Saturday Folklore Link Bonanza

Lots and lots of folklore happenings this week, including the passing of another major influence on contemporary folklore studies:

• Turkish folklorist and novelist Hayrettin Ivgin was awarded the Pushkin Prize for his contributions to world literature. He is supposedly more popular in the former Soviet Union than in his native Turkey.
• Awards season is upon us - the American Folklore Society has posthumously awarded its Aesop prize for Children's Folklore to Nona Beamer for her book Naupaka.
• Dell Hymes has passed away after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer's Disease. Professor Hymes held influence over innumerable fields such as Sociolinguistics, Anthropology and Folklore. While having been long associated with my alma mater - The University of Virginia - Professor Hymes was gearing up for retirement by the time I did my graduate study/indentured servitude. I never had the opportunity to meet the man, but his name resounded throughout the halls on the grounds. The Washington post has his obituary, UVA has an official press release, The Daily Progress has an obituary, and Jason Baird Jackson has an appreciation.
• The Aesop Accolade Award - also awarded by the AFS - went to Orville Hicks and Julia Taylor Ebel for the book Jack Tales and Mountain Yarns.
• Folklore Forum has put out a call for papers on Cultural Manifestations of Violence.
• Short article about the work of Brigham Young University-Hawaii dean/researcher Philip McArthur.
• I am so looking forward to seeing the movie "The Book of Masters" - Disney's first foray into Russian-language filmmaking. The New York Times has an article about the making of the film.

Keep folklorin'!

Folklore Friday Roundup

Hey! It's Folklore Friday! Time for a round-up of relatively recent news from the folklore front.

• Snopes.com has a debunking of a persistent urban legend concerning Oprah Winfrey and tipping.
• Alan Dundes's posthumous collection "The Meaning of Folklore" has been made available as a free ebook. My mother actually gave me a copy of this book for Christmas last year and I devoured it, digested it and loved it. It's nice to have a searchable copy on my laptop. I am not offering the link - the legality of this copy is dubious - but it is easily googleable.
• The New England Folklore Blog has an interesting post commemorating Bear Hibernation Day, and includes a retelling of a Penobscot tale. If you don't already subscribe to this blog, you should.
• There were many memorials about the late Claude Levi-Strauss this past week-and-a-half. Jason Baird Jackson from Indiana looks at Levi-Strauss from the point-of-view of a museum ethnologist. Vital reading.
• I have mentioned it before, but the new Russian Disney movie "The Book of the Masters" is set for general release. The Disneyfication of Russian tales has started (I wonder if Russian folkloristics has its Jack Zipes?)

November Spawned These Folklore Books

I am overwhelmed in updates that I have to do to this site, but I enjoy doing these lists the most:

• Dun: Discourses, Strategies, and Power in the Yora'ba Play of Transformation - Cristina Boscolo. From the series Cross/Culture.
• Preaching the Inward Light: Early Quaker Rhetoric - Michael P. Graves. From the series . in Rhetoric and Literature.
• Approaches to Homer's Iliad and Odyssey - Kosta Myrsiades. American University Studies XIX: General Literature.
• Perspectives on Israeli Anthropology - Harvey Goldberg, et. al. (eds). The Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology.
• A Tennessee Folklore Sampler: Selected Readings from the Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin - Ted Olson and Anthony Cavender, eds.
• Indian Ocean Studies: Cultural, Social, and Political Perspectives - Shanti Moorty, ed. Routledge Indian Ocean Series.
• Pancatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom - Patrick Oiville (trans). Oxford World's Classics edition.
• Serbian Folk-Lore: Popular Tales. Selected and translated by Madam Csedomille Mijatovich and W. Denton.
• Word Stories Originated by Ancient Africans - Joseph A. Bailey.
• Folk Tales of the Coast Salish - Thelma Anderson (ed).
• Ariadne's Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature - William Hansen. From the series Myth & Poetics.
• Popular Turkish Love Lyrics & Folk Legends - Talat S. Halman. From the series Middle East Literature in Translation.

As always, I would gladly accept free copies of these (or any) books!