Theorizing Folklore from the Margins: Critical and Ethical Approaches

Description

The study of folklore has historically focused on the daily life and culture of regular people, such as artisans, storytellers, and craftsmen. But what can folklore reveal about strategies of belonging, survival, and reinvention in moments of crisis? The experience of living in hostile conditions for cultural, social, political, or economic reasons has redefined communities in crisis. The curated works in Theorizing Folklore from the Margins offer clear and feasible suggestions for how to ethically engage in the study of folklore with marginalized populations. By focusing on issues of critical race and ethnic studies, decolonial and antioppressive methodologies, and gender and sexuality studies, contributors employ with a wide variety of disciplines and theoretical approaches. In doing so, they reflect the transdisciplinary possibilities of folklore studies. By bridging the gap between theory and practice, Theorizing Folklore from the Margins confirms that engaging with oppressed communities is not only relevant, but necessary. Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Part I. Critical Paths Introduction: How Does Folklore Find Its Voice in the Twenty-First Century? An Offering/Invitation from the Margins / Solimar Otero and Mintzi Auanda Martínez-Rivera 1. White Traditioning and Bruja Epistemologies: Rebuilding the House of USAmerican Folklore Studies / Rachel V. González-Martin 2. Un Tumbe Ch’ixi: Incorporating Afro-Descendant Ideas into an Andean Anticolonial Methodology / Juan Eduardo Wolf 3. Disrupting the Archive / Miriam Melton-Villanueva and Sheila Bock Part II. Framing the Narrative 4. Afrolatinx Folklore and Representation: Interstices and Antiauthenticity / Solimar Otero 5. Behaving like Relatives: Or, We Don’t Sit Around and Talk Politics with Strangers / Rhonda R. Dass 6. Political Protest, Ideology, and Social Criticism in Wolof Folk Poetry / Cheikh Tidiane Lo 7. Sugar Cane Alley: Teaching the Concept of “Group” from a Critical Folkloristics Perspective / Katherine Borland 8. movimiento armado / armed movement / Itzel Guadalupe Garcia Part III. Visualizing the Present 9. Ni lacras, ni lesbianas normalizadas: Trauma, matrimonio, conectividad y representación audiovisual para la comunidad lesbiana en Cuba / Mabel Cuesta 10. “¿Batata? ¡Batata!”: Examining Puerto Rican Visual Folk Expression in Times of Adversity / Gloria M. Colom Braña 11. Forming Strands and Ties in the Knotted Atlantic:Methodologies of Color and Practice of Beadwork in LucumíReligion / Martin A. Tsang 12. Of Blithe Spirits: Narratives of Rebellion, Violence, and Cosmic Memory in Haitian Vodou / Alexander Fernández Part IV. Placing Community 13. “No One Would Believe Us”: An Autoethnography of Conducting Fieldwork in a Conflict Zone / Mintzi Auanda Martínez-Rivera 14. “La Sierra Juárez en Riverside”: The Inaugural Oaxacan Philharmonic Bands Audition on a University Campus / Xóchitl Chávez 15. Hidden Thoughts and Exposed Bodies: Art, Everyday Life, and Queering Cuban Masculinities / Cory W. Thorne 16. Complexifying Identity through Disability: Critical Folkloristic Perspectives on Being a Parent and Experiencing Illness and Disability through My Child / Phyllis M. May-Machunda Index