Seminar: Cult C: Global Folklore

This course is a survey of folk literature identifying archetypes, themes, and motifs, orally transmitted literature across place and time. Students will begin by learning key concepts of folklore scholarship: culture, tradition, performance, genre, the local/global distinction, the folk/popular divide, and the dynamics of the customary and innovative in folklore production. Through an exploration of these concepts students will develop an expansive definition of folklore the way that stories live between and among people i.e. tellers and audiences, collectors and translators; adapting themselves to changing times, circumstances and metaphysical spaces. The course will focus on the transmission and transformation of cultural knowledge and practice in situations of want and plenty, peace and conflict.