This study focuses on Vadie Conner Williams, an individual folk artist, and the drawnwork she has created throughout her lifetime. Included is a description of her rural farm background, her needlework skills and her creative process. The study also examines the significance of drawnwork to Williams and determines how she has adapted her work to satisfy her personal needs as well as the needs of her customers. Based on tape recorded interviews and a close examination of her work, the study concludes that drawnwork is an integral part of Williams's everyday life; it is an indicator of her beliefs and a source of identity within her community.

In order to remedy the shortcomings of past log structure documentation efforts, six proficiencies were established as necessary for the folklorist: (1) knowledge of, and use of, aerial photographs and topographic maps, (2) familiarity with usage of the compass, steel measuring tape and alidade, (3) accuracy in building measurement techniques, (4) the ability to competently compile a field notebook using standardized architectural notation, (5) operation of the camera as a recording tool, and (6) the production of measured drawings using the techniques specified by the Historic American Buildings Survey. The Rigsby House, a log structure in Warren County, Kentucky, served as a case study documentation, Providing the folklorist with a demonstration of techniques adaptable to his own documentation problem. Relevant comments on the difficulties inherent in recording structures constructed of wooden timbers were interjected as necessary throughout the text. Emphasis was placed on proficiencies three, four, and six, with more limited discussion of the remaining skills. Thirty-five illustrations were broken down into one perspective photograph, one aerial photograph, one partial elevation photograph, one topographic map, one plot plan, seventeen field notebook entries, twelve measured drawings, and one ion structure terminology drawing.

A number of aspects of the life style and material culture of a mountain settlement in Eastern Kentucky are studied to provide a portrait of life in that region in the early part of this century. The Hensley Settlement was established about 1903 when two families, the Hensleys and the Gibbonses, moved onto a 509 acre survey on top of Brush Mountain near Middlesboro, Kentucky. luring the course of almost forty—eight years on the mountain, the settlers multiplied into a community of over eighty people and constructed in excess of 100 log buildings. They had their own school, gristmills, and blacksmith. Their economy was agricultural at a subsistence level as their only cash crop was illegal whiskey. In later years the younger generation of Hensleys and Gibbonses becaue disenchanted with the rugged style of mountain life and were lured away by the regular paycheck and cash economy of the coal camps. As the younger generation left the mountain the older settlers were forced to move also. Advancing ape made it impossible for them to carry on their farming activities without the help of their children. Finally about 1951 only Sherran Hensley, the first of the settlers to move up the mountain, remained. The land was bought by the National Park Service to be reconstructed and used as a living historical museum. The settlement history and genealogy is examined in detail as well as the buildings, food production and preservation methods, and the mountain culture.

Formation, expression, and function of world view were examined in the life and compositions of folk musician, Katherine O'Neill Peters Sturgill. It was seen that the institutions of home, loved ones, and heaven were dominant themes in the formation of her world view. When twenty-two of Kate's gospel and sentimental song compositions were examined for thematic content, they were found to reflect the predominant formative influences in Kate's life. An interpretive model was developed showing home, loved ones, and heaven to be unified themes in a concept of sacred order--a concept which stood to oppose and defend against the banal chaos of the real world. Gospel and sentimental songs were examined in the context of the chaotic nineteenth century mainstream society from which they emerged, and they were seen to be functional entities corresponding strongly to Kate's songs, created out of her immediate context. The functionality of Kate's performance was interpreted in terms of a rhetorical theory of folklore performance.

Although country music and its antecedents have received attention primarily as cultural phenomena of the South, the past twenty years have witnessed a growing scholarly interest in the interplay between commercial country music, vernacular components. and performers within a regional context. The commercial product which has now attained worldwide appeal undoubtedly sustains a significant relationship to the folkways and regional identity of the South; nonetheless, performers and vernacular styles from other areas of the country have contributed to the development of country music. Most important. many areas outside of the South maintain local traditions of country music entertainment. In this thesis, I argue for a broader conception of country music and its sources by examining the careers of Gene Hooper and Dick Curless within the context of country music in Maine. The evidence presented suggests that country music, in its local context, retains a significant link to regional image and identity, as well as maintaining a connection to traditional music style and function. The acceptance of the "new social history" rests upon the belief that knowledge of everyday people and culture contributes to our understanding of historical processes and periods. The methods of folkloristics complement this perspective and also provide an approach with which to study performance in small group contexts. Much of my information derives from observation of country music culture in Maine and interviews with relevant persons. I have also utilized archival material and scholarship concerning the history of country music and vernacular music in the Northeast. Within the thesis. I examine theoretical considerations of region and group identity. Because the scholarly and popular conceptions of country music identify it primarily as a cultural phenomenon of the American South, my examination begins with a summary of historical perspectives on country music and the development of the Southern image connected with it. This discussion is followed by a brief survey of theoretical attitudes toward country music and regional identity within the discipline of folklore. Turning toward country music in the Northeast, I outline the roots of vernacular music there and describe the evolution of a regional country music boom. A detailed description of the careers of Gene Hooper and Dick Curless follows, with particular emphasis on the differing professional contexts of their music. Finally, I return to academic models of country music and region, elaborating on distinctions between the commercial context of the Nashville music industry and the vernacular music of the Northeast.

In this thesis I focus on an art form alternately described as "naive," "visionary," "environmental," "singular," "individual," or "grassroots." Not easily placed within established academic or popular art categories, such art usually lands by default in the folk art pile and is quickly cast to the peripheries of that genre. In this thesis, I am not concerned with inventing another label for these artists and their work. Instead, I explore the possibility that visionary art may be a separate genre, but one to which folklore analysis may usefully be brought to bear. Chapter One is a historical and bibliographical analysis of visionary art. Beginning with an overview of the literature on the subject, I review the development of the definitional debate in the United States as well as in Europe and trace the gradual evolution of this art form into a loosely separate category. Chapter Two consists of an analysis of visionary art. I construct a "behaviorist" model which draws not only upon the usual criteria of building styles or materials used but also examines such subjects as the artist's motivations, personal visions, life history and community role. In Chapter Three I test this model using the work of Valenty Zaharek, an Arizona woodcarver and ceramicist. Zaharek's previously undocumented work, "Pecos West," is a three-dimensional carved depiction of Western scenes. It is aesthetically magnificent and falls along the borders of a variety of art forms --folk, visionary, popular.

An ethnographic study of the musical traditions of the A. L. Phipps Family, of Barbourville, Kentucky, reveals various social forces which have affected the family's repertoire and performance career. A life history of the family, compiled from extensive fieldwork, is presented along with analyses of the Phippses' secular music, sacred songs, and their performance career. The family is clearly representative of the musical traditions of the upland South, drawing its music from sources common to most white Appalachian singers. A discography of the Phipps Family's recordings is included along with a selection of photographs highlighting their life and performance career.

This study is a development of the work roles of traditional farm women in Peytonsburg, Kentucky. Peytonsburg is a relatively isolated area along the western border of the Appalachians. Traditional processes such as broom-making, chair-making, quilting, spinning and traditional farming are still practiced there. Taped interviews were conducted with seven women ranging from sixty-five to eighty-eight years old. The women were questioned concerning their house and field cores as well as their philosophies and attitudes toward their life styles. It was revealed in this study that the traditional farm women of this area work throughout the year to keep the family farm of:crating. In an analysis of these farm women's work roles it was discerned that they are concerned with four significant facets of life. First, their family; second, maintenance of the farm through house and field work necessary at any riven time; third, the church; rand, fourth, helping others. This research adds to the small body of relevant materials available on women's studies. The present description of the work role, philosophies, and attitudes of the traditional farm women in Peytonsburg is a study which may provide a foundation for other research in women's roles.

This thesis explores the day-to-day realities for public high school counselors inside their schools. The national average student-to-counselor ratio in public high schools in the U.S. is 482:1. This is almost double the recommended counselor caseload by the American School Counselor Association, which recommends 250 students per counselor. However, counselors’ inflated caseloads are not the only reason why counselors are overworked. Using a year’s worth of ethnographic research, I analyze the bureaucratic and care labor practices of counselors and the ways in which their labor exploitation reflects years of neoliberal discourse influencing the functioning of public education. This neoliberalization of public education not only intensifies the bureaucratic labor that counselors must do on a daily basis, but also makes counselors perceive their frequent care labor as “unproductive.” Schools exploit counselors’ labor by depending on their care labor, while also relying on the pressure that counselors put on themselves to continue completing the bureaucratic labor demanded of them.

Jewish Israeli Women Soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are marked as the feminine "other" and work to reify the institution's power in Israeli nation-making. As subjects of the militarized Israeli state, women operate as legitimizers of Israel's masculinist authority. They soften the aggressive actions of the IDF through their demarcation in the feminine category, but they are also capable of furthering Israel's arguments regarding its egalitarian modernity through narratives of female "empowerment." As the subjugated "other" within ideas of Jewish Israeli national belonging, Jewish Israeli women soldiers operate for the means of the state's re/production of the nation and therefore of the state's power.