titled “The Bloodshed Legacy: Historical Legends of Civil War Guerilla Activity in Western Appalachia,” which includes descriptions of historic folk legends in eastern Kentucky and Tennessee. Transcriptions of interviews on reel-to-reel tapes may include description of the legend, date collected, and informant’s name and address.

2019 Iggad Conference Program, Charles Joyner Institute For Gullah And African Diaspora Studies

IGGAD Conference Programs

Program of the 2019 IGGAD Conference: Tracing the African Diaspora: Places of Suffering, Resilience, and Reinvention.

Ohio River Survey (Fa 656), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 656. Kentucky Folklife Program project titled: “Ohio River Survey,” which includes interviews, tape logs, photographs and other documentation of folklife along the Ohio River in Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. Interviews may include a description of belief, traditional occupation, practice, craft, or tool, informant’s name, age, birth date, and address.

On Being Trans: Narrative, Identity, Performance, And Community, Chloe Jo Brown

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis focuses on various topics related to transgender identity and culture. Through a combination of ethnographic and secondary research, I studied transgender coming out narratives, trans media representation, transgender performance and identity, and conceptualizations of group and chosen family in a community of trans students, the WKU Transgender and Non-Binary Student Group.

The three chapters of my thesis address some of the traditional milestones of a trans person’s acculturation: coming out, constructing one’s newly discovered trans identity, and finding community. Chapter 1 explores coming out as transgender, and the way in in which coming out is valued and discussed …

Public Ritual Sacrifice As A Controlling Mechanism For The Aztec, Madeline Nicholson

Honors Scholar Theses

For decades, archaeologists have researched the fascinating finds of Aztec sacrifice. Evidence of their sacrifices are seen on temple walls, stone carvings, bones, and in Spanish chronicler drawings. Although public ritual sacrifice was practiced before the Aztecs, with evidence from the Olmec civilization (1200-1300 BCE) and Maya (200-900 BCE), Aztec sacrifices are among the most extensively documented. How does such a practice survive in different civilizations through different rulers? This thesis will analyze the phases of Aztec public ritual sacrifice (specifically the location, length, and number of sacrifices) and the close relationship to their origin myths, or founding stories. It …

Beliefs And Practices Related To Community Water Sources: "The Specialness Of Springs", Anita Kay Westhues

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The practice of gathering water from community springs in Kentucky constitutes a rich and complex research setting for the study of folklore beliefs and practices. Local knowledge construction, nostalgia as an evaluative process, contested views about purity and impurity, the protection and retention of a “public commons,” and the crisis which ensues when infrastructure maintenance and the delivery of safe drinking water are no longer guaranteed to communities, are all relevant to this vernacular practice. My thesis explores these topics, informed by fieldwork I conducted in nine Kentucky counties, which included formal and informal interviews with individuals who have used …

Inexhaustible Magic: Folklore As World Building In Harry Potter, Samantha G. Castleman

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The practice of secondary world building, the creation of a fantasy realm with its own unique laws and systems has long been a tradition within the genre of fantasy writing. In many notable cases, such as those publications by J.R.R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft, folklore exhibited in the world of the reader has been specifically used not only to construct these fantasy realms, but to add depth and believability to their presentation. The universe of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series demonstrates this same practice of folklore-as-world-building, yet her construction does much more than just create a fantasy realm. By using …

The Healing Power Of Music And Chants Amongst The Ahl-E Haqq People, Azadeh Vatanpour

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis examines current practices of music and prayers in the context of Jam ritual among the Ahl-e Haqq, a vernacular religion group in Iranian Kurdistan. I examine the construction and sacralization of the sacred instrument of the Ahl-e Haqq, tanbūr. I also explore the sacred prayer, kalām, and the association of prayer and music. Through the ethnographic method, participant observations, and interviewing religious figures and master musicians during the fieldwork in Sahneh, Iran, I investigate the relation of the Ahl-e Haqq prayers and music, and their effect on healing during their sacred ritual performance. Drawing primarily on scholarship from …

Medieval Iceland, Greenland, And The New Human Condition: A Case Study In Integrated Environmental Humanities, Steven Hartman, A.E.J. Ogilvie, Jón Haukur Ingimundarson, A.J. Dugmore, George Hambrecht, Thomas Mcgovern

Publications and Research

This paper contributes to recent studies exploring the longue durée of human impacts on island landscapes, the impacts of climate and other environmental changes on human communities, and the interaction of human societies and their environments at different spatial and temporal scales. In particular, the paper addresses Iceland during the medieval period (with a secondary, comparative focus on Norse Greenland) and discusses episodes where environmental and climatic changes have appeared to cross key thresholds for agricultural productivity. The paper draws upon international, interdisciplinary research in the North Atlantic region led by the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) and the Nordic …

Nightmares In The Kitchen: Personal Experience Narratives About Cooking And Food, Sarah T. Shultz

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis explores personal experience narratives about making mistakes in the preparation and serving of food. In order to understand when these narratives, referred to in the text as “kitchen nightmares,” are told, to whom, in what form, and why, one-onone and group ethnographic interviews were conducted. In total, 13 interviews were conducted with 25 individuals (men and women) ranging in age from 19 to 70. Six major themes of kitchen nightmare narratives are identified in Chapter One. Chapter Two explores one of these themes, resistance, in the context of the kitchen nightmare stories of heterosexual married women. Chapter Three …

The Index Of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature From The Lone Star State, Robert Z. Selden Jr., C. Britt Bousman

CRHR: Archaeology

Cultural resources management (CRM) reports represent a rapidly growing proportion of our knowledge associated with archaeological undertakings in the United States. Historically, these reports were printed in limited numbers and distributed to a few libraries and individuals, and few were distributed beyond the political boundaries of any given state. Libraries on the distribution list are reticent to allow patrons to check out these reports due to the fact that they have—and will only ever have—a single copy. Late in 2009, the Texas Historical Commission (THC) permitting guidelines for CRM reports were updated, requiring CRM contractors to submit a digital copy …

Book Review: Kirin Narayan, Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses In The Himalayan Foothills (Kirin Narayan), Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

No abstract provided.