Anthropology Commons^™

All Roads Lead To Darrington: Building A Bluegrass Community In Western Washington, James W. Edgar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Through the mid-twentieth century, a significant pattern of migration occurred between Appalachia and the Pacific Northwest, with Washington’s thriving timber industry offering compelling economic opportunities. Many workers and families from western North Carolina settled in the small mountain town of Darrington, Washington, frequently accompanied by their banjos and guitars. As a group of young bluegrass enthusiasts from Seattle established relationships with Darrington’s “Tar Heel” musicians, a collaborative music community formed, laying the foundation for the region’s contemporary bluegrass scene.

Drawn from a series of ethnographic interviews, this project illuminates the development of a bluegrass community in western Washington, while identifying …

The Player Character's Journey: The Hero's Journey In Moldvay's Dungeons & Dragons, Robert Leopold

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the archetypes, motifs, and stages of the Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey as they are found in the Moldvay revision of the rules to Basic Dungeons & Dragons, that emerge from playing the game using the seven adventure modules printed for these rules. Using narratological concepts, the definition of what makes narrative is expanded to include the narrative that emerges by playing story-based roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons. These narratives, based on the seven adventure modules, are the analyzed using Campbell's monomyth as an interpretive tool, showing that these types of narratives are up to …

Children Of A One-Eyed God: Impairment In The Myth And Memory Of Medieval Scandinavia, Michael David Lawson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using the lives of impaired individuals catalogued in the Íslendingasögur as a narrative framework, this study examines medieval Scandinavian social views regarding impairment from the ninth to the thirteenth century. Beginning with the myths and legends of the eddic poetry and prose of Iceland, it investigates impairment in Norse pre-Christian belief; demonstrating how myth and memory informed medieval conceptualizations of the body. This thesis counters scholarly assumptions that the impaired were universally marginalized across medieval Europe. It argues that bodily difference, in the Norse world, was only viewed as a limitation when it prevented an individual from fulfilling roles that …

The Unsung Hero Character: A Harbinger Device Of Misfortune, Eutimio Talavera

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis introduces an obscure storytelling device, The Unsung Hero character, as one way of examining how movies function as stories. This character is often overlooked, as it frequently cloaks its idiosyncrasies, thus it lacks any apparent signs of internal conflict. This analysis foregrounds the character’s overall functionality, found only in rare instances and typically in the story of a movie. With effective implementation in a story, as a functional harbinger device, brief appearances of The Unsung Hero character demonstrate flashpoints or disclosures of a forthcoming misfortune in the story. This movie analysis shows how The Unsung Hero character functions …

The Doyen Of Dixie: A Survey Of The Banjo Stylings Of Uncle Dave Macon, Corbin F. Hayslett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

David Harrison Macon (1870-1952) is often memorialized for his showmanship rather than his banjo playing. To compartmentalize such a significant American musician yields a wide gap within scholarship about Macon, country music history and the banjo. Macon’s banjo playing, documented through over two-hundred and fifty recordings made between the 1920s and 1950s, represents an array of cultures, eras, ethnicities, and styles all preserved in the repertoire of one of the most prolific country musicians of the 20^th century. This study reveals Macon’s playing by considering such factors as influences that preceded his professional tenure, identifying elements within his playing …

"Some Things Grew No Less With Time:" Tracing Atu 510b From The Thirteenth To The Twentieth Century, Rachel L. Maynard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a comparative analysis of seven different variants of the fairy tale commonly known as “Donkeyskin,” classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther folktale motif index as ATU 510B. By comparing so many different iterations of one fairy tale, it is easier to recognize the inherent attitudes concerning women and their place in society contained in this tale. Additionally, reading multiple variants from different centuries lends a perspective on the way that these attitudes changed over the centuries. Each of the thirteenth century texts considered end with their heroines trapped in loveless marriages, much like the seventeenth-century fairy tale, “Donkeyskin,” their …

The Old Deery Inn & Museum: An Ethnographic Case Study, Rebecca J. Proffitt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses qualitative ethnographic research methods to present a case study that explores the multiplicity of meanings and representations that are attached to the Old Deery Inn & Museum in Blountville, Tennessee. Within the community, the Inn functions as a center for cultural memory, with the physical structure itself acting as an artifact that holds community identity. This community narrative contrasts with the official narrative used by tourism entities that markets the Inn as a part of the Appalachian region, situating the Inn within a complex and intricately constructed identity of place that is shaped by lived experiences as …

Fire On The Prisoners: An Autoethnographic Study Of Ethics In Historical Storytelling, A. Trae Mcmaken

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During field experience as a storyteller constructing a performance based on the Battle of Kings Mountain on behalf of the Overmountain Victory Trail Association and the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, I encountered ethical and philosophical dilemmas. This challenge centered on ethical and spiritual convictions that put me in potential conflict with the task of creating a performance about war. This experience forms the basis of an autoethnographic approach to the art form, revealing the critical role played by personal ethics and a functioning engagement with historiography and narrative theory in producing effective performance stories. Historical performance storytelling has little …

The Digital Folklore Project: Tracking The Oral Tradition On The World Wide Web., Jasen Bacon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I collected forty-two e-mail forwards over the course of four months, and from those I formulated a framework that adapts existing theory in collection and study of real-world folklore to the emerging folk communities that exist on the internet. Through this analysis I prove that the same genres of folklore that is routinely collected by folklorists have been adapted to fit the digital environment of the internet. I then use the framework that I lay out to perform a study of the e-mails themselves.