No description available.

No description available.

<p> This thesis originally came out of a term paper for Dr. John Troutman&rsquo;s History 505 class in the spring of 2015, and at first, I was more interested in folklore itself than the organization charged with preserving it. But that soon changed, as did my purposes for writing. These purposes were several. First, to examine the Louisiana Folklife Program&mdash;its origins, its evolution, and its achievements&mdash;in order to see how it became what it is today. Second, to place the LFP in a national context by examining the factors that gave rise to its birth. Third, to explain why the LFP has endured while similar programs have struggled or faded away. And fourth, to examine the impact that political and academic opposition can and do have upon such programs. My methodology has changed little since I wrote the first page. Most of it entailed archival research coupled with secondary sources gleaned from libraries and Internet searches as well as oral interviews. What I learned in the course of my research has illustrated more than ever the fragility and value of Louisiana&rsquo;s cultural heritage and the value of preserving it. Some of it was almost wiped out in the early twentieth century, when speaking French was forbidden in schools throughout the state. It is thus incumbent upon both the LFP and the people of Louisiana to each do their part in ensuring that their posterity will be able to enjoy the rich diversity Louisiana has to offer. Stories, recipes, and handicrafts are things that we should not allow to fade away. Once they are gone, there is no restoring them. The LFP has made tremendous advances in this regard, and I sincerely hope they continue to do so, for the sake of all the generations that come after us.</p>

No description available.

The Antjie/Andries Somers folklore character invites different decodings since it has many different inscriptions. These proposed inscriptions aids this research project to explore the historical value this folklore character exhibits when compared to changes in South African social and political climates since the abolishment of the slave laws in 1834 until the present. This symbiotic relationship between culture and character, as well as the continuous restructuring of the character, is explored in an attempt to understand the changing fears and anxieties projected onto the Antjie/Andries Somers persona. This cultural icon also underwent a continuous number of different interpretations and manifestations as experienced by the Afrikaans speaking community during the past centuries. The body with relation to gender is another pivotal point regarding the Antjie/Andries Somers folklore as well as the question concerning the physical change from male to female. This relates to the controversy surrounding a woman as an object of “evil” that is investigated through the different mythologies regarding the origin of sin using the biblical character of Eve. These explorations of “evil” as an inscription on women is further examined against the backdrop of the patriarchal society and some of the many dominant religious practices from that time. Despite a vast archive of information on the various embodiments of Antjie/Andries Somers, the character as well as the embodiments, is still shrouded in mystery and the research project aims to provide information about some of these manifestations.

This thesis explores the role of folklore in creating an online Orkney place, referring to key literature from the discipline of folklore and the study of place, including the study of island places. The research introduces the concept and theory of Virtually Filtered Places: places created in the digital environment which are related to identifiable physical places in the non-digital environment. Such virtually filtered places are created by multiple users, meaning they are subject to compounded subjectivity; and are created across a range of digital platforms, meaning a virtually filtered place is one which has a range of possibilities and multiples depending on the nature of the data collection, including which platforms are analysed. This theory is grounded in the fields of space and place research, and of potential relevance to a wide variety of disciplines which focus on the interaction and engagement of users in digital environments which are linked to places in non-digital environments. The research develops a methodological approach grounded in digital ethnography, focussing upon three case studies using the social media platforms Facebook and Twitter. As a participant observer on Twitter, the researcher hosted a Twitter Hour discussing the #OrkneySupernatural, and hosted three Hosted Hashtags on Twitter, discussing three key themes that arose from early thematic analysis: the physical environment (#OrkneyAndPlace), the human environment (#OrkneyAndPeople), and the online environment (#OrkneyOnline). The researcher collated data from Facebook Groups and Pages as an invisible observer. Following iterative thematic analysis, nine sub-themes were identified. Referring to users' utilisation of platform-specific functionality and the themes and sub-themes identified, the creation of space and place relating to Orkney in the online environment is discussed, specifically considering the role that branding, media, and people play in the creation of place. The research considers the role of folklore in creating an online Orkney place (or a virtual Orkney), focussing on the importance of both the physical environment and the human environment. Finally, the features of this virtual Orkney are discussed, concluding with a proposal for how to approach the study of similar virtually filtered places. The research offers potential ways in which to investigate emerging and developing virtual places, and what folklore as a discipline can contribute to such studies in the context of place and the fluctuating digital environments in which these places are created.

<p>This thesis is a critical examination of a handful of the works of Shirley Jackson. It is an attempt at engaging in critical scholarship that for many years has been relatively lacking. In it, her stories ?The Summer People,? ?Pillar of Salt,? and ?The Daemon Lover? are examined alongside her novels Hangsaman and The Haunting of Hill House. This thesis addresses the ways in which Shirley Jackson writes the interior worlds of her protagonists and explores how those interiors are often physically linked to the physical worlds that these characters inhabit. Particularly, this thesis examines how Jackson writes the dissolution of her characters? fragile interiorities in the face of trauma spurred on by society?s oppression of women. Each section of this thesis attempts to examine how Jackson creates coping mechanisms for these protagonists and how these coping mechanisms fail to provide comfort and safety for her protagonists as their stories progress. By the end of this thesis, it is clear that Jackson?s work is a bleak chronicle of trauma and anxiety. In the starkest terms, she exposes just how few options women have in the face of a society that refuses to allow them to be whole individuals.

Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

No description available.

The antebellum American South was a site of continual human mobility and social fluidity. This cultivated a pattern of cultural exchange between black, indigenous, and white Southerners, especially in the Old Southwest, making the region a cultural borderland as well as a geographical one. This environment resulted in the creolization of many aspects of life in the region. to date, the literature of the Old South has yet to be studied in this context. This project traces the diffusion of African-American and Native American culture in white-authored Southern texts.;For instance, textual evidence in Old Southwestern Humor reveals a pattern of adaptations of folklore belonging to African-Americans. Johnson Jones Hooper's Some Adventures of Simon Suggs (1845) in particular reflects the presence of plots and motifs that originated in African trickster tales. Not all white Southern authors were menable to creolization, though. Novelists like William Gilmore Simms drew from but resisted the complete integration of non-white folklore in his historical romances. Native Americans and their culture frequently appear in his The Yemassee (1835), for instance, but always in a separate sphere.;The differences associated with the creolization of Old Southwestern Humor and the lack thereof in Southern historical romances reflect a distinction in Southern attitudes toward westward expansion and its social implications. In particular, the degree to which these authors did or did not resist creolization reflects their opinion about patterns of antebellum emigration and the backwoods social fluidity that contributed to the phenomenon of cultural exchange. Older conservatives like Simms, for instance, perceived the Old Southwest as a threat due to its rowdiness, materialism, and permeable social class. Novels by these authors displaced this milieu into the colonial past at an historical moment at which it became stabilized. The consequent elimination of Native Americans by whites in these texts marked a symbolic victory for order and stasis.;The texts of younger emigres to the South like Hooper reflect an alternate perspective. their embrace of the creative opportunities made possible by the social instability of the Old Southwest corresponds to their enthusiasm for the economic and social promise afforded by this recently settled region. In other words, the authors' openness to creolization mirrors a tolerance of the chaos born of mobility and a lack of structure. Suggs's antisocial exploits are adapted from African-American trickster tales whose characteristic disdain for authority and subversiveness contribute to Hooper's satire of traditional attitudes, including paternalism, which sought to limit this social flux.;These texts' competing viewpoints of the frontier allow scholars to get a sense of the diversity of social and political thought in the region---there was no monolithic Mind of the Old South. Additionally, acknowledging that these texts are a product of the multicultural environment reveals the contributions of Africans and Native Americans to Southern literature at its formative stage.