Folklore Commons^™

This Needs More Time!: Considerations For Improving Partnerships Between Communities And Institutions In Folklore, Sarah M. Gordon, Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth, Junious Lee Brickhouse, Ashley Minner Jones, Naomi Sturm-Wijesinghe

Art Faculty Publications

From 2021 to 2023, the authors convened a series of discussion forums at the annual meetings of the American Folklore Society to discuss the challenges of community-institutional partnerships in the field of folklore. This perspectives piece presents the outcomes of that series of panels with the goal of advancing adaptability in institutional practices to better support community-engaged work. We seek to promote practices that better respond to community needs in collaborative partnerships through disciplinary norms and institutional bureaucratic mechanisms.

Folklore And Region In Actual Play Podcasting: An Interview With Clint And Griffin Mcelroy, Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth

Art Faculty Publications

The article focuses on the rise of "actual play" podcasts like The Adventure Zone, which use tabletop roleplaying games as a medium for storytelling. Topics include the show's engagement with Appalachian folklore, the emotional depth of its narrative themes such as memory and loss, and its representation of West Virginia's cultural landscape.

Introduction: Beyond Hollow Materialism, Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth, Zada Komara

Art Faculty Publications

This introduction to the special issue, “Transformative Approaches to Materiality in Appalachian Studies,” provides theoretical background and examples that demonstrate applications of new material culture and materiality theory to key Appalachian studies themes. It offers new directions for the study of material entanglement in social relationships by reviewing the history of material culture studies in the Appalachian context, fundamental theoretical propositions emerging from the “material turn” in social theory, and examples drawn from ethnographic and archaeological research into the patterns of use of material culture in the timber country of West Virginia and coalfields of eastern Kentucky. Finally, this introduction …

"Queens Of Ghost-Land" 134 Years Later: Un-Masking An Appalachian Witchcraft Accuser, Aíne Norris

English Faculty Publications

In 1891, newspapers across America printed a story about witches in the Appalachian Mountains and the alleged powers they possessed to control their small farming community. The article was scathing in accusation and ultimately contributed to continued othering of the women profiled, increasing their visible vulnerabilities of class, gender, and societal status. Despite an implied familiarity with the region, the article was published with initials for its byline, an act that simultaneously identified the author to locals as historian Eva Grant while offering her anonymized national protection as a subject expert. For over five years the accusations were re-printed in …

In The Doha International Airport, A Forest, Paulina Bianca Ocampo

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

In the Doha International Airport, a forest calls is a poem about a culture of deep ecology in a context of coloniality, brain drain, and my own part in it. Despite over 300 years of colonization in the Philippines and the colonization of our own education system, a certain deep ecology continues to thrive in the belief of spirits in nature. Among Filipinos, even in the thick of the Anthropocene, a sense of respect and fear for nature continues to exist. It is common, for example, for Filipinos to ask these spirits for permission to pass through forested areas. However, …

Serendipityblah, Amanda Linn Kunkel

English Theses & Dissertations

So, you’ve stumbled upon my neck of the woods, where the weird and fantastical reside. Wit and humor may save you here but beware of what draws near. Beneath the bright and smiling facade, you may find the danse macabre. Within these pages you’ll find magic and wonder, darkness, and failure. The setting is post-March 2020 in Norfolk, Virginia. An urban city at the heart of Hampton Roads where the lines between reality and otherworldliness blur. Witches protect ghosts in a downtown Abbey. The fae break new ground in the art district of Ghent. Even Death stalks the halls of …

Bodylore And Dress, Amy K. Milligan

Women's & Gender Studies Faculty Publications

Bodylore includes the ways in which the body is used as a canvas for inherited and chosen identity. Bodylore considers the symbolic inventory of dress and hair, addressing a range of identities from conservative religious groups like the Amish and the Hasidim to edgy goth and punk devotees. The body is scripted in portrayals of race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, and politics, including such topics as tattoos, piercing, scarification, hair covering and styling, traditional and folk dress, fashion, and body modification. The central bodylore questions are whether individuals choose consciously or subconsciously to engage with their performative body, as well …

The Anunnaki, The Vampire, And The Structure Of Dissent, Marcus Librizzi

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The latest incarnation of the vampire - in the conspiracy theories of David Icke - reveals the critical, revolutionary heart of the vampire legend. Discourse on the vampire appears above all to provide a structure of dissent, a metaphorical means of representing and soliciting critiques of the social order. The Anunnaki form of the vampire - in its immersion in the constellation of contemporary conspiracy theories, in its reflection on global capitalism, and in its blurring of historical and fictional narratives - has moved this structure of dissent from the cloak of darkness to the light of day.

Begging The Earth's Forgiveness: Russian Folklore In The Novels Of F. M. Dostoevsky, Wendy Kristine Chia-Klesch

English Theses & Dissertations

The pervading theme of Dostoevsky's novels is humanity's need to discover meaning in the natural world and in human experience. For generations, the Russian peasantry created myths and folk tales in order to understand the workings of Damp Mother Earth and to endow the earth and their lives with meaning. By the nineteenth century, however, the principles of Western materialism, which Dostoevsky likened to "intelligent bacteria," began to drift across the border and infect the Russian intelligentsia. These new Westernizers devoted themselves to dismantling existing religious and folk traditions and replacing them with a modern sign system based on science …

The Red Hawk's Cry, Malaika Anne King

Institute for the Humanities Theses

The Red Hawk's Cry, a collection of twenty-eight poems, is arranged in three sections. "Calling It Back," the first section, consists of eight poems. The title and the poem rely on the concept of resurrecting people, the past, and pieces of the self in order to release them. Several of the poems' subjects are childhood and the personal mythology one weaves growing up. "Dialogue" has nine poems which revolve around relationships with lovers and friends. Though there appears to be a chronological order, the poems are placed more for interplay than for a constructed time line. The final section, "The …