Nom Nom Nom

When I was in Russian summer camp we used to play the 'niam niam niam niam' song to signal meal times!

Glad to see that folk expression absolutely thrives on the intranets.

Folklore Friday - Tuesday Edition!

The intrawebs is abuzz with folklore this week:

• "American Folklife: A Commonwealth of Cultures" - a 1991 article by Mary Hufford has been digitized and posted.
• The artist Rosalynn Rothstein has presented a rather confusing poster at the AFS meeting in Boise. I think it's wonderful!
• Josh Berer has been collecting folklore from Yemeni Jews.
• Weird Chicago Tours Blog has a personal recollection of the Bloody Mary/Mary Worth legend.
• VisWiki has an update to an article on Alan Dundes.
• Celtic Scholar has a review of Alan Dundes' "Sacred Narrative," a book which I revisit with much frequency.
• Osun.org has a neat-o collection of folklore pdfs.
• I think I will let the title of the posting speak for itself: Abstracts of Proceedings of Dying and Death in 18th -21st Century Europe.
• There are countless -pedias and wikis scattered throughout the internets. Here's wapedia's take on Russian folk belief.
• Andrew Whastie has a nice introduction to slavic mythology.

Till next time: Keep on Folklorin'!

Folklore Friday!

It is Folklore Friday and time for a news round-up from the amazing and exciting world of folklore studies!

• Professor Henry Glassie was awarded the Homer Haskins Prize for his lifetime of work. This award is akin to the Irving Thalberg award at the Oscars, and it is most deserving. Henry Glassie is nothing short of a monumental force in the field of folklore. I had the pleasure of meeting him a number of years ago, and saw an amazing lecture on the folk architecture of the Piedmont. A round of applause goes out to Professor Glassie. Mirror article can also be found over at the Educational Cyberplayground.
• Interesting transcript of an interview with Gary Snyder.
• An overview of a research project on the oral history of the Ayta people from Bataan, Phillipines.
• Springshare LibGuides has a useful listing of web resources for those interested in American Folklore.
• Short biography of Joel Chandler Harris.
• A joint meeting of the Popular Culture and American Culture Association has put out a call for papers on biography.
• Bess Lomax Hawes has passed away. The Washington Post has an obit and the NEA's official announcement.
• The Botkin Prize has gone to Maryland folklorist Elaine Eff. The accompanying picture in the Baltimore Sun makes me want to immediately get in a car and drive down to Maryland to try a Smith Island cake! Congrats!
• Speaking of Joel Chandler Harris, a call for Disney to let Song of the South out of the vaults.
• Disney's new movie has sparked lots of interest in "Song of the South," here's another article from Culture Mining.
• About a week too late, but an interesting lecture put on by the Botkin Folklife Lecture Series on Jewish/Irish collaboration on the minstrel scene.
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Folklore Books in Time for Festivus!

Another month, another list of books that can be enjoyed by folklorists of all stripes:

• Folklore of American Holidays, 4th ed. - Hennig Cohen and Tristram Potter Coffin.
• Folklore of World Holidays, 3rd ed. - Robert Griffin and Ann H. Shurgin.
• The Life of the Longhouse: An Archaeology of Ethnicity - Peter Metcalf.
• The Theory of Cultural and Social Selection - W. G. Runciman.
• Creation Myths of the World - David Adams Leeming, Ph.D.
• Ethnography: Step-By-Step - David M. Fetterman. In the Series "Applied Social Research Methods."
• Ritual: Perpectives and Dimensions - Catherine Bell. Revised edition.
• Culinary Fictions: Food in South Asian Diasporic Culture - Anita Mannur.
• The Flood and the Fire: Creation and Apocolypse in Irish Myth and Prophecy - Anthony Murphy and Richard Moore.
• Diana - Fay Glinister. From the series "Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World."
• Shamanic Journeys Through the Caucasus - Michael Berman.
• Consuming Agency in Fairy Tales, Childlore, and Folkliterature - Susan Honeyman. Part of the series "Routledge Studies in Folklore and Fairy Tales.
• Framing the Jina: Narrative of Icons and Idols in Jain History - John Cort.
• Old Gods, New Druids - Robin Herne.
• Shamanic Journeys Through Daghestan - Michael Berman (man he's been busy!).
• Primitive Classification - Emile Durkheim. Reprinted as part of the "Routledge Revivals" series.
• Unwitting Zionists: The Jewish Community of Zakho in Iraqi Kurdistan - Haya Gavish. From the series "Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology."
• Celebrating 100 Years of the Texas Folklore Society, 1909-2009 - ed. by Kenneth L. Untiedt.
• Between Pulpit and Pew: Folk Religion in a North Yorkshire Fishing Village - David Clark.
• Tibetan Ritual - Jose Ignacio Cabezon.
• Going to the Well for Water - Rionach Ui Ogain.

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!