Western States Folklore Society 72Nd Annual Meeting April 18-20, 2013 University of California, San Diego

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Folklore in a Digital Age

University of California, San Diego April 18-20, 2013

University of California, San Diego

Western States Folklore Society 72nd Annual Meeting April 18-20, 2013 University of California, San Diego

Folklore in a Digital Age

WSFS Executive Board, 2012-2013

Simon J. Bronner, President

Administrative Vice Presidents JoAnn Conrad and Jill Rudy Paul Jordan-Smith, Treasurer Montana Miller, Secretary

Additional Members of the Executive Committee Executive Vice Presidents Jeanne H. Johnson and Maggi Michel Student Vice Presidents Anthony Buccitelli and Robert Dobler

Ex-Officio Board Members Elliott Oring, Managing Editor Robert Howard, Journal Editor

2013 Program Chair and Host Michele Goldwasser

Student Volunteers Esther Chong, Loretta Deaver, Michael Nguyen, Stefi Petit, Sharon So, Sophie Staschus, Alesha Wilson

This conference is co-sponsored by the Department of Communication. In addition, we gratefully acknowledge the support of the Cross-Cultural Center at the University of California, San Diego.

Western States Folklore Society University of California, San Diego

Folklore in a Digital Age

Program and Schedule, April 18-20, 2013

Sessions: Cross-Cultural Center Price Center East

All sessions will be held in the following rooms in the Cross-Cultural Center: Communidad Large, Communidad Small, ArtSpace

PROGRAM AND SCHEDULE

Thursday, April 18, 2013

6:00-7:30 PM Please join us for a small informal reception in the patio of our hotel, the Del Mar Inn. Conference registration will be available at that time.

Friday (April 19, 2013)

8:30-9:00 Registration

SESSION 1 (9:00-10:20)

Session 1A Rites and Performances (Chair: Matthew Hale) 9:00-10:20 Communidad Large

9:00-9:20 LINFORD, Scott (University of California, Los Angeles). Balance and Swing: Embodied Community and Music/Dance Relationships at Los Angeles Contra Dances.

9:20-9:40 WATSON, Carolisa (University of Kansas). Rites of Passage within the US Navy

9:40-10:00 HALE, Mathew (Indiana University). Cosplay: Intertextuality, Public Texts, and the Body Fantastic.

10:00-10:20 Discussion

Session 1B Hybrid Categories (Chair: Tok Thompson) 9:00-10:20 ArtSpace

9:00-9:20 BARBER. Suzanne (Indiana University). Human/Dog Co-Creation: “Naturecultures” and Folkloristic Posthumanism.

9:20-9:40 VIEIRA, Jordan (University of Southern California). The Harlem Shake: Toward a Theory of Digital Folklore and Archives in the Digital Age.

9:40-10:00 THOMPSON, Tok (University of Southern California). Folklore Before The Story: Towards a Study of Non-Hominid Culture & Aesthetics.

10:00-10:20 Discussion

SESSION 2 (10:30-12:10)

Session 2A Vernacular Knowledge and YouTube (Chair: Robert Glenn Howard) 10:30-12:10 Communidad Large

10:30-10:50 HOWARD, Robert Glenn (The University of Wisconsin, Madison). When Institutional Music Goes Vernacular: The Internet, Authority, and AC/DC.

10:50-11:10 IVANOVA-NYBERG, Daniela (Independent Scholar). A Door Wide Open: Bulgarian Dance Lessons on YouTube

11:10-11:30 AASLAND, Erik (Fuller Graduate School of Intercultural Studies). Kazakh Proverbial Twist on YouTube: Language Ideologies Considered.

11:30-11:50 MCDOWELL, John (Indiana University). “Surfing the Tube”: The Blessing (and Curse) of YouTube as a Folkloristic Resource.

11:50-12:10 Discussion

Session 2B Rethinking Narration (Chair: Montana Miller) 10:30-12:10 ArtSpace

10:30-10:50 MILLER, Montana (Bowling Green State University). “No Shit There I Was…”: NSTIWTIWGD Stories Among Skydivers.

10:50-11:10 WILLSEY, Kristiana (Indiana University). “The Purity and Beauty of a Failure”: The Poetics and Pragmatics of Narrative Breakdowns.

11:10-11:30 ROTHSTEIN, Rosalynn (Independent Scholar). Three Minutes of Multi-modal Storytelling at a 911 Call Center.

11:30-11:50 RUDY, Jill Terry (Brigham Young University). Things Jim Henson Showed Us: Intermediality, Fairy Tale Studies, and Jim Henson’s The Storyteller.

11:50-12:10 Discussion

12:10-1:40 Lunch (The Executive Committee meets in Zanzibar Café at the Loft, next to the Cross-Cultural Center)

SESSION 3 (1:40-3:20)

Session 3A Resistance and Community (Chair: Joyce Bishop) 1:40-3:20 Communidad Large

1:40-2:00 CHRISTIAN, Tiffany A. (Washington State University). LGBT Guilds as Folkgroups in World of Warcraft.

2:00-2:20 WINKELMAN, Meagan (University of Oregon). Secret Publics: Confession, Conversation and Play in Anonymous Social Networks.

2:20-2:40 GREWATZ, Abby (University of Oregon). Folk Arts in Context: Ukrainian Cultural Promotion in a Kyiv Souvenir Market.

2:40-3:00 BISHOP, Joyce (California State University, Sacramento). Asking for the Virgin's Hand: An Indigenous Interpretation of Christmas.

3:00-3:20 Discussion

Session 3B Communicating Belief (Chair: Kimberly Ball) 1:40-3:20 ArtSpace

1:40-2:00 LAWSON, Kristine (University of California, Berkeley). The Human Microphone and “Combative” Mic Checks: An Acoustemological Exploration of Protest Venues.

2:00-2:20 BALL, Kimberly (College of the Canyons). The Devil’s Pact: Diabolic Writing, Oral Tradition, and the Digital Age.

2:20-2:40 McNABB, Caroline L. (San Jose State University). Bigfoot Sighting Narratives: Transformation of a Contemporary Legend.

2:40-3:00 Discussion

3:45-5:15 ARCHER TAYLOR MEMORIAL LECTURE

Global Gypsy: Balkan Romani Music, Representation and Appropriation Professor Carol Silverman Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon

Communidad Large (Reception to follow)

SATURDAY (April 20, 2013

SESSION 4 (8:30-10:30)

Session 4A Alan Dundes: The Teacher and His Students (Panel I) (Organizer and Chair: Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt) 8:30-10:10 Communidad Large

8:30-8:50 LARSEN, Hanne Pico (Columbia University). Snail and Nasturtium: Embodying the North through Food Narration.

8:50-9:10 GÜREL, Perin (Dickinson College). When You are Up to Your Ass in Memes: Folklore and New Media.

9:10-9:30 PERELMUTTER, Renee (University of Kansas). Folk Belief, Motherhood, and the Struggle for Identity in Russian-language Women’s Forums.

9:30-9:50 ZUMWALT, Rosemary Lévy (Agnes Scott College). Inspiring Research: Alan Dundes and his Students.

9:50-10:10 MAGLIOCCO, Sabina (California State University, Northridge). Discussant

10:10-10:30 Discussion

Session 4B Keeping an Open Mind: A Panel in Memory of C. Scott Littleton (Chair: Linda A. Malcor) 8:30-10:10 ArtSpace

8:30-8:50 MALCOR, Linda A. (Independent Researcher). The Alano-Sarmatian “Sword in the Stone”.

8:50-9:10 RENO, Frank D. (Independent Scholar). Vortigern – A Debatable Superbus Tyrannus of Fifth-century Britain.

9:10-9:30 VON CHMIELEWSKI, Wolfgang. (Independent Scholar). From “Poaching” to Interdisciplinary Research.

9:30-9:50 MALCOR, Kassandra A. (Community Home Education Program). The Heavenly Horses.

9:50-10:10 Discussion

Session 4C Rethinking Folklore and Folkloristics (Chair: Elliott Oring) 8:30-9:50 Communidad Small

8:30-8:50 TOKOFSKY, Peter (The J. Paul Getty Museum). Applied Humanities: Revisiting the Divide

8:50-9:10 MECHLING, Jay (University of California, Davis). Pissing and Masculinity

9:10-9:30 ORING, Elliott (California State University, Los Angeles). Memetics and Folkloristics

9:30-9:50 Discussion

SESSION 5 (10:40-12:20)

Session 5A Rethinking Folklore and Folklore Resources (Chair: Luisa Del Giudice) 10:40-12:20 Communidad Large

10:40-11:00 SMITH, Paul (Memorial University of Newfoundland). “I Saw It On The Internet:” De-Constructing A Meaningless Statement.

11:00-11:20 WISE, Alicia (Independent Scholar). Remolding the Chain Letter for Likes: Facebook and the Circulation of Superstition.

11:20-11:40 BREWER, Teri (Independent Scholar) and ATKINSON, Patricia (Nevada Arts Council). Adaptive Re-use from the Visual Archive: Mining Folklife Resources in the Silver State.

11:40-12:00 DEL GIUDICE, Luisa (Independent Scholar). WWW.ITALIAN LOS ANGELES.ORG: Creating Virtual Community.

12:00-12:20 Discussion

Session 5B Folk Art, Material Culture, and Folk Belief (Chair: Loretta Deaver) 10:40-12:20 ArtSpace

10:40-11:00 STASCHUS, Sophie (University of California, San Diego). My Life Narrative Told Through Perfumes

11:00-11:20 WILSON, Alesha (University of California, San Diego). Tattoos: The Practice behind the Symbols

11:20-11:40 NGUYEN, Michael (University of California, San Diego). Asian-American Identity in a Jade Pendant

11:40-12:00 DEAVER, Loretta (University of California, San Diego). The White Lady in Elfin Forest

12:00-12:20 Discussion

Session 5C Talking Folklore: New Studies of Old Sayings (Organizer: Simon J. Bronner; Chair: Patricia A. Turner) 10:40-12:20 Communidad Small

10:40-11:00 DOYLE, Charles Clay (University of Georgia). Iago’s Heart and the Sleeve That Wore It.

11:00-11:20 BRONNER, Simon J. (Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg). “Who’s Your Daddy?”: On the Folklore and Social Psychology of American Patriarchal Speech.

11:20-11:40 MIEDER, Wolfgang (University of Vermont). “Let George Do It”: The Disturbing Origin and Cultural History of an American Proverb.

11:40-12:00 TURNER, Patricia A. (University of California, Los Angeles). Discussant

12:00-12:20 Discussion

12:20-1:50 Lunch

SESSION 6 (1:50-3:50)

Session 6A Alan Dundes: The Teacher and His Students (Panel II) (Organizer: Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt; Chair: Jennifer Gipson) 1:50-3:50 Communidad Large

1:50-2:10 AREWA, Olufunmilayo B. (University of California, Irvine School of Law). Alan Dundes: His Legacy and Impact.

2:10-2:30 ORING, Elliott (California State University, Los Angeles). Teacher without a Classroom

2:30-2:50 MAGAT, Margaret Capili (Independent Scholar). Southeast Asian Folklorists and the Influence of Alan Dundes.

2:50-3:10 GIPSON, Jennifer (University of Wisconsin, Madison). Lafcadio Hearn’s Afterlife in the Americas: From Folklorist to Folk Hero?

3:10-3:30 TOKOFSKY, Peter (The J. Paul Getty Museum). Discussant

3:30-3:50 Discussion

Session 6B Animals and the Human Imagination (Chair: Sabina Magliocco) 1:50-3:50 ArtSpace

1:50-2:10 HITZ, Jade A. (California State University, Northridge). The Pit Bull: From National Treasure To Public Enemy Number One.

2:10-2:30 PALMER, Katherine (California State University, Northridge) You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat.

2:30-2:50 PRO, Shoshanna (California State University, Northridge). Mary Had A Little Lamb: Should It Or Should It Not Have Followed Her To School?

2:50-3:10 GOMES, Michaela (California State University, Northridge). Human Interacation Shapes A Pet's Personhood.

3:10-3:30 MAGLIOCCO, Sabina (California State University, Northridge). “Ded From he Qte:” Responses to Online Animal Photos and Videos.

3:30-3:50 Discussion

4:00-5:00 General Business Meeting

ABSTRACTS

AASLAND, Erik (Fuller Graduate School of International Studies). Kazakh Proverbial Twist on YouTube: Language Ideologies Considered. YouTube is commonly associated with music videos, news clips, family videos, and how-to sessions. The creativity and adaptations of user- generated content (UGC) on sites like FaceBook has been compared to folklore (Arewa 2010). Currently, YouTube is being used to share folklore, for example Vivian Yenika-Agbaw’s adaptation of African folktales for YouTube (Vivian Yenika-Agbaw 2011). There is a variety of proverb content on YouTube. U.S. proverb posts are dominated by material from the biblical Book of Proverbs. In contrast to this, German proverb offerings include use of German proverbs for language learning and interesting literal enactments of proverbs using props. Kazakh proverbs and proverbial phrases on YouTube are used to present societal values of birthplace, unity, and other key themes. As a medium, YouTube is an attractive option for launching proverbial content, since it provides access to a wide audience without the challenges and costs of printing and acquiring necessary approvals. During the Soviet era and early post-Soviet period, proverb publishing was the purview of scholars. In this paper, I will compare the proverbial content in Kazakh on YouTube to recent hardcopy proverbial material in Kazakh with special attention to language ideologies (Kroskrity 2010) that emerge.

AREWA, Olufunmilayo B. (University of California, Irvine School of Law). Alan Dundes: His Legacy and Impact. This paper will begin by discussing the impact of Alan Dundes on the author and her father, E. Ojo Arewa, Sr., who was an early student of Alan Dundes. It will then go on the explore the broader impact of Alan Dundes on his students, both within and outside of folklore and anthropology. This paper will also touch on his broader legacy on a range of academic fields, with a focus on examining at his legacy from an interdisciplinary perspective.

BALL, Kimberly (College of the Canyons). The Devil’s Pact: Diabolic Writing, Oral Tradition, and the Digital Age. This paper examines the relationship between the Devil and Writing in oral tradition, expanding on Thomas Sebeok’s observation that the repeated concurrence of these two concepts in folk narrative indicates that they are “related in meaning” in the thinking of informants. By comparing Devil narratives recorded during the folklore collection boom period with more recent Devil lore drawn from the”Satanic P anics” of the 1980s, the political rhetoric of the Christian right, and Internet memes, this paper suggests that the differences reflect the considerable transformations our relationship with the written word has undergone in the Digital Age, while the continuities indicate that our sense of writing’s fundamental strangeness remains.

BARBER. Suzanne (Indiana University). This paper takes a posthumanist examination of the discursive practices that occur amongst advocates of purebred dogs. Following Donna Haraway, I will show how the insertion of the feminine within the co-creation of dog-human relationships have produced multiple potential becomings of “dogness.” I will focus on the constitutive practices of women and the distinctions between “working dogs,” “sport dogs,” and “pet dogs.” These practices shape and are shaped by breed origin myths and multiple potential forms of capital that delineate what a breed is and is not. By conceptualizing dogs as a practice of creation, we are forced to think beyond the normally accepted boundaries of material culture. By

8 moving beyond humanist stances that assert the centrality of humans, posthumanist theory allows us to transition from nature versus culture to “naturecultures” in which both humans and dogs are seen as agents within the shaping of the canine body, bringing to light a more complex view of materiality within a biopolitical framework.

BISHOP, Joyce (California State University, Sacramento). Asking for the Virgin's Hand: An Indigenous Interpretation of Christmas. A key technique of evangelization in the early years of the Spanish colonies was the use of vernacular theatrical performances of Biblical stories, such as the Shepherds' Play and the Passion Play. Today these enacted narratives underlie many of the ritual dances characteristic of contemporary indigenous communities in Mexico. Faithful to their original form in some regions, in the highland Purepecha (Tarascan) towns of Michoacan they have become greatly abstracted, almost unrecognizable in some cases. Nevertheless, a careful parsing of the syntax of the December rituals of one town reveals, not only the "pieces" of the Christmas story, but a story reinterpreted, through ritual, entirely in terms of present-day Purepecha social organization. This paper examines then a localized, highly idiosyncratic constellation of ceremonies as an innovative re-articulation of group identity -- a re-articulation, probably dating from the early period of home rule by hereditary governors, that has persisted through the later re-configuration of the town as a more egalitarian closed-corporate community and that even now remains meaningful in an increasingly open town connected to the greater world through the media and migratory labor.

BREWER, Teri (Independent Scholar) and ATKINSON, Patricia (Nevada Arts Council). Adaptive Re-use from the Visual Archive: Mining Folklife Resources in the Silver State. In 2009 we began to informally review archival holdings of visual folklife documentation in film or video from around the state of Nevada that documented past projects associated with regional folk life. This material ranged from photography and film produced for public displays and awards programs, to local interest public television broadcast footage and ethnographic film footage, (sometimes unedited) held in local universities and museums both in and out of state. Initial experiments with adaptive re-use of such film where copyright permission could be gained led to the creation of several types of video shorts which will be discussed here. Based on this work we propose some new ways forward with archival resources.

BRONNER, Simon J. (Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg). “Who’s Your Daddy?”: On the Folklore and Social Psychology of American Patriarchal Speech. An ethnographic moment during the final game of the 2004 American League Championship series inspires this paper on the significance of patriarchal speech in American culture. When Red Sox pitcher came into the game, thousands of fans spontaneously erupted into an unflattering chant of “Who’s Your Daddy?” A variant yelled at former Indiana University basketball coach was “Hoosier Daddy?” The phrase as folk speech has an uncertain origin but dictionaries refer to it as a modern phrase and often cite popular culture references such as a 1968 song “Time of the Season” by the Zombies. At least one source refers to its probably earlier use in the culture of sado-masochism. The use of “daddy” appears related to a set of sayings such as “Come to Papa” and “Big Daddy” suggesting the submission of an individual to a father/master figure. Slang dictionaries document the sayings almost exclusively in the United States but do not analyze its usage or meanings in this context. My paper addresses these issues and raises a folkloristic question about the modern representation of patriarchal speech in a feminizing society.

CHRISTIAN, Tiffany A. (Washington State University). LGBT Guilds as Folkgroups in World of Warcraft. The groups that are created in the online role-playing game World of Warcraft, called guilds, are generally identified by a specific feature of gameplay that may or may not keep the group together. Some guilds use additional markers, such as publicly identifying as LGBT. For these groups of “gaymers,” the guild becomes a relatively private space where members can share jokes, popular culture references, and personal experiences specific to either World of Warcraft or LGBT communities (or both). The LGBT guild also serves as a public space of passive resistance against hegemonic heteronormativity. I provide an emic perspective and several years of participant-observation as well as twelve interviews conducted with members of a well-established LGBT guild, the Stonewall Misfits. I argue that the significance of this guild as a folkgroup lies in its “public” expression of an LGBT identity combined with a “private” community space that allows for better cohesion as a group within the game.

DEAVER, Loretta (University of California, San Diego). The White Lady in Elfin Forest. From the Elfin Forest, located in Escondido, California, comes the legend of ‘The White Lady,’ a wandering apparition dressed in white. This paper studies the legend as members of one family, long-time residents of Escondido, have experienced it. Fieldwork reveals that each interviewee has his or her own personal interpretations and beliefs about the story. This paper will demonstrate that while the story is widely and generally known throughout the Escondido community, each individual gives a sense of ownership and guardianship over the tale.

DEL GIUDICE, Luisa (Independent Scholar). WWW.ITALIAN LOS ANGELES.ORG: Creating Virtual Community. The author’s Preliminary Survey of Italian Folklife in Los Angeles (Cultural Affairs Dept., 1990), mapping an “invisible” community, formed the basis for a larger research project (Italian Oral History Institute): www.ItalianLosAngeles.org (2005), an online guide to Italian resources in the greater Los Angeles area (e.g. markets, restaurants, art, music, educational institutes, associations, festivals, historical sites, human resources, and more). It created an innovative partnership between non-profit (the IOHI) and public universities (e.g., UCLA, CSULB, CSUN), and explored the interface between academic and public sector approaches to culture and history. This paper explores the challenges of: 1. employing oral history and folklore methodologies to create (virtual) community, 2. representing a divided, diverse, and evolving community, while 3. solving practical issues of maintaining an online presence despite the dissolution of the institution which created it.

DOYLE, Charles Clay (University of Georgia). lago’s Heart and the Sleeve That Wore It. In the first scene of Othello, the villainous lago famously disdains to “wear my heart upon my sleeve / For daws to peck at,” meaning that he intends never to be sincere or forthright in his dealings. Shakespeare’s character was not, it appears, himself employing a proverbial expression. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the verb phrase “wear one’s heart on his sleeve” occurred frequently, but only as an acknowledged quotation or a specific allusion to its literary source (for example, with the coda “for daws to peck at” still attached). The phrase did not actually become proverbial until the 19th century, sometimes in the form “pin one’s heart on [or to] his sleeve.” Proverbially, the phrase can nowadays mean not only “be honest and forthright” but also “speak or act with unrestrained passion.” Even though the phrase itself was apparently

10 not proverbial when lago uttered it, the imagery may have evolved from earlier expressions about the figurative pinning of one’s faith (or one’s soul) to another man’s sleeve—“cravenly following an illegitimate authority or forfeiting one’s autonomy.”

GIPSON, Jennifer (University of Wisconsin, Madison). Lafcadio Hearn’s Afterlife in the Americas: From Folklorist to Folk Hero? The Greek-born writer, journalist, and folklorist Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) is perhaps best known for his time in Japan. For some, though, he is remembered as a folklorist of the Americas who was fascinated with Creole language, culture, and lore. There are many histories of Hearn’s life in New Orleans and the Creole-speaking world, but the story of his afterlife in the cultural imagination remains to be written. Three main points will be examined in this regard: Hearn, the folklorist, as a character in the literature of créolité; a resurgence of interest in Hearn in post-Katrina New Orleans; and Lafcadio Hearn and mardi gras, including his newfound function as the namesake for the krewe of Lafcadio, honoring chefs of the Crescent City. This paper, conceived of a response to a question from the late Alan Dundes who had planned a study of Hearn and Japanese national character, seeks to show that Hearn not only shaped the Americas but continues to be shaped by them. Ultimately, is the created and recreated Lafcadio Hearn of today a folk hero, far removed from the folklorist of the nineteenth-century, or do Lafcadio Hearn’s many cultural reincarnations stand as reminders of his own thinking about folklore?

GOMES, Michaela (California State University, Northridge) Human Interacation Shapes A Pet's Personhood. The late 20th and early 21st centuries have witnessed a marked change in the ways that Westerners imagine and interact with their pets, or companion animals. These animals are increasingly granted what anthropologists call “personhood,” treated as family members rather than as livestock or commodities. Recent studies of human interactions with companion animals have argued that personhood is constructed through specific human-animal interactions. My paper examines how human interaction can shape pets’ personhood, personality and behavior. I used directed interviews and participant observation to collect personal experience narratives from different pet owners that show how a pet's personhood is shaped by human interaction. I focus on four main narrative themes: pets with anthropomorphic characteristics, pet naming, human-pet interaction that shapes behavior, and attachment. I also apply Horowitz and Bekoff's study on anthropomorphic behavior in human-dog play to human-cat interactions, using my own cat Chloe as a model, to demonstrate that the patterns they identified apply to cats as well, and could be extended to other companion animals. Building on the work of folklorist Jay Mechling, I argue that these informal patterns of interaction both construct animal personhood constitute an important form of folklore that shapes lay knowledge and understandings about the animals with whom we share our lives.

GREWATZ, Abby (University of Oregon). Folk Arts in Context: Ukrainian Cultural Promotion in a Kyiv Souvenir Market. Since the collapse of the USSR independent Ukraine has used politics and culture to define a separate national identity, in contrast to Russia. Through a performance studies lens I describe Kyiv’s largest souvenir market, Andriyivsky Uzviz, and place it in the context of nationalism and cultural promotion. I draw on Conquergood who situates the performing of culture at the intersection of history and identity, and Kapchan who notes that markets are key sites where ethnic identity is defined within sociopolitical frameworks. While profit and customer demand are important to vendors in the Uzviz,

Ukrainianness is consciously emphasized through their folk art items. Vendors wear national costume, sell “traditional” Ukrainian items, and explicitly identify as Ukrainian, not Russian. Through one Uzviz folk artist I illustrate vendors’ use of folk arts to express Ukrainian cultural identity, and show how the market is a microcosm of the larger nationalist movement in Ukraine.

GÜREL, Perin (Dickinson College). When You are Up to Your Ass in Memes: Folklore and New Media. Alan Dundes’s work (with Carl Pagter) on xeroxlore constitutes as a key moment in the uneasy embrace of technology by folklorists. Considering Dundes’s description of folklore as informal texts that exhibit “multiple existence” and “variation,” this presentation asks how these criteria function in digital lore. In particular, it juxtaposes the digital buzzword “meme,” usually defined as the smallest unit of culture that can be transferred, with folk genres. It examines the rising importance of “curation,” i.e. filtering and presenting vast quantities of web-based data, as a form of scholarship. Underlining the differences between the analog human brain and computer programming, the presentation advocates an interdisciplinary method that combines digital content analysis resembling the geographic-historic method with close readings of representative texts. Finally, it asks how, given the visual nature of so much Internet folklore, the unauthorized use, re-appropriation, and dissemination of images may pose ethical challenges for folklorists.

HALE, Mathew (Indiana University). Cosplay: Intertextuality, Public Texts, and the Body Fantastic. DragonCon is the largest fan-run popular culture convention held in the United States. Based on fieldwork conducted since 2010, this paper examines how fans materialize and embody semiotic elements from mass mediated public texts (e.g. film, television, internet memes, viral videos, video games) and reanimate them in cosplay. Cosplay or “costume play,” is an expressive practice in which one dons a costume and adopts an alternate “body rhetoric” (Laude 1993) and speech style in order to generate meaningful correspondences and contrasts between one’s body and a set of texts from which that body is modeled and made to relate.

HITZ, Jade A. (California State University, Northridge) The Pit Bull: From National Treasure To Public Enemy Number One. This paper takes a closer look at the relationship between humans and “pit bull” type dogs to try to understand why what was once America’s favorite dog breed is now facing breed specific legislation (BSL) in some areas of the country. BSL targets specific breeds of dogs based on the folk belief that they constitute public dangers, placing limitations on their owners and in some cases banning ownership altogether. My aim is to understand the process that led to this historical change in attitude, as well as the gaps between responsible owners’ understanding of the “bully” breeds and official understandings used to justify BSL. I use digital and hardcopy archival data as well as data I collected through participant observation, personal experience and Facebook. I discovered that negative stereotypes about “pit bulls” lead many local (and some state) governments to create BSL mandates which often lead to the death of hundreds, or even thousands, of innocent dogs who are well-behaved family pets, while at the same time BSL mandates fail to lower or prevent the crime they are designed to target. Advocates focus on spreading positive breed awareness. I argue that “pit bulls” are being deprived of their national honor and culturally significant role as a once much loved American icon and mascot.

HOWARD, Robert Glenn (The University of Wisconsin, Madison). When Institutional Music Goes Vernacular: The Internet, Authority, and AC/DC. Probably from the very beginning, we

12 humans have been devising ever more complex ways to interact with each other. From physical mimicry, to oral narration and musical instruments, to books, movies, TV, and now—as so many have been quick to point out—these so-called “new” media. Termed “new folk culture” but Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler and “participatory culture” by media scholar Henry Jenkins, analysts are celebrating the new normal of network communication. But is it really new? Or has the age of durable media and commercial broadcasts only been an awkward silence in the long chatter of human history. If so, that silence has been broken by a digital roar. We can hear it in everything from advice about how to treat sick kids to homemade videos of ourselves playing guitar licks. This paper documents this roar through the example of individuals deliberating over the most “authentic” way to play an obscure guitar phrase recorded by one of the most profitable recording artists in history, AC/DC. Here, we discover vernacular authority overwhelming that of the published score for the song. Institutional practices seeking to codify a song fail in the face of the aggregate of individual expression online.

IVANOVA-NYBERG, Daniela (Independent Scholar). A Door Wide Open: Bulgarian Dance Lessons on YouTube outlines some changes in transmitting Bulgarian folk dance in the digital era. The emergence of the recreational folk dance club phenomenon in Bulgaria within the past decade set a new stage for Bulgarian folk dance. Club folk dancing, directed exclusively by professional choreographers, became a national trend and was also popularized by social media and the internet. My paper discusses this phenomenon within the context of the today’s changing Bulgarian society with focus on distribution of Bulgarian dance lessons through YouTube. Research questions are related to the nature of the lessons themselves, their relationship to both Bulgarian folk dance tradition and Bulgarian dance ensemble tradition.

LARSEN, Hanne Pico (Columbia University). Snail and Nasturtium: Embodying the North through Food Narration. In this paper, I look at food as storytelling. I follow a Swedish snail to the kitchen of the Danish gourmet restaurant noma. Here the chef explains the creative process behind the dish for which the snails is used. It all started with the nasturtium, a tasty edible flower. Noma wanted to serve it as a dish, but something was missing – a snail. I propose a model based on the idea that a meal at noma can be read as a (cyclical) three-stage process of embodiment and narration. When the dish at noma is put in front of the consumer, it has already been embodied and narrativized twice. It has been collected by the chef, interpreted and recreated in the kitchen. Through the final dish the multiple layers of food narration unfolds. Terroir is made out of terroir – in the process it become a meta-terroir. Through the creation of strong narratives, which intentionally places the consumer in the middle of the tasty Nordic terroir the consumer can, by eating the snail in a nasturtium at Noma, embody the North and become part of the meta-terroir-narrative.

LAWSON, Kristine (University of California, Berkeley). The human microphone and “combative” mic checks: an acoustemological exploration of protest venues. This project addresses the role of sound in social protest through an investigation of “the human microphone” and “mic check” folk practices that gained popularity in Occupy events in 2011 and 2012. Using digitally archived recordings as well as personally collected samples, I explore how these performances create a certain kind of place for protest through the implementation of loudness, repetition, and, in the latter, talking-over. I use an acoustemological framework as described by Steve Feld as I examine the different uses of these two ‒ human microphone for “basic

13 amplification” and mic check as more of a combative strategy to overcome talk that is already happening, as in being “mic-checked”. I am also interested in the ways in which these practices do or do not reflect so-called democratic ideals among the group and the somewhat new and unique notion in aural protest more broadly of not having the “script” for the performance in advance. In other words, what is the significance of participation without knowing beforehand exactly what is to be said? As a counterpoint to the theme of sound in protest performance will be a discussion of the power of silent protest performance.

LINFORD, Scott (University of California, Los Angeles). Balance and Swing: Embodied Community and Music/Dance Relationships at Los Angeles Contra Dances. Los Angeles is home to a dedicated and enthusiastic community centered around contra dance, a type of social dancing developed in the United States from the English country dance repertoire. Contra dance aesthetics comprise a negotiation of individual expression and group interaction, while musical practices involve a sometimes controversial compromise of uniformity and variation, tradition and innovation. Combining the methods of participant-observation, survey data, musical analysis, and geographic mapping, this paper explores the relationship between these music and dance practices and their combined effect on the character of the "embodied community" created on the dance floor and beyond. As one dancer told me, "It's not just people; it's a real community." What is the difference between "just people" and a "real community?" And why has such a community sprouted from the field of contra dancing? Cultural practices couched as practical considerations and aesthetic preferences offer pathways to approach these questions.

MAGAT, Margaret Capili (Independent Scholar). Southeast Asian Folklorists and the Influence of Alan Dundes. One of the many goals that Alan Dundes expressed to students was his desire to train at least one folklorist from each country of the world. This paper examines the influences he has had on two former students, James Danandjaja and Mellie Lopez, prominent scholars of Indonesian folklore studies and Philippine folkloristics, respectively. Yet Alan Dundes’ influences as attested to by Elliot Oring’s paper in this panel was not just limited to his students but can also be seen in his support of colleagues’ work. Through an interview with Herminia Menez Coben, the first Filipino to have graduated under the University of Pennsylvania’s Folklore department who has gone on to be a foremost scholar of Filipino and Filipino American folklore studies, I will explore how traces of Alan Dundes’ influences, both direct and indirect, have inspired others including myself in the study of folklore.

MAGLIOCCO, Sabina (California State University, Northridge) “Ded From The Qte:” Responses to Online Animal Photos and Videos. Next to pornography, one of the most popular categories of items viewed by the public on the Internet consists of photos and videos of cute animals. A number of websites and blogs specialize in these items; users can subscribe to their RSS feeds, “like” their webpages, and receive daily doses of cuteness through email and social media. Users also typically comment on these links, either by responding to the blog in the “comments” section, or by posting responses on threads in social media. This paper examines these responses, analyzing folk speech that often uses violent metaphors such as death and explosion to qualify the effect of the images on users. In exploring the juxtaposition of the vulnerable and tender with the violent and deadly, it seeks to shed light on the overwhelming popularity of this genre of imagery within the context of a post-industrial, late capitalist workplace in which the boundaries between work and leisure are entirely eroded.

MALCOR, Kassandra A. (Community Home Education Program). The Heavenly Horses. The horses were called “Heavenly Horses” because they had a metallic coat that made them glow, implying they came from the heavens. They were golden in color, and their genealogies were preserved through oral tradition. Legend says that the Wusun, “White Alans,” brought them from the “Heavenly Mountains” to the people of China. Some scholars think the “Heavenly Mountains” may have been the Caucasus region. First recorded in the Tang Dynasty (618 C.E. to 907 C.E.) the breed appeared on pottery, coins and in stories. They may be the same as the Ferhana horse, which might be the modern Akhal-Teke. This paper exams the possibility that these hypotheses are correct and discusses the role folklore played in the development of the breed.

MALCOR, Linda A. (Independent Researcher). The Alano-Sarmatian ‘Sword in the Stone’. Littleton’s hypothesis, “The Sarmatian Connection”, expanded into our book From Scythia to Camelot (1994), which included a chapter on the Sword in the Stone. We wrote from the writinge of Herodotus, Ammianus Marcelinus, and Georges Dumézil, and a phone interview and some e-mail exchanges with John Colarusso. We wrote in Prime on an early computer. Since then Colarusso has published Nart Sagas from the Caucasus (2002). Also Elizabeth Wayland Barber and Paul Barber wrote When They Severed Earth From Sky (2004), for which they used a computer program that determined the position of certain stars at specific places and times. Recently I have been talking with Ossetians via Skype about the Narts. The result is this paper, which will become a chapter in our book on the Sword in the Stone—a work made possible largely by the combination of folkloric methodology and the wonders of the digital age.

MCDOWELL, John (Indiana University). “Surfing the Tube”: The Blessing (and Curse) of YouTube as a Folkloristic Resource. Among the many striking transformations ushered in with the digital age is the projection of traditional expressive forms and their modern refinements onto YouTube’s ubiquitous little screens. In this talk I want to share my own experiences of dipping into the YouTube universe in search of folkloristic data. I will focus on two examples – the narcocorrido of greater Mexico, and a hip hop music video production originating in the north of Ecuador. In my work, I have found YouTube to be much more than a stale and passive repository, but at the same time, much less than a trustworthy source of data. The trope that arises for me is of YouTube as a paradoxical merging of accessibility and inscrutability, and I suspect we will need to devote considerable attention to sorting out the promise and the limitations of this now unavoidable medium.

McNABB, Caroline L. (San Jose State University). Bigfoot Sighting Narratives: Transformation of a Contemporary Legend. The year 2011 appears to have been the beginning of a new Bigfoot era. With a wildly popular television show, two major DNA research projects, hundreds of shaky YouTube videos, and several well-publicized folklore and pop books, Bigfoot is in the public eye. But Bigfoot is hardly a new phenomenon; sighting accounts stretch back hundreds of years and have surprisingly similar characteristics throughout the United States. This paper, part of a larger ethnographic project exploring Bigfoot witness and enthusiast communities, analyzes ten sighting narratives; examining legendary motifs, the legend process, the effects of mass media, and the ways in which meaning is generated within the community.

MECHLING, Jay (University of California, Davis – retired). Pissing and Masculinity. In February of 2012 a video surfaced of a 2011 event in Afghanistan showing a group of U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters they had just killed. The video shocked the American public, but this male ritual begs for a deeper interpretation of the collective act of urinating on other males. This paper explores the elements of the social construction and performance of masculinity in the act of pissing (purposely using the folk term). Mary Douglas, Freud, and Gregory Bateson provide the theoretical grounding for the inquiry, and the texts include Scouts pissing out a campfire, Biblical sources, playfighting with piss, sexual practices, folk speech (including proverbs and jokes), folk medical beliefs regarding urine, Norman Mailer’s “45-second piss” in Armies of the Night, and Dundes’s interpretation of the flood myths.

MIEDER, Wolfgang (University of Vermont). “Let George Do It”: The Disturbing Origin and Cultural History of an American Proverb. While polygenesis appears to be a rare phenomenon with proverbs, the French proverb “Laissez faire à Georges” from the end of the fifteenth century and the American proverb “Let George do it” from the last quarter of the nineteenth century do have two different origins. This will be shown by numerous references from French and Anglo- American proverb collections, dictionaries, literary works, and the mass media. The two “Georges” of the proverbs have no relationship to each other, and it would have made little sense for the old French proverb with its relationship to Georges d’Amboise to have been adopted by the Anglo-American world. The American proverb is based on another George, namely the generic name given to emancipated slaves who were employed as African American porters on the Pullman railroad cars during the second half of the nineteenth century and beyond. While the French proverb has long been out of use, the American proverb is still in circulation today.

MILLER, Montana (Bowling Green State University). “No Shit There I Was…”: NSTIWTIWGD Stories Among Skydivers. “No Shit There I Was, Thought I Was Gonna Die stories” are a recognized form of occupational narrative used by experienced skydivers as entertainment, cautionary/didactic tale, and means of bonding wherever jumpers gather during down time (traditionally around the drop zone bonfire, and currently also in a Facebook group devoted to the genre—not in the airplane, however). In my ethnographic study of within-group phenomena of ritual, humor, and other coping strategies, I have explained that skydivers must focus not only on the consistent performance of their skills, roles and responsibilities on the next jump but also on the performance and practice of belief learned through time and experience in a sport where death visits regularly. I have written about group and individual responses including doubt, denial, introspection, critical analysis of dead jumpers’ mistakes, and the impulse to jump again. NSTIWTIWGD stories commonly put words to (otherwise unspoken) intense feelings, through personal accounts of close brushes with death due to extraordinary, unpredictable malfunctions and mishaps. With these performances, skydivers share their esoteric identity, and find an enjoyable, group- sanctioned outlet for the outlaw emotions (Santino 1978) with which even the most seasoned, self-possessed jumpers must occasionally come to grips.

NGUYEN, Michael (University of California, San Diego). Folkloric Signs Communicating an Expressed Identity. In the scholarly world there are many fields of study that have their own concepts and theories of what can constitute identity and the construction processes of it. While identity can be restricted by biology, it is created through social factors. What this paper seeks to

16 explore is that identity can be expressed through folklore using cultural objects as a medium to communicate it. In particular, what I did was apply semiotic concepts to analyze jade pendant necklaces and found that these necklaces express Asian-American identity specifically. Following upon this, this paper is going to examine the decontextualization and recontextualisation of jade pendants necklaces as a vessel that contains a combination of sign processes that include icons, symbols, and indexes. This will lead to an explanation of how they all work together to express Asian-American identity.

ORING, Elliott (California State University, Los Angeles) Memetics and Folkloristics. Richard Dawkins first coined the term “meme” in 1976 and the term found quick acceptance in both popular speech and prestigious dictionaries. “Memetics,” the science of memes, also quickly gained popularity in both popular and academic culture. In this paper, the theoretical underpinnings of the science of memes is described and scrutinized, and the relevance of memetics to the study of folklore is explored.

ORING, Elliott (California State University, Los Angeles). Teacher without a Classroom. I first met Alan Dundes in 1967 at the American Folklore Society Meeting in Toronto. I never attended UC Berkeley, I never took a class from Dundes, and I never had to complete any assignment that he proposed. Nevertheless, over the years my work has been informed by and has reacted to his books, essays, papers, as well as the give-and-take that invariably followed those meeting sessions in which he participated or which he simply happened to attend. To the extent that he stimulated areas of my research and provoked my reactions to his own, I consider him to be my teacher in the best sense of the word.

PALMER, Katherine (California State University, Northridge) You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat. Sharks have been the focus of myths and folklore for centuries. In the new digital age, the movie Jaws has influenced every generation since 1975, assuring that the threat of shark attacks remain in the forefront of people’s minds whenever they enter the ocean. Yet, shark conservation is a global issue that requires immediate attention, but it is often overlooked because of humans’ persistent fear of sharks. While sharks attacks do occur occasionally, angry mobs of villagers out to kill the shark that ate their friend or family member can do little real harm to shark populations. Shark finning, a fishing practice in which millions of sharks are slaughtered annually for their fin, which some consider a delicacy, does considerably more harm, and is threatening shark populations worldwide. This paper investigates folk attitudes towards sharks and shark conservation, and considers whether the pop culture effect of Jaws plays an important part in fomenting apathy towards this much-maligned fish. It is based on a small mixed-method study. My larger aim is to explore the role of folklore and popular culture in the promulgation of animal stereotypes and their long-term effects on sustainability.

PERELMUTTER, Renee (University of Kansas). Folk Belief, Motherhood, and the Struggle for Identity in Russian-language Women’s Forums. Though religious expression has been discouraged during the Soviet period, folklore, and especially folk belief associated with pregnancy and early motherhood, played a crucial role in how femininity and motherhood were constituted as a practice. This talk examines discourse data from Eva.ru, one of the oldest Russian-language forums for women, which serves as a community for mothers who came of age in the post-Soviet period. During this time, significant gender-related changes have been

17 occurring in opportunities available to women, family structure, ethics and morals, and other spheres. While Soviet-era gendered norms are often rejected, no single overarching new narrative has emerged, prompting the post-Soviet women to constantly renegotiate their identities. This (re)negotiation is often done through online discourse. At Eva.ru, folk belief is a subject of intense discussion among expectant and young mothers. In this talk, I will analyze three multi-participant exchanges to examine the intersection of folklore and identity struggle in the lives of post-Soviet women. I will discuss how such folklore is transmitted online, and examine how resistance to certain kinds of folk belief reflects generational conflicts and shifting identity norms.

PRO, Shoshanna (California State University, Northridge) Mary Had A Little Lamb: Should It Or Should It Not Have Followed Her To School? Over the past few years there have been many studies done on the benefits of human/animal interactions, specifically student/animal interactions. This paper seeks to examine a larger scope of these interactions and their results on both students and their companion animals. In conducting my research I examined college student and animal relationships through a mixed methods approach. This was done using previous research and interviews by other professionals as well as my own interviews of approximately 30 students in their early to mid-twenties. From this study I discovered that there are many benefits for students who have access to animals that enhance their quality of life and ability to deal with common student stressors. It has also become evident that although many students would benefit from animal companionship, there is a widespread tendency towards irresponsibility towards the animal, or an inability to properly care for the animal, while students are enrolled in college or university. Based on these findings, I will argue that colleges and universities should seek out alternative models of human/animal companionship that could benefit students. While a few universities are involved in alternative options of human/animal accessibility, more need to follow their lead.

RENO, Frank D. (Independent Scholar). Vortigern – A Debatable Superbus Tyrannus of Fifth-century Britain. Briton figures of the fifth century are some of the most intriguing and elusive individuals to identify, and Vortigern is one of the most difficult. Various scholars deem that the descriptor “Vortigern” is an epithet, which is a term others describe and label as the actual name of a powerful fifth-century king. Leslie Alcock claims in Arthur’s Britain (1989) that this dilemma created considerable problems regarding exactly who this individual was and what position he held in history. Alcock inspired an entry in my third book Arthurian Figures of History and Legend (2007), which concentrated on the actions and relationships between Cunedda, Vortimer, and Vortigern as history in the fifth century. What I soon recognized is that there is a historical association connecting Cunedda, Vortigern and his son, Vortimer, which may help resolve the on-going debates surrounding the names and terms “Vortigern” as well as the epithet Superbus Tyrannus.

ROTHSTEIN, Rosalynn (Independent Scholar). Three Minutes of Multi-modal Storytelling at a 911 Call Center. This presentation will examine three minutes of multi-modal storytelling documented at a 911 call center. Multi-modal storytelling at a 911 call center includes verbal communication, informal communication in the institutional computer program used to dispatch calls for service, text messages in cellphones, and other modes of communication depending on the circumstance. The diagram accompanying this presentation will help to illustrate the process

18 and the significance of multi-modal communication and storytelling to folklorists and ask questions about how visual representation can support research on multi-modal communication. It will also illustrate potential hurdles in examining and visualizing multi-modal communication from a folkloristically-based perspective.

RUDY, Jill Terry (Brigham Young University). Things Jim Henson Showed Us: Intermediality, Fairy Tale Studies, and Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. Stories regularly appear at the same time and space as the storytelling in Jim Henson’s The Storyteller (JHTS), a live- action/puppet series that initially aired in 1987. In ATU 441 “Hans My Hedgehog,” viewers initially see the old Storyteller reciting the story of a childless couple. But two minutes into the twenty-four-minute episode, viewers have been shown the story action of Farmer and Farmer’s Wife in their cottage and heard dialogue not from the Storyteller but in the characters’ voices. This move suggests that showing the story will attract the viewers’ attention as much as telling the story. In this paper, I argue that it is important to analyze this show in terms of modes of communication (intermediality) because of how it expands the audience’s perspective toward fairy tale and storytelling. Visually representing tales opens views on narrative possibility. Similarly, fairy tale as a genre evokes and rewards such openness. So while JHTS honors the storyteller, it extends telling stories into the more mediated contemporary realm of showing stories. Through the channels of television, storytelling can be story showing, particularly in JHTS a showing that collapses the space and time distances while still foregrounding the role of the storyteller. JHTS exploits and plays with televisual possibilities that meld the separate spheres of story and storytelling into one sphere on screen.

SMITH, Paul (Memorial University of Newfoundland) “I Saw It On The Internet:” De- Constructing A Meaningless Statement. With the abandonment of the view that oral tradition was the mainstay for the communication of folklore materials, researchers adopted two strategies. Firstly, they looked to earlier technologies for evidence of the transmission of folklore. Secondly, as new communication forms emerged these were examined in a similar manner, the tendency being for researchers to simply make unqualified statements identifying items of folklore as being “in the newspaper,” “on television” and, more recently, “on the internet.” The reality is that each communication technology embraces a number of distinct and unique characteristics which we frequently only later come to appreciate. This paper explores the notion that, while taxonomies of internet communications have been developed, folklorists are lagging behind. While there is nothing wrong with content spotting, we need to move forward and begin to develop taxonomies which highlight what we find being communicated on the internet (e.g., texts, plots, themes, behaviors, beliefs, symbols, concepts, interpretations) and taxonomies of the functions of internet communicative forms (e.g., news, education, advertising, entertainment.

STASCHUS, Sophie (University of California, San Diego). My Life Narrative Told Through Perfumes. This paper looks at analyzing how the display of my collection of used perfume bottles allows me to control my personal and public life narrative. By controlling the specific arrangement of the bottles within the overall display, I can emphasize certain enjoyable events while obscuring others, hence romanticizing the plot of my life story. Additionally, I only display bottles which either belong to myself or my most trusted circle, enabling me to create a

19 life narrative in which only trusted and loved characters are incorporated, again diminishing the importance of people who are associated with painful events within my idealized life story.

THOMPSON, Tok (University of Southern California). Folklore Before The Story: Towards a Study of Non-Hominid Culture & Aesthetics. Nearly all the multitudinous studies on culture investigate the concept in humans alone. This is particularly true of the notion of aesthetics, central towards understanding any sort of expressive culture. One notable exception comes from sociobiology, which has investigated aesthetic choices primarily as the result of mate selection (say, the concept of symmetry). Yet I would claim that there is much more to aesthetics than mate choice alone, as will be reviewed in this paper. Since aesthetics is a sine que non in folklore studies, folklore studies makes an ideal disciplinary vantage point from which to observe and come to understand the role of shared, expressive culture in non-hominid life. Aesthetics is a motivating principle in much of life, rewarding organisms with sensations of pleasure or displeasure. It is deeply rooted in our evolutionary development, and thus provides an important commonality between hominid and non-hominid cultures. I will conclude by attempting to sketch some of the possible implications of this model, utilizing examples of songbirds, dolphins, primates, and many many more.

TOKOFSKY, Peter (The J. Paul Getty Museum). Applied Humanities: Revisiting the Divide. Economic and employment realities, as well as changing technologies, are prompting some leading humanities programs to reconsider the training of graduate students with a goal of preparing them for a variety of employment options in applied humanities fields, such as museums. The debate between “pure” humanities and “life beyond the tenure track” has dominated discussions at recent meetings of the Modern Language Association and the American Historical Association (presidents of both societies have called for revision of graduate curricula), and within various other fields. This paper examines this latest version of the academic-applied dichotomy in light of lessons learned from folklore and art history in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively. Drawing on personal experience working in both domains, I reflect on the prospects for graduate curricula which endeavor to include preparation for jobs outside the academy, and whether this necessarily degrades humanistic inquiry.

VIEIRA, Jordan (University of Southern California). The Harlem Shake: Toward a Theory of Digital Folklore and Archives in the Digital Age. The “Harlem Shake” is the title of a 2012 heavy bass instrumental track produced by Baauer, an American producer of trap and bass music. In February 2013, the song spurred a series of YouTube videos that begin with a masked individual dancing alone in a group before suddenly cutting to a seemingly disorderly dance party featuring participants in costumes. At the time of this writing, a search of the title yields over 220,000 YouTube variations that indeed suggest the emergence of a new folkloric cultural form. This paper examines the concepts of community coalescence and representation in the Harlem Shake phenomenon and its implications regarding the cyborg and future folklore. It will also argue that YouTube acts as a site of digital folklore archiving, and our futuristic orientation consequently has the potential to recall and bring to our corporeality images of the past.

VON CHMIELEWSKI, Wolfgang (Independent Scholar). From ‘Poaching’ to Interdisciplinary Research. Less than a hundred years ago, scholars had to spend months on horseback to consult manuscripts at isolated locations, much of which we can do today with the

20 click of a mouse. With the abundance of information that is available on the internet, we no longer rely on the experts and are practically forced to make interdisciplinary research. As the dialogues expand on blogs, even students and independent researchers can contribute ideas. Consequently, this is the dawn of the information age, and as soon as all books and articles are digitized our scientific, philosophical, and religious doctrines will be revised automatically – and we may have found the “Stone of the Wise”.

WILLSEY, Kristiana (Indiana University). ‘The Purity and Beauty of a Failure’: The Poetics and Pragmatics of Narrative Breakdowns. Remembering is a form of forgetting. One of the fundamental paradoxes of personal narrative is how a freshly told tale of a painful experience can be cathartic, compelling the teller to make him/herself emotionally vulnerable, yet after many iterations, a personal narrative can function less as intimate revelation than as a carefully polished performance of a preferred self—a story that reveals may become a story that conceals. Traumatic narratives tend to be morally ambiguous, emotionally overdetermined, temporally confused, and inescapably sensuous, yet these qualities of “broken” performance, when mastered and appropriately applied, can also denote a highly skilled and affecting performer. How is the move from “authentic” narrative to “authenticating” discourse accomplished? This paper will rely on close linguistic readings of “broken” performances, particularly silence and disfluency, in the personal experience narratives of U.S. military veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. My focus is on the relationship between the markers of traumatic narrative—the qualities of narrative breakdowns— and the markers of virtuosic narrative, in which the breaks are willful, managed, and failure is sublimated into artistry.

WILSON, Alesha (University of California, San Diego). Tattoos: The Practice Behind the Symbols. This presentation examines the process of becoming tattooed, from concept through bearing the marks in daily life. Unlike other studies, the emphasis in this discussion focuses on neither the artistic nature of tattoos nor the symbolism of an individual marking itself, but endeavors to establish the tattoo process as a ritualistic folkloric practice with innate value. The study looks at the experiences of two college aged individuals, the author and an informant (Pond), who together form a unique micro-folk group amongst the greater subculture of tattooed persons. Through analysis of interviews and self-reflection, the author breaks the tattoo process into four stages (preparation, being tattooed, healing and wearing) in order to examine the importance of the process to the individual.

WINKELMAN, Meagan (University of Oregon). Secret Publics: Confession, Conversation and Play in Anonymous Social Networks. This paper examines a genre of online expression defined as “secrets,” as employed by young adults. Many websites and mobile applications advertise as spaces to anonymously share secrets and confessions: PostSecret, Experience Project, GroupHug (now defunct), Whisper, and several localized Facebook pages. Similarly, forums and social networks in which users interact anonymously allow users to participate in a “secret life” of relationships and experiences that need not be known by their peers or family. Men and women provided their retrospective experiences both sharing secrets and secretly sharing online during adolescence (ages 12-18), as well as responses to queries I submitted within these “intimate publics.”1 I explore how adolescents use these anonymous frameworks as both support systems and spaces for experimentation and play, as they negotiate their own

21 developing identities within normative standards imposed by media, peers, and family, and forge new connections based on their emotions and interests.

WISE, Alicia (Independent Scholar). Remolding the Chain Letter for Likes: Facebook and the Circulation of Superstition. Spammers and hackers have long blasted unsuspecting emailers with superstitious chain letters begging to be forwarded to fresh victims often with the effect of planting viruses and cookies software. For past few years, the chain letter has tormented a new online recipient: the Facebook user. This is not perhaps surprising; Facebook grants users access to numerous individuals thus rendering it an ideal platform for chain letters. Specifically, I am most interested in alternations of the folklore form caused by the conventions of Facebook: the additive of “Liking” rather than forwarding the letter to avoid dire consequences. And this is significant because it represents not only the revitalization of the chain letter but also its empowerment. By exploiting the arguably limiting “like” button, a small click of the mouse more easily passes on these posts compared to the time consuming act of forwarding traditional and electronic mail. In regards to chain letters, the “like” button is not a “conversation ender” as Aixin Wang argues; instead, it is the ultimate tool to propagate this folklore’s message and existence.

ZUMWALT, Rosemary Lévy (Agnes Scott College). Inspiring Research: Alan Dundes and his Students. In “Thinking Ahead: A Folkloristic Reflection of the Future Orientation in American Worldview,” Alan Dundes represented folklore as the autobiographical ethnography of a people.” Folklore, Dundes wrote, is “a people’s own description of themselves.” In this work, I draw from personal-experience narratives of Dundes’s students for their own descriptions of what Wolfgang Mieder called, “The Pied Piper of Folklore,” meant to them. Alan Dundes, the “giant in his field,” stood, as I said at his memorial service, at “the epicenter of American folklore scholarship.” At the center as he was seen – “the folklore scholar best known both to fellow folklorists and to non-folklorists the world over” –, Dundes typified himself as “a leader without followers.” At the center and on the edge, Dundes knew the power of the liminal. For those of us who benefitted from his inspiring research, our identity is firmly shaped as students of Alan Dundes.