Abstracts for Individual Presentations 1999 AFS Annual Meeting

(Numeric symbols following each abstract identify the session, as listed in the Program, in which the individual presentation will be found.)

ABEYTA, Mardella (Indiana University) RELIGION AND HUMOR: LOS MATACHINES IN HISPANIC AND NATIVE AMERICAN COMMUNITIES IN NEW MEXICO. This comparative analysis will examine the visual and verbal narratives as expressed through the juxtaposition of religion and humor portrayed by the dramatis personae in the sacred ritual drama of Los Matachines in Hispanic and Native American communities in New Mexico. The analysis will focus on the distinct roles the characters play and how through these ritual roles the conflictive religious sociopolitical relationship between the colonizer and the colonized is symbolically represented. Also to be discussed is how this bipolar relationship is re-invented according to the political contextual climate of the day. (4-7)

ABNEY, Lisa (Louisiana Folklife Center, Northwestern State University) GRAVE DIGGING BY HAND IN CENTRAL LOUISIANA. This presentation will document and discuss the tradition of hand digging graves in central Louisiana. In most communities before the advent of memorial parks and corporate run cemeteries, family members and friends dug graves by hand in family or church cemeteries. This tradition, by and large, has dwindled; few graves today are dug by hand. In central Louisiana, however, a relatively strong tradition of hand digging graves still exists. The grave diggers who participate are usually distant relatives, close friends, or fellow church-members of the deceased. For some families, the hand dug grave is an economic necessity; for others, it is a matter of family tradition. (1-10)

ABOUSAMRA, Dina (Western Kentucky University) RESISTING AND RECONSTRUCTING PLACE: AN EXPLORATION OF NARRATIVES OF DISPLACEMENT. How does war affect sense of place? As Roger Abrahams has suggested, places have often been studied by folklorists in terms of natural boundaries and positive ties which people hold to them (JAF 1993). This paper will question our delineations of places and the ways in which we approach and present people’s ties to place and home. I examine Beirut in terms of how the war changed geographical spaces. I explore other issues and questions related to displacement in terms of post-war Beirut and the new "city" which is being created by a dominant institution. (7-2)

ABRAMS, James (Open-Hearth Education Project) PEDAGOGY OF THE COMMONS: SOCIAL LEARNING, CLASS STRUGGLE, AND THE POETICS OF PROPERTY RELATIONS IN THE BOOTLEG COAL INDUSTRY OF PENNSYLVANIA. This paper examines the material and symbolic structuring of a community-based "anti-economy" in the hard coal region of Pennsylvania, 1926 to 1941. Thousands of jobless mining families seized control of privately-owned corporate lands, formed an integrated bootleg coal economy, and struggled with capital and the state over the meanings of property rights. The mobilization of sentiments endorsing communal access to property through direct action, along with improvisational patterns of social learning in relation to the economic processes of production, distribution, and exchange comprised a class-based "pedagogy of the commons," which continues to inform residents of the region today. (4-5)

ALIDOU, Ousseina (Ohio State University) INTEGRATED IDENTITIES: THE NATIVES AND THEIR OTHERS. In a series of interviews with the leading ‘Hausa’ traditional female scholar, it became obvious that we had fundamental differences rooted in distinct epistemological/scholastic traditions: one Afro-Islamic and the other western. These differences further betrayed a divergence in our understanding of the "boundaries" of "nativity" and "otherness". It is these boundaries and their implications--especially for western trained "natives"--that this paper will seek to interrogate against the backdrop of Anthony Appiah’s "typologies on nativism" elucidated in his book, In My Father’s House. (1-5)

ALLEN, Ray (Brooklyn College) CELEBRATING J’OUVERT IN BROOKLYN CARNIVAL. This paper will examine the evolving performance contexts for steel pan music in Brooklyn’s Trinidad-American community, focusing on the recently established "J’Ouvert" ("break of day") Carnival celebration. The revitalization of acoustic steel pan music, traditional calypso, and old mas costuming during J’Ouvert will be discussed. The process by which these expressive forms serve to demarcate the symbolic boundary between Trinidad-American and other Afro-Caribbean peoples (Jamaicans, Barbadians, Haitians, etc.) in central Brooklyn will be explored. (1-7)

ALSUP, Janet (University of Missouri-Columbia) THE CENTRALITY OF BLACK WOMEN IN AN AME CHURCH: A DESCRIPTION OF ONE PASTOR AND HER CONGREGATION. This paper describes an African-American women pastor and her mostly female AME congregation in rural, central Missouri and how they have created a female-centered religious experience. I demonstrate how the Oakley AME Chapel is a collaborative, female, spiritual "folk group" through discussion of the sermons the pastor preaches, the communal relationship of the pastor and her congregation, and the emphasis placed on church and community history and related art. The pastor and congregation have created a woman-centered religious experience that is distinctly different from worship in male-centered AME churches. (4-3)

ANCELET, Barry Jean (University of Southwestern Louisiana) WE LOVE OUR MARDI GRAS: THE SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE MARDI GRAS AND HOW WE READ IT. The South Louisiana Mardi Gras can dazzle photographers, documentary film makers and fieldworkers alike. Masking and costuming traditions based on intense parody and inversion, equally intense improvised dramatic play, and athletic chicken cases and whipping rituals can be so intriguing and engaging that they capture all of our attention. But Mardi Gras is essentially an intimate social event that defines and is defined by its community. This paper reaffirms its community ties, and how this important factor can slip under the radar of some observers. (7-3)

ANDERSON, Trela (University of Southwestern Louisiana) TO BELIEVE OR NOT TO BELIEVE: AN UPDATE ON THE CHURCH’S FRIED CHICKEN RUMOR IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY. This paper will explore the differences between rumor and legend, relate the Church’s Fried Chicken rumor (the assertion that Church’s chicken makes black people sterile) to other contamination and conspiracy rumors, discuss features of the Church’s Corporation which may have made it a target for this type of rumor, and compare my fieldwork to that of Patricia Turner’s in an effort to discover why informants in Southwestern Louisiana might have a somewhat distinct way of responding to and coping with rumors of potential enmity by whites. (4-11)

ANTONSEN, Chris (Ohio State University) TOURING LOCALITY: THE SHIFTING BOUNDARIES OF A CONTAINED VILLAGE. Eyam, a historical community in the English North Midlands, is changing under the weight of tourism, marketed by the national park and county in which it is located. This living village–becoming a tourist village–has a conceptual landscape that is highly contested, particularly because of the pressures of the local tourist economy. As tourism and suburbanization force changes on the region, a large contingent of the villagers fear that their community is changing for the worse. At stake is locality itself (a desired commodity) against the realization that the concept of community is shedding its traditionally geographic meaning. (5-7)

ANTTONEN, Pertti (University of Helsinki) THE POLITICALLY UNITED SUBJECT OF FOLKLORE. It has been suggested that the way in which folklore has served Finnish nation-building could also be used as a model for newly independent states and ethnic minorities seeking cultural independence. This is based on the tendency to view Finland’s history narratively as a victorious struggle by a united people against stronger enemies, and it has recently been paralleled with post-colonialism. The paper examines these discursive practices in light of the country’s political history and focuses on the actual differences between political and social realities and folkloric symbols. (3-6)

APLENC, Veronica (University of Pennsylvania) THE CONSERVATION OF CASTLES AND THE CREATION OF HERITAGE: VALTICE CASTLE, CZECH REPUBLIC. "Heritage," particularly in the form of large monuments, have been associated with national identity for all European nations over the course of the twentieth century. How is this heritage formed and what type of national identity does it advance? Over the past forty years, the Valtice Castle, Southern Moravia, has been managed and physically conserved in a manner typical of Czech preservation. This paper outlines how the physical treatment of the Castle reflects Czech state narratives of national identity in the late twentieth-century. (8-4)

ARMIJO, Enrique (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) THE INTERVIEW AS PERFORMANCE IN THE CUENTOS DE LA COMUNIDAD ORAL HISTORY NARRATIVES. If oral history gives voice to the unheard, then performance is the channel. The influence of the interviewer (or audience, using an interchangeable term), in determining performance is clearly evident in oral interviews. In an effective interview, the interviewee considers the audience when making his/her oratorical and poetic choices. To this degree, the audience will dictate those choices; taken in this sense, the terms "interviewee" and "performer" become interchangeable as well. This consideration of the audience’s role allows us to see performance as reflexive communication, analogous again in its reflexivity to the interview setting. (7-7)

ARORA, Shirley L. (University of California-Los Angeles) PROVERB RECOGNITION AMONG HERITAGE SPEAKERS OF SPANISH. "Heritage speaker" of Spanish–those born in the U.S. of Spanish-speaking parents–typically spend their childhood years in a Spanish-speaking household but shift to varying degrees of English dominance by the time they are teenagers, if not earlier. I will explore here the effect of this language shift on the ability of these young people to judge the proverbiality of sayings in Spanish with which they have had no prior familiarity, with particular attention to the kinds of clues they appear to employ in making such judgments. (3-7)

ASHTON, John (Sir Wilfred Grenfell College) TALES TOLD BY THE FIRESIDE: FOLKLORE IN THE ENGLISH POPULAR PRESS. This paper will examine the presentation of folklore materials in English regional newspapers and country magazines during the Late Victorian period. A series of English writers collected and published folklore through the popular press during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century alongside the publications of the academic folklore movement in England which was then at its zenith. The paper will suggest that newspapers and magazines reflected and stimulated popular interest in and attitudes towards folklore and helped to shape the work of folklorists themselves. They also provided an outlet for the work of folklore writers who had been marginalized by the attitudes prevailing within the English Folklore Society. (8-10)

ATKINSON, Robert (University of Southern Maine) THE LIFE STORY INTERVIEW. This presentation will provide an overview of the life story interview and discuss how it can be of great value in working with tradition bearers and others. It will address cultural and ethnic minority issues as well as other issues related to personal narratives, such as identity, generativity, and integrity. The presentation will cover the essentials of the pre-interview, interview, and post-interview process, and explore its application to the field of folklore.(9-10)

AUKRUST, Knut (University of Oslo) NARRATIVES FROM THE NUNNERY. When we are studying people’s narratives, we can focus on what they are saying as well as what they are not saying. The most valuable parts of our lives are perhaps the things that we don’t talk about . By using Jürgen Habermas’ term "life-world", this paper will deal with a fieldwork among 35 Catholic nuns from 7 different European countries and their course of life as sisters in Norway. The study will contribute to the understanding of how a small group of women tries to construct a certain religious and national identity based upon a multiple cultural background in a relatively homogenous society with a hostile attitude towards Catholicism. (5-6)

BACCHILEGA, Cristina (University of Hawaii-Manoa) HAWAII’S STORIED PLACES AND THE RE-PLACEMENT OF ILLUSTRATION. Ann Kapulani Landgraf’s dialogue of photographic and verbal texts in Na Wahi Pana O Ko’olau Poko (1994) is a powerful example of historicizing and transforming "landscape" into lived-in "place" via the re-imaging of Hawaiian legendary traditions. I develop this argument in three different contexts which articulate the violence of colonial translation at work in some " dialogues across differences," this year’s AFS theme: landscape photography in Hawaii; "storied place" vs. "visual illustration"; the political and performative use of traditionally-based art on display. (1-8)

BADO, Nikki (Ohio State University) TURNING MY HAND TOWARD BEAUTY: THE FOLK DOLLS OF TERESA REYNOLDS. Teresa Reynolds is a remarkable artist whose "hand for beauty" defies all attempts to confine her work into neat categories. The folk dolls created by inner city children under her direction as an arts volunteer at the Carnegie Art Center in Covington, KY, transcend such simplistic dichotomies as arts vs. crafts or artistic expression vs. political activism and engage the viewer in a dialogue that cuts across racial, cultural, and economic boundaries. Teresa draws inspiration from the "old arts" while maintaining a clear focus on her own unique artistic and political vision. (3-8)

BAKER, Ronald L. (Indiana State University) TRADITION AND THE INDIVIDUAL TALENT IN FOLKLORE AND LITERATURE. This paper contrasts the meaning of tradition and role of the artist in T.S. Eliot’s "Tradition and the Individual Talent" and Leslie Fiedler’s "Archetype and Signature" and considers the use of Fiedler’s approach in the interdisciplinary study of folklore and literature. Whereas Eliot views tradition mainly as the heritage of European literature and culture, Fiedler sees tradition, which he calls "archetype", as "immemorial patterns of response to the human situation in its most permanent aspects," and his psychological orientation frees tradition from the bondage of time. (1-3)

BARON, Robert (New York State Council on the Arts) WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA? - INTERPRETIVE PRACTICE AND CORE CONCEPTS IN PUBLIC FOLKLORE PROGRAMMING. When exhibition planning begins at many museums, interpretation takes shape through articulating the "big idea" that crystallizes what an exhibition is about and provides its central focus. In contrast, the conceptual focus of a public folklore event is rarely articulated or critically examined. Premises like continuity and change, endangered traditions, persistence of identity, innovation within traditions, mastery of form, and the resilience of tradition function as unspoken themes, implicit within a big idea. An examination of interpretive practices in folk festivals, exhibitions and media productions will explore how "big ideas" are embedded, show how they can be revealed and contend that they should be questioned. (8-1)

BARROW, Anita M. (William Paterson University) LATINA CONNECTIONS: FOLK TALES OF DESIRE AND ACQUISITION. Folk tales about Latin women’s and Gringo men’s desire for each other abound. Commonly perpetuated locally (by rumor and word of mouth), nationally and internationally (via advertising, tourism, and the Internet); folk tales of acquisition and desire support the booming international sex, bride, and dating trade between gringos and latinas. Focusing ethnographically on Mexican women and men from the United States, I will discuss how global legends about love, lust, and the good life are instrumental in bringing these couples together and describe the impact these legends have on ensuing domestic relationships after couples begin dating or are married. (8-9)

BEARDEN, Kenneth (University of Southwestern Louisiana) HE SAID, I SAID: REPORTED SPEECH, POWER RELATIONS, AND NEGOTIATION IN THE PERSONAL NARRATIVES OF A GRANDFATHER. The power of personal narrative and the role of certain devices such as reported speech have been a serious concern of folklorists over the past couple of decades. This exploration into a collection of my grandfather’s personal narratives examines the function of reported speech as both a complex structuring and evaluative device. The stories are acts of meta-speech, dealing with the act of and the power associated with speaking itself, presenting characters whose power to instruct or negotiate with words is deemed important enough to prompt a reconstruction of their words, whatever they might have been, as quoted speech. (6-3)

BEARDSLEE, Karen (Friends Select School) CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE THROUGH FOLKLORE. This part of the forum discussion suggests a contemporary literary course that trains its eye on works that allow us to eavesdrop on communities circled inward in order to understand how cultural traditions shape communities and, in turn, how individual characters learn to use these cultural traditions to create meaning in their own lives. While this course explores extensively folklore and literature theory and multi-cultural studies, it seeks to bring folklore to the forefront. Students are introduced to the various cultural traditions illuminated in the texts–we visit a quilting circle, an oral storyteller, a blues musician, and we engage in a pipe ceremony with a local Lakota medicine woman–, and they are encouraged to think about the relationship between folklore and identity in their own lives through self-survey folklore projects. (9-2)

BELL, Kristi A. (Brigham Young University) IT’S AS EASY AS A PIE IN THE FACE: CREATIVE DATE INVITATIONS AS CUSTOMARY COMMUNICATION. During the past three decades, Mormon high school daters in certain geographical regions have come to rely upon the custom of creative dating invitations to promote creativity, positive peer interaction, family interaction, and adherence to religious dating standards. Creative invitation customs also allow daters to communicate their individuality and creation of social self. (2-7)

BENDER, Mark (Ohio State University) IN THE (ORAL) TERRITORY OF THE MANGIE. The Daur are among the number of ethnic minority peoples in northeast China who have tales of multi-headed ogre-like creatures (mangie) who terrorize the steppes and forests in search of slaves and blood victims. Often described as having blue eyes and blonde or red hair, the creatures conjure up dark memories of atrocities committed by Czarist expeditionary forces in the 17^th century. This paper explores the form and content of the terrains of "oral territory" traversed by the plucky hero-hunters (merged) who go on arduous journeys (not unlike the trips of shamans to the spirit realms) in search of captives and a chance to prove themselves by chopping off maggie heads (Sarris 1993; Humphrey and Urgunge 1996). (6-2)

BENDER, Nathan E. (Buffalo Bill Historical Center) BUFFALO BILL AND THE DANISH OGRES. William F. Cody was a famous 19^th century American plainsman better knows as Buffalo Bill. He first became famous from a dime novel written by Ned Buntline. The dime novels featuring him were written by American authors, and many translated into European languages. However, in the 20^th century new stories were being written, and in Denmark one series featured not only the usual American villains, but also some European monsters such as ogres and a Minotaur. By allowing Buffalo Bill to fight European monsters he was being elevated to the rank of European heroes such as Beowulf and Theseus. (6-2)

BENDIX, Regina (University of Pennsylvania) and HARING, Lee (University of Pennsylvania) THE CODES BEHIND THE FLOWS. The notion of "translation," taken in the widest sense, is the master term for understanding the east/west and west/east flows examined in these panels. Research in Central Europe and the islands of the Southwest Indian Ocean shows that assimilating or exoticizing eastern or western cultural practices relies on processes of translation. Translation emerges as a key that potentially enables our insight into cultural as well as disciplinary flows of knowledge. (6-9)

BENING, Carolyn (University of Missouri-Columbia) RE-THINKING THE PERFORMANCE IN TEXT: LESLIE MARMON SILKO AS KERESAN STORYTELLER. This paper examines the extent to which Leslie Marmon Silko, a Laguna Pueblo novelist and poet, resurrects the word-power of Keresan oral tradition in her 1981 work Storyteller. Through oral readings of selected passages, we will first determine the residual orality in Silko’s textual narrative forms that signals oral performance. As Silko assumes the identity of the Keresan storyteller in text, she then incorporates metanarrative keys that are essential for the reader/audience to cognitively engage traditional referents in the performance event. (1-4)

BENNETT, Gillian (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK) THE POST-BEREAVEMENT PRESENCE OF THE DEAD: VIEWS FROM PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLKLORE. The "sense of presence" is a common post-bereavement experience. The "received" view is that it is an illusion or an hallucination. But popular folklore provides an alternative interpretational framework which allows the experience to be used as evidence of the survival of the soul beyond death. This paper discusses the way the experience is treated in scientific discourse and in personal experience narratives, then discusses the utility of these traditional frameworks as explanations. The narrative data was collected as part of an ongoing exploration of the lives of widows being conducted in the psychology department of a British university. (2-9)

BERRES, Allen (Ohio State University) FOLLOWING DOCTOR’S ORDERS: MEDICAL DEVICES, SYMBOLISM, AND AUTHORITY IN SM SCENES. "Medical play" in sadomasochistic sexual culture describes the use of devices such as catheters and enema bags to achieve various sensations; the term also involves medical "scene", erotic role-playing in which the dominant partner assumes the role of a medical practitioner and the submissive partner assumes the patient role. For an insider’s perspective, I interviewed "Doc", a physician’s assistant and participant in the gay SM scene. Doc’s statements indicate how, through medical scenes, medical authority is transformed into a sexual experience by SM players. (3-11)

BETHKE, Robert D. (University of Delaware) RACE RELATIONS AND POLITICS OF FOLK PERFORMANCE IN DELAWARE DURING THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT. In 1965, an African American street performer in a southern Delaware community became the focal point for contested notions of racial identity, black public comportment, and what amounted to politics of public folk performance in contexts of the Civil Rights Movement. "Hotfoot" Jackson’s minstrelsy routines, honed in the Deep South, raised the ire of local NAACP members; their strategy led to the entertainer’s departure from the local scene. A pointed case study in identity, folk performance, and politics. (4-10)

BIRKALAN, Hande A. (Indiana University Folklore Institute) WHAT IS "YOUR OWN" AND "OTHER" IN STUDYING YOUR OWN CULTURE? Long time has passed since Sartre’s gift of the "other" to the ethnographic parlance. The rationale behind the "other" was to grant a status different from the "self." Since then, ethnographers, both foreign and native alike, found themselves in an on-going discussion on "studying your own culture." I explore the dynamics behind the "self" and "other" in my fieldwork I conducted in Istanbul with a village migrant family in the gecekondus. Born and raised in Turkey, I was studying my own culture, but there were so much in the fieldwork in terms of "culture," which was not essentially mine. I was a Turk from Istanbul, but as the mother of the family put it, I was a yabanci, a stranger in their house. Using my "liminal" experience, I hope to draw attention to the dynamics of studying "your own culture," and raise some issues pertinent to our ethnographic endeavor in folklore. (8-3)

BIZZARO, Patrick (East Carolina University) NARRATIVES OF TRANSITION: FROM LITERATURE SCHOLAR TO COMPOSITIONIST. This part of the Forum discussion focuses not on literature or folklore classes but on composition theory and pedagogy courses, where folk anecdotes and legends are an important resource for studying the impact of doctoral training in literature on the theorizing of composition by well-known figures in English studies. (9-2)

BIZZARO, Resa Crane (East Carolina University) FOLKLORE AND LITERATURE IN FIRST-YEAR COMPOSITION. This part of the Forum discussion will explore ways in which first-year composition teachers can use both folklore and literature as subjects and resources of writing. Primary emphasis will be given to a series of reading and writing assignments designed to help students discover their own narrative voices and to connect their stories with those of literary authors such as North Carolina poet and fiction writer Fred Chappell, who draws extensively on local and regional folk traditions familiar to many students. (9-2)

BJARNASON, Deborah (Payson Middle School) FAMILY FOLKLORE UNIT. Lesson plans for teaching about family folklore in a 7^th grade English classroom will be shared and discussed. These lessons have inspired students to research and write about their families, with more enthusiasm than they have shown for other assignments. Examples of student work created using these lesson plans will be showcased in this session in order to create discussion about involving middle school students in folklore studies. Ms. Bjarnason will also discuss the impact of her graduate folklife studies on her classroom curriculum. (8-8)

BLANDY, Doug (University of Oregon) CIVIL SOCIETY, ART EDUCATION, AND FOLK GROUP SETTINGS. The US is currently experiencing an eroding civil society. Research firms that civically engaged communities are more likely to identify and solve problems. Art educators preparing people to participate in civil society can look to folk groups and folk art for examples of civic association. (3-2)

BLAUSTEIN, Richard (East Tennessee State University) STALKING THE ELUSIVE TEUCHTER JOKE: EXPLORING SCOTTISH INTER-REGIONAL HUMOR. Are teuchters Scotland’s hillbillies? Though Scottish inter-regional humor concerning highlanders and Gaelic speakers does exist, teuchters are overshadowed by the residents of Aberdeen, typified as exceedingly canny and thrifty, also overly intimate with sheep. Just as other people tell demeaning jokes about Scottish misers and "sheepshaggers," Scots tell these very same jokes about Aberdonians. The principal numskulls in Scottish humor are not teuchters but the Irish. It is noteworthy that the Irish tell these same jokes about Kerrymen, just as American jokes about hillbillies become West Virginia jokes in Southern Appalachia. (9-6)

BLYN-LADREW, Roslyn (University of Pennsylvania) IRISH FOLKLORE IN FILM: JOHN SAYLES, BOX-OFFICE SALES, SUPERNATURAL SEALS, AND THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH. Director Sayles’ films are known for his "head-on", independent approach to weighty topics such as race relations, labor unions, and political corruption–little fantasy or folklore for children here. In the Secret of Roan Inish however, he ventures into cinematic magic realism, interweaving a selkie legend with the socio-economic realities of life in depopulated, pre-industrial, rural western Ireland. How has this film charmed the Irish-American audience, maintained artistic integrity without recourse to the plastic shamrocks and ludicrous leprechauns which characterize much commercial Celtic culture, and used folklore to deliver a poignant yet powerful message about faith, hope and family relationships? (7-10)

BODNER, John M. (Memorial University of Newfoundland) SPACE-TIME CONFIGURATIONS IN A NORTHERN ONTARIO TREEPLANTING CAMP: A CRITIQUE OF POST-TURNER LIMINALITY. Occupational folklore has, generally, ignored the actual work environment and the ways it effects the laborers as a direct site of investigation. The study of treeplanting is an exploration into the way in which Canadian ideologies of space and place contribute to the social organization, culture and practices of treeplanters. Although many aspects of treeplanting suggest that it is a liminal space/time (Turner 1969, Van Gennep 1906), planting camp exposes the deficiencies in post-Turner liminal studies. My critique will focus on Turner’s spatial model as an ideal cultural category which does not reflect the means by which spaces like treeplanting are created, maintained and used in complex societies. (7-6)

BOLZENIUS, Ruth and KIRK, Lucinda (Ohio State University) ROLES AND REVISIONS AND POSSIBLE COLLISIONS: WHEN STUDENTS AND TEACHERS COLLABORATE TO BECOME BETTER CULTURAL OBSERVERS. In a writing classroom, construction of identity can be influences by peers and teachers. This presentation will consider the collaboration between teacher and students during the revision of personal narrative texts. The presentation will also address the benefits of collaboration for students and teacher. One goal of collaboration is an increased awareness of the way that all group members assume and change roles when engaged in cultural activities. This session will allow participants the opportunity to actively consider the roles people play as members of a particular group, the way those roles create and maintain individual and group identity. (3-2)

BOYARSKY, Therese J. (Western Kentucky University) OPLATKI AND ME: REFLEXIVITY AND IDENTITY IN RITUAL CELEBRATION. What role does the individual play in ritual celebration in which group-belonging and identity are the main focus, and what happens when that person is placed outside of his/her "folk group"? This paper examines this question incorporating both positive and negative aspects of focusing on personal experience and the reconstruction of identity in situational contexts. Understanding ourselves and how we use foodways, ritual, language, and other elements of tradition may lead us to a better understanding of others. I use the Villia/Wigilia, a traditional, Slovak/Polish-Catholic ritual the Boyarsky Family participates in each Christmas Eve as a basis for this analysis. (1-10)

BRADLEY, Jim (Western Kentucky University) THE DEVIL YOU SAY?: CHICK TRACTS, HELL HOUSE, AND THE POSSIBILITY OF CROSS-CULTURAL DIALOGUE. A brief examination of the narrative and visual content of the popular religious tract/comic books produced by J. T. Chick as well as Hell House (a recent, and quite controversial, "haunted house" ministry). Both have been denounced by mainstream society as perpetuating hatred and intolerance, yet from the Fundamentalist Christian standpoint these same materials are viewed as an act of love and compassion. Ethnography of such subject matter is problematic in that folklorists must transcend simple reflexivity or objectivity and must truly comprehend the worldview of the opposing stances if any meaningful dialogue is to be achieved. (5-4)

BRADLEY, Matt (Indiana University) EASTSIDERS, WESTSIDERS, OUTSIDERS: A CASE STUDY OF PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH AND "AT-RISK" YOUTH. For a group of primarily African-American young men living in Bloomington, Indiana, the majority of their interactions and relationship with the larger Bloomington community have primarily been marked by conflict and tension. This paper will explore the efforts of these young men to engage the community in a productive way through the filming, production, and presentation of a video-documentary, the intent f which was to present themselves and their lifestyle to the larger community and to call attention to these problems. This paper will also address Participatory Action Research as a model for research and community action in light of the current case study. (1-9)

BRADY, Margaret K. (University of Utah) FOLK POETRY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SELF IN COMMUNITY. This analysis of the folk poetry of Mary Susannah Fowler, a turn-of-the-century Mormon polygamous wife and traditional healer, demonstrates the ways in which aesthetic forms can be employed to create both individual conceptions of self and of community. Folk poetry is seen as a culturally constructed discursive form that allows the poet to examine, critique, and celebrate the cultural values of her community. The person Mary Fowler becomes in the process, the self that emerges, is as much a product of her creative constructions, as the words of poetry left on the foolscap pages 100 years later. (5-6)

BRAID, Donald (Butler University) FANCY FOOTWORK: VOICE AND INTERTEXTUALITY IN TRAVELLER NARRATIVE. Recent work in folklore, sociolinguistics, and sociology has called into questions models of communication that rely on oversimplified notions of speakers and listeners. Here I examine stories recorded from the Travelling People of Scotland to explore how narrators creatively manage narrative voice and thereby create a range of differing footings that frame the relevance of the communication for participants. These voices may involve playful fabrications, as in the case of joking and expressive lying, or they may directly present the voices of others and thereby serve to refresh and traditionalize the links that interconnect individuals over space and time. (3-3)

BRONNER, Simon J. (Pennsylvania State University-Harrisburg) THE AMERICAN CONCEPT OF TRADITION: FOLKLORE IN THE DISCOURSE OF TRADITIONAL VALUES. In the twentieth century, "tradition" as a keyword in American public rhetoric has become significant symbolic capital for the restructuring of American culture in the midst of perceived rapid, and critical, social changes. One recent demonstration of this pattern is the divergence between scholarly and public discourse on traditional values. While the American scholarly discourse on tradition, much of it produced by historians, sociologists, and folklorists tended to express tradition as progressive, multilayered, and creative, public discourse conceptualized tradition as part of "traditional values" associated with past-oriented, unified, and inherently stable. This paper explores examples of folklore used as a contested site within debates on traditional values from 1989 to 1999. It interprets the tension between scholarly and public discourse in this debate as a struggle to define American cultural identity with a concept of tradition. (1-3)

BUCKLIN, Mary Ann (University of Pennsylvania) SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM EMPLOYED AGAINST TRADITIONAL BELIEF. Belief in spiritual realities that interact with humans is ancient, ubiquitous and fundamental to folk belief. Many theories of the social construction of reality "debunk" such traditional views–either tacitly or explicitly–and these theories are taken-for-granted is implicit in their lack of argumentation or evidence concerning basic religious beliefs. Students, therefore, either accept them as dogma or reject them as heresy, In this sense, these theories operate by a kind of "colonizing of minds". (3-9)

BURKE, Carol (Johns Hopkins University) IN-COUNTRY PATCHES AND LIBERTY BLUES: FOLK MODIFICATIONS TO GOVERNMENT ISSUE UNIFORMS. The American military uniform is the great leveler; upon entry recruits are stripped of all marks of their former civilian lives and dressed in a basic uniform free of any distinguishing characteristics. As they progress beyond basic training, members of the military circumvent the government’s insistence on standardization in order to create distinct small group identities and individual identities through modifications to their uniforms. (7-4)

BURNS, Richard (Arkansas State University) "THIS IS MY RIFLE, THIS IS MY GUN....": GUNLORE IN THE MILITARY. The folklore of military weapons, specifically rifles, appears in several oral forms, including jokes, folk poetry, and marching chants, as well as personal experience narratives. Bringing together these and other expressive forms from both folklore and popular culture, this paper examines the function and meaning such folklore specific to military occupations has for members of the armed forces who share it. (7-4)

BUSTOS GARCIA, Brenda Araceli (Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon) LA BODA EN EL NORESTE DE MEXICO: UNA TRADICION EN CAMBIO (THE WEDDING IN NORTHEASTERN MEXICO: A CHANGING TRADITION). In looking at the importance of weddings in the social arena, of Northeastern Mexico and the changes it is undergoing in the rural and urban areas, one can observe influences from the post modern world as well as the United States. This paper analyzes the perceptions of "antes" and "ahora" (before, now) of women from this geographical area and the reasons why it is changing and the ways the celebration has changed. (4-7)

BYRNE, Pat (Memorial University of Newfoundland) BLASON POPULAIRE AS TOURIST COMMODITY: THE ‘NEWFIE’ STEREOTYPE IN NEWFOUNDLAND POPULAR CULTURE. The word "Newfie," introduced into everyday parlance in Newfoundland as a blason populaire by visiting servicemen during World War II, was adopted by Newfoundlanders, despite the negative connotations associated with the ubiquitous "Newfie" jokes, as an acceptable marker of regional identity and a buzzword for the promotion of locally produced goods and services to tourists and other visitors. More recently, highly charged debates in the local media have raised questions about how the "newfie" phenomenon is to be viewed in relation to the image and identity of Newfoundlanders, esoterically and exoterically, regionally and nationally. (9-6)

CAMITTA, Miriam (Independent Consultant) THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF "ENVIRONMENT". This paper discusses the data of several studies I conducted in Philadelphia neighborhoods and the beliefs of their members about the "environment". At the heart of the discussion is the contention that "environment" is a term the meaning of which turns on variable aspects of context and use. I will propose that underlying the "missions" of community groups are mandates constituting philosophies of action. Documented by my research is the belief held by many community groups that environmentalism is a tool for achieving non-tangible goals of their organizational philosophies including fostering neighborhood morale, pride, and stewardship. (2-1)

CANTU, Norma E. (Texas A&M International University) MILAGROS, MANDAS, Y PROMESAS: FAITH AND TRADITION ON THE U.S. MEXICO BORDERLANDS. Los Matachines de la Santa Cruz dance on the feast of the Holy Cross in Laredo, Texas, as a testament to their faith in the Holy Cross which they hold is a miraculous artifact. This paper explores the survival of and the impact of the tradition by focusing on the mandas y promesas (vows and promises) made by the community and the milagros (miracles) attributed to the cross. The Matachines celebration, prayer made