Folklore Commons^™

Kentucky Folklife Festival - Frankfort, Kentucky, 1997 (Fa 661), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives project 661. This collection features information anf documentation about the first annual Kentucky Folklife Festival held from September 18-21, 1997 in Frankfort, Kentucky. The festival was sponsored by the Kentucky Folklife Program, an inter-agency program of the Kentucky Historical Society and the Kentucky Arts Council agencies of the Education, Arts and Humanities Cabinet.

Highway 31-W Folklife Survey (Fa 660), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives project 660. This collection includes information and documentation of the Highway 31-W Folklife Survey conducted by folklorist Dale Johnson throughout the summer and fall of 1999. Sponsored by the Kentucky Arts Council, the West Kentucky Corporation, and Mammoth Cave National Park, the survey was undertaken to document folklore and traditions from the U.S. Highway 31-W corridor running from Louisville, Kentucky to the Tennessee state line near Franklin, Kentucky.

Always A River: The Ohio River And The American Experience (Fa 657), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 657. Collection features documentation on the "Always a River" exhibit sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as the Humanities Councils of the six states whose boundaries touch the Ohio River. The exhibit demonstrated the relationship between the individual and the environment. One exhibit was featured on a barge that traveled from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Cairo, Illinois in 1991.

Kentucky River Exhibit (Fa 655), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 655. Documentation relating to a traveling exhibit based on interviews and illustrative material from the Kentucky River Folklife Project of 1989. This collection documents the exhibit's creation process from 1989 to 1992. The exhibit was made available initially to town halls and libraries in counties along to Kentucky River, and then traveled across the state through the "Museums to Go" program of the Kentucky Historical Society.

Report On My Fall 2013 Sabbatical Leave, Haiwang Yuan

DLPS Faculty Publications

Haiwang Yuan, Professor of Department of Library Public Services of WKU, received his 2012-2013 Research & Creative Activities Program (RCAP) grant from WKU Research Office and a book contract from a U.S. publisher ABC-CLIO to write a book on Tibetan folktales. He then applied for and was awarded the fall 2013 sabbatical leave. With the grant and the leave, he made his research field trip to Tibet and some other Tibetan communities in China. This is the report he has given to his dean and WKU Academic Affairs Office as required. He has now submitted the manuscripts of his book.

Kentucky River Folklife Project (Fa 654), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folkllife Archives Project 654. Chiefly interviews, photographs, slides, and tape logs for a summer 1989 project conducted by the Kentucky Folklife Program, in conjunction with other supporting agencies and institutions, about folklife and folklore along the Kentucky River. Project results were presented to the public in two formats: a traveling exhibit and narrative stage presentations.

Religion, Partisanship, And Attitudes Towards Science Policy, Ted G. Jelen, Linda A. Lockett

Political Science Faculty Research

We examine issues involving science which have been contested in recent public debate. These “contested science” issues include human evolution, stem-cell research, and climate change. We find that few respondents evince consistently skeptical attitudes toward science issues, and that religious variables are generally strong predictors of attitudes toward individual issues. Furthermore, and contrary to analyses of elite discourse, partisan identification is not generally predictive of attitudes toward contested scientific issues.

First Baptist Church - Frankfort, Kentucky - Oral History Project (Fa 652), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 652. This collection features oral histories gathered from members of the First Baptist Church located in Frankfort, Kentucky. The project was started by Dr. Lee Harris in 2010 in honor of the church's upcoming 177th anniversary celebration.

Atcher Family Reunion - West Point, Kentucky (Fa 653), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 653. This collection consists of photographs and video documentation of the Atcher family reunion held on June 11, 2011 in West Point, Kentucky. Activities consisted of a tour of the Fort Knox reservation to see family graves and a family picnic in the afternoon.

Stringbean Festival - Gray Hawk, Kentucky (Fa 651), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 651. Materials documenting the 2003 Stringbean Festival, held in Gray Hawk, Jackson County, Kentucky. The festival is hosted by Stringbean Memorial, Inc., a non-profit corporation named in honor of the late David "Stringbean" Akemon (1916-1973), a native of Jackson County and an internationally known musician and performer at the Grand Ole Opry and the televison show, Hee Haw.

Benton Big Sing (Fa 648), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 648. This collection features video and audio documentation of the Benton Big Sing held in Benton, Kentucky. Originally organized in 1884, the Benton Big Sing is held annually on the fourth Sunday in May.

Jack In The City (Fa 649), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 649. "Jack in the City" is a Community Arts Project of the Covington Community Center in Covington, Kentucky. The book is based upon stories of Appalachian migrants that are currently living in Covington.

Annual Pennington Goat Ropin' Festival (Fa 650), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives project 650. The 2004 Goat Ropin' Festival was held on Agust 29th on the farm of folk musician Eddie Pennington. The festival is a gathering of local and traveling musicians who come together to celebrate the joy of music and play tunes.

Interview With Jim Carroll (Fa 1098), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Oral Histories

Transcript of interview by Brent Björkman with Jim Carroll about his experience as a park ranger at Mammoth Cave National Park. In 2013, Kentucky Folklife Program Director Brent Björkman received the Archie Green Fellowship from the Library of Congress to look more intimately at the life stories of the working men and women employed by Mammoth Cave National Park. Part of Folklife Archives Project 1098 titled "Rangerlore: The Occupational Folklife of Parks."

Tour Of Kentucky Folk Music (Fa 647), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives project 647. Since the spring of 1992, the Tour of Kentucky Folk Music, a program of the Kentucky Arts Council, has provided Kentucky communities with the opportunity to present regional folk music on a statewide level. From 1992 to 1999, more than sixty concerts featuring diverse folk artists have been produced representing the five cultural regions of the state.

Molding Messages: Analyzing The Reworking Of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ In Grimm’S Fairy Tale Classics And Dollhouse, Jeana Jorgensen, Brittany Warman

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The story of “Sleeping Beauty” (ATU 410) is one of the most consistently captivating fairy tales. It tells of a cursed princess dreaming in a tower, waiting patiently for her prince to rescue her. Those who recreate the tale for contemporary audiences spin the story anew, reconstructing again and again what it means both to sleep and to awaken. This chapter analyzes two modern television versions of the tale, one for children and one for adults, comparing their incorporation of feminist messages and parallel ideas about shaping narratives and shaping lives. The children’s cartoon Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics (also called …

Cutting A Thousandsticks Of Tobacco Makes A Boy A Man: Traditionalized Performances Of Masculinity In Occupational Contexts, Ann Ferrell, Pauline Greenhill, Editor, Diane Tye, Editor

Folk Studies & Anthropology Faculty Book Gallery

In Unsettling Assumptions, editors Pauline Greenhill and Diane Tye examine how tradition and gender come together to unsettle assumptions about culture and its study.

Contributors explore the intersections of traditional expressive culture and sex/gender systems to question, investigate, or upset concepts like family, ethics, and authenticity. Individual essays consider myriad topics such as Thanksgiving turkeys, rockabilly and bar fights, Chinese tales of female ghosts, selkie stories, a noisy Mennonite New Year's celebration, the Distaff Gospels, Kentucky tobacco farmers, international adoptions, and more.

In Unsettling Assumptions, folkloric forms express but also counteract negative aspects of culture like misogyny, homophobia, …

(Review) Jones, Christine A. And Jennifer Schacker, Eds., Marvelous Transformations: An Anthology Of Fairy Tales And Contemporary Critical Perspectives And Raynard, Sophie, Ed., The Teller’S Tale: Lives Of The Classic Fairy Tale Writers, Jeana Jorgensen

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Jeana Jorgensen's review of:

Marvelous Transformations: An Anthology of Fairy Tales and Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Ed. Christine A. Jones and Jennifer Schacker. (Peterborough, ON : Broadview Press, 2013. Pp. 580, introduction, notes on contributors, sources.)

The Teller’s Tale: Lives of the Classic Fairy Tale Writers. Ed. Sophie Raynard. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012. Pp. vi + 183, introduction, list of contributors, index.)

Quantifying The Grimm Corpus: Transgressive And Transformative Bodies In The Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Jeana Jorgensen

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

What do bodies mean in fairy tales? Donald Haase’s engagement with the Grimms’ fairy tales has offered some hints, ranging from his attention to feminist scholarship on the Grimms to his multifaceted review of recent Grimm scholarship that addresses various meanings of bodies in the language and translation of their tales. Inspired by Haase’s work and encouragement, I created a database that lists every mention or description of a body in the Grimms’ tales and in five other European tale collections. I detailed the results of this quantitative investigation in my dissertation, generally treating all the tale collections as part …

Strategic Silences: Voiceless Heroes In Fairy Tales, Jeana Jorgensen

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

In a number of international fairy tale types, such as ATU 451 ("The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers"), the female protagonist voluntarily stops speaking in order to attain the object of her quest. In ATU 451, found in the collected tales of the Grimms and Hans Christian Andersen as well as in oral tradition, the protagonist remains silent while weaving the shirts needed to disenchant her brothers from their birdlike forms. While this silence is undoubtedly disempowering in some ways as she cannot defend herself from persecution and accusations of wickedness, here I argue that the choice to remain silent …

Strategic Deployments Of ‘Sisterhood’ And Questions Of Solidarity At A Women’S Development Project In Janakpur, Nepal, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

Linguistic uses of ‘sisterhood’ provide a window into disparate understandings of relationality among virtual and actual interlocutors in women’s development across vectors of caste, class, ethnicity and nationality. In this essay, I examine the trope of ‘sisterhood’ as it was employed at a women’s development project in Janakpur, Nepal, in the 1990s. I demonstrate that the use of this common signifier of kinship with culturally disparate ‘signifieds’ created a confusion of meaning, and differential readings of the politics of relationality. In my view, ‘sister,’ as used at this project, was a multivalent, strategically deployed, and divergently interpreted term. In particular, …

Ua68/1/2 Potter College Of Arts & Letters Dean, Assistant Deans, Committees Events, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by the Potter College of Arts & Letters Dean's Office regarding events, performances, series, conferences, and lectures sponsored or produced by Potter College for faculty, staff, students and general public.

Includes records related to the Cultural Enhancement Committee, Fine Arts Festival, Faculty Lecture Series, Visual & Performing Arts and Kentucky Heritage Project.

Interview With Bobby Carson (Fa 1098), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Oral Histories

Transcript of interview by Brent Bjorkman with Bobby Carson about his experiences as a park ranger at Mammoth Cave National Park. In 2013, Kentucky Folklife Program Director Brent Bjorkman received the Archie Green Fellowship from the Library of Congress to look more intimately at the life stories of the working men and women employed by Mammoth Cave National Park. Part of Folklife Archives Project 1098 titled "Rangerlore: The Occupational Folklife of Parks."

Superstitious Precebo Illusion : Does Luck Charm Really Gives You Luck? It's Mere Possession Does!, Pik Ying Chan

Bachelor of Social Sciences – Senior Theses

Superstition is quite common in the modern society, people still hold superstitious beliefs and often engage in superstitious rituals that bring good luck. For example, Feng shui is the most popular superstition among Chinese and carrying a Feng shui luck charm such as mystic knot and red envelopes was believed to bring good luck. Likewise, in Western superstition, similar astrological talismans are believed to strengthen different qualities of the possessor. When one believes that certain object carried mystical power, having possession of it would grant the owner access to those powers. Nonetheless, the mystic power of these talismans is questionable …

Folkloric Musicians Among The Bugakhwe, Robert Veith

Masters Theses

Increased access to global media by traditional culture in remote parts of Africa has, in many cases, seen indigenous music marginalized in favor of imported forms. In some places, a folkloric tradition thrives, though this music may face extinction if those who practice it do not document their art in a way which can be passed down to future generations. For this project, I recorded seven musician/composers of the Bugakhwe, a Khoisan people group living in the Okavango Delta region of Botswana. Two were given enough studio time to create a complete CD-length set, so as to show off the …