Feminist Folklore
Department:
Comparative Studies
Course Number:
5957.01
Call Number:
12077
Semester:
Autumn 2012
Days/Times:
TR 9:35 to 10:55 am
Professor:
Katey Borland
Professor Email:
borland.19@osu.edu
Professor Phone:
(___)___-____
Other Contact:
Elo-Hanna Seljamaa
Other Contact Email:
seljamaa.1@osu.edu
In this course we will trace the various paradigms for studying women, gender and feminism in folklore and ethnography that have emerged over the last quarter century. After reviewing the foundations of feminist folklore in the 1970s and 1980s, we will pay particular attention to contemporary approaches, theories and projects that illuminate the relationships between performance, gender and power. This course will be taught in conjunction with Professor Shuman's course English 4577.01: Gender.
Folklore Major/Minor Elective
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Folklore I: Groups and Communities: Gender
Department:
English
Course Number:
4577.01
Call Number:
12312
Semester:
Autumn 2012
Days/Times:
TR 9:35 to 10:55 am
Professor:
Amy Shuman
Professor Email:
shuman.1@osu.edu
Professor Phone:
(___)___-____
Other Contact:
Elo-Hanna Seljamaa
Other Contact Email:
seljamaa.1@osu.edu
Folklorists have always studied gender, whether in research on women's lament songs or on men's work songs, but this research has only recently become part of discussions on sexuality, global feminism, or feminist ethnography. Often the larger theoretical studies fail to account for local culturally-specific experiences. This course is designed to bring the culturally specific research into conversation with the theoretical work. Topics include: gender and "traditional" cultural practices; representations of gender in folktales, ballads, jokes and other genres; and gender politics in everyday life including sexuality, social roles, and stigma. Theoretical issues include the incompatibility of cultural relativism and feminism; global feminism and local cultural resistance movements; and feminist ethnography. This course will be taught in conjunction with Professor Borland's Comparative Studies Course CS 5957.01 Feminist Folklore.
Folklore Minor/Major Elective
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Global Folklore
Department:
Comparative Studies
Course Number:
4597.03
Call Number:
20012
Semester:
Autumn 2012
Days/Times:
TR 9:35 to 10:55 am
Professor:
Sabra Webber
Professor Email:
webber.1@osu.edu
Professor Phone:
(___)___-____
Other Contact:
Elo-Hanna Seljamaa
Other Contact Email:
seljamaa.1@osu.edu
This course provides an introduction to contemporary folklore from around the world. How do people from all walks of life create expressive or aesthetic culture in their everyday lives? How do communities and groups mark themselves and maintain a collective sense of themselves as distinct from other communities/groups, particularly in the midst of globalization? What does it mean to respect and conserve cultural as well as biological diversity? Students will begin by learning key concepts of folklore scholarship: culture, tradition, performance, genre, the local/global distinction, the folk/popular divide, the dynamics of tradition and innovation in folklore production. Through an exploration of these concepts students will develop an expansive definition of folklore as both the means by which groups distinguish themselves and the bridges among diverse communities. Additionally, we will explore a set of special topics in folklore through readings and films from various regions of the world. We will focus on the transmission and transformation of cultural knowledge and practice in situations of want, conflict, and upheaval.
Sample Readings and Films: Excerpt from Barre Toelken’s The Anguish of Snails; Enid Schildkrout and Donna Klumpp Pido, “Serendipity, Practicality, and Aesthetics: The Art of Recycling in Personal Adornment,” in Recycled, Re-Seen: Folk Art from the Global Scrap Heap, ed. Cerny & Seriff; Alex Haley, “Black History, oral history and geneology”; Jana Hawley, “The Amish Veil: Symbol of Separation and Community”; Mohja Kahf “From Her Royal Body the Robe Was Removed: The Blessings of the Veil and the Trauma of Forced Unveilings in the Middle East,” in The Veil: Women Writers on its History, Lore and Politics, ed. Heath; the films Sugar Cane Alley, West Beirut.
GE Cross-Disciplinary Seminar; GE Diversity: Global Studies; Folklore Major/Minor Elective
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Introduction to Narrative and Narrative Theory
Department:
English
Course Number:
4559
Call Number:
12113
Semester:
Autumn 2012
Days/Times:
TR 12:45 to 2:05 pm
Professor:
Amy Shuman
Professor Email:
shuman.1@osu.edu
Professor Phone:
(___)___-____
Other Contact:
Elo-Hanna Seljamaa
Other Contact Email:
seljamaa.1@osu.edu
Stories give shape to our everyday life experiences. We tell stories about ourselves, about others, about trivial interactions that fade from memory, and about life changing events. In this course we explore who tells stories to whom and in what contexts. We’ll examine narrative form, genre, performance, repertoire and interaction. Each student will collect stories that will become the focus of a term paper.
Folklore Major/Minor Elective
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Modernity and Postmodernity: Issues and Ideas: Development Theory
Department:
Comparative Studies
Course Number:
2864H
Call Number:
10548
Semester:
Autumn 2012
Days/Times:
TR 2:20 to 3:40 pm
Professor:
Katey Borland
Professor Email:
borland.19@osu.edu
Professor Phone:
(___)___-____
Other Contact:
Elo-Hanna Seljamaa
Other Contact Email:
seljamaa.1@osu.edu
Since the end of World War II, the development paradigm has structured relations between the global north and south in powerful ways. This course will introduce students to the history of the “development” concept, its successes and failures in the 20th century, and the more recent 21st century paradigms—alternative development, sustainable development, philanthrocapitalism, post-development—that currently dominate our conversations. Students will be encouraged to ask themselves the following questions: Is develop a transitive or intransitive verb? What causes abject poverty (ie poverty without dignity or hope)? What are basic human needs? Which is the more serious problem: underdevelopment or overdevelopment? What should the goals of development be? What are the most appropriate methods for improving quality of life for all? Students will select a specific aspect of development that interests them (such as women in development, the environment, race relations, conflict mitigation) and become the class expert in that area, interrogating the various models we consider with a view to uncovering their effects and side effects on the issues that concern us most.
GE Literature; GE Diversity: Global Studies; Honors Course; Folklore Major/Minor Elective
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Studies in Orality and Literacy
Department:
NELC/ Comparative Studies
Course Number:
5568/ 5668
Call Number:
7520/ 12313
Semester:
Autumn 2012
Days/Times:
R 3:55 to 6:50 pm
Professor:
Sabra Webber
Professor Email:
webber.1@osu.edu
Professor Phone:
(___)___-____
Other Contact:
Elo-Hanna Seljamaa
Other Contact Email:
seljamaa.1@osu.edu
This course takes place thirty years after the publishing of Walter Ong’s influential 1982 work, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. Ong touches briefly on what he called, secondary oral cultures, those emergent with the advent of television and radio, but perhaps for our purposes in this course more usefully with the advent of hypertext/hypermedia phenomena. As we move forward in the course we will keep an eye on these emerging phenomena and those who study them considering, at the suggestion of Fowler and others, how hypermedia processes and products might lead us to understand more complexly oral, manuscript, as well as book cultures as they interweave across time and space.
The focus in this course is on theoretical trends in orality and literacy studies that engage with expressive or aesthetic (“performative” as linguistic anthropologists or folklorists understand the term) examples of oral or written communication, sacred or secular, that consider texts, textures and contexts, especially audience, in their analyses. We will also privilege theoretical studies that consider the permeable boundaries among the oral, written, and secondary oral rather than, for example, setting up absolute dichotomies between various manifestations of oral and written. We will test these theoretical claims with recourse to case studies particular to one or another of a spectrum of local communities.
Students are urged to bring their own projects based in any language or combination of languages to the metaphorical and actual course table, though all readings will be in English. Student projects can address any culture and any time period, but the work done on it in this particular seminar will be expected to draw on our mutually considered course readings as the means to move the particular study forward.
Global theories of both orality and literacy owe much to studies of Near Eastern data, ancient, medieval, and contemporary, but we will also draw on comparative examples that apply similar theory in alternative places and times, and those that engage with dissimilar theory applied to the same expressive phenomena. Among others, we will read excerpts from works by Martin Jaffee, John Foley, Roman Jakobson, Michael Zwettler, Donna Haraway, Joyce Coleman, G. Bauman, Ong himself, Robert Fowler, and Galit Hasan-Rokem. This course can be taken to fulfill the topics component of the Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Folklore. For more information on GIS, see http://cfs.osu.edu/programs/graduateoptions/gis
Folklore Major/Minor Elective; Topics Option Folklore GIS
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The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union
Department:
International Studies
Course Number:
2250H - 0010
Call Number:
11646
Semester:
Autumn 2012
Days/Times:
MWF 1:50 to 2:45 pm
Professor:
Tatyana Nestorova
Professor Email:
nestorovamatejic.1@osu.edu
Professor Phone:
(614)292-9657
Other Contact:
Liz Langford
Other Contact Email:
langford.18@osu.edu
The course provides a thorough introduction into the geography, history, politics, economy, society and foreign policy of the former Soviet Union. Particular attention will be drawn to the meaning of the Soviet experience and the role of political leaders in the Soviet context. The emergence of post-Soviet Russia and the evolving new Russian political and socioeconomic system are also discussed.
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