This course extends the classroom to include the diverse neighborhoods
and places of Philadelphia and its suburbs. Students will have the
opportunity to explore--through class fieldtrips and individual research
projects--forgotten corners and everyday landscapes. From the mirrored
murals of South Street to the decaying hull of long-abandoned Eastern
State Penitentiary, from neighborhood Irish pubs to corner schoolyards
where pick-up basketball games are played, students will learn how writing
can be used to effectively convey the often elusive "sense of place"
that marks human inhabitation of a particular spot on the map. The class
will be conducted in a writing workshop format. In addition to conferences
and written responses from the instructor, students will form a community of
readers for the writing of their peers. Writing assignments will include
journal writing in response to class readings and discussions;
ethnographic "field reports" recording observations of chosen locales;
and a final writing project, developed in consultation with the
instructor, in some way documenting a particular urban or suburban space.
Students will be introduced to principles of urban ethnography,
developing skills of observation, interviewing, and documenting. This
ethnographic approach allows students to put into practice the
oft-invoked truism to "write what you know" by giving writers a
concrete approach for translating personal experience in the world into
written form. In the course of the semester students will develop a
portfolio of ethnographic-based writing in which, based on individual writing
goals, students can approach a variety of writing genres.
Contact: Brian D.
Gregory
FOLK 009 302 Writing About Spaces
Veronica Aplenc
Seminar: Monday, Wednesday: 3:00-4:30; Williams 315
Fulfills The College Writing Requirement
Embodied Memory/History in the Urban Landscape: McDonalds or Independence
Hall? Do you believe your local McDonald's plays a significant role in your
city's history? In the same way as other buildings, or less? The
contemporary North American landscape contains many markers of our collective
identity, some designated so intentionally and some not. Through examining
local historic sites, including both traditional and not-so-traditional
ones, we will examine the ways in which our nation incorporates history
into public spaces as an embodiment of our collective sense of identity,
with attention to how we interact with this history. Our discussions will help
us interrogate the ways in which our nation understands its past and
reinterprets it through local cultural expressions as a means of better
understanding our own conceptions of society and culture.
In parallel with our disciplinary focus of analyzing the built
environment and related cultural phenomena, we will also sharpen our
ability to write clear and persuasive arguments. The main class
requirements will take the form of brief responses to the readings and
three medium-length papers. Other requirements will include readings
on diverse topics; active class participation; several short fieldtrips
and the taking of field notes; visual analysis of architectural sites,
written and oral; and conferences with the instructor.
Contact: Veronica Aplenc
FOLK 022 401 World Music and Culture
Staff
Lecture: Monday, Wednesday, Friday: 10:00-11:00; Music Building 302
Cross-listed with: MUSC 022
Fulfills General Requirements III: Arts & Letters
This course draws on repertories of various societies from Asia,
Africa, Europe, and the Americas to examine relations between
aesthetic productions and social processes. We investigate musical
sounds, cultural logics informing those sounds, and social strategies
of performance. Topics may include indigenous music theories, music
and social organization, symbolic expressions and musical meaning,
gender, religion, and social change.
Contact: Music Department - 215-898-7544
FOLK 022 402 World Music and Culture
Professor Carol Ann Muller
Lecture: Tuesday, Thursday: 12:00-1:30; Music Annex 210
Contact: Carol A.
Muller;215-898-4985 or 898-7544
Requirements, Descriptions and Cross-listings are same as
above.
FOLK 022 403 World Music and Culture
Staff
Lecture: Monday, Wednesday, Friday: 12:00-1:00; Music Building 302
Requirements, Descriptions and Cross-listings are same as above.
Contact: Music Department - 215-898-7544
FOLK 022 601 World Music and Culture
Rose Theresa
Lecture: Thursday: 4:30-7:10; Music Annex 210
Requirements, Descriptions and Cross-listings are same as above.
Contact: Music Department - 215-898-7544
FOLK 029 401 Women and Religion
Dr. Alexandra Griswold
Lecture: Tuesday, Thursday: 3:00-4:30; Williams 318
Cross-listed with: RELS 005, WSTD 109
Fulfills General Requirement I: Society
An introduction to the role of women in major religious traditions, focusing
on the relationship between religion and culture. Attention to views of
women in sacred texts and to recent feminist responses will be given.
Contact: Alexandra F. Griswold
FOLK 075 401 Jazz: Style and History
Professor Guthrie Ramsey
Lecture: Tuesday, Thursday: 3:00-4:30; Music Annex 210
Cross-listed with MUSC 075
Fulfills Distribution III: Arts and Letters
Exploration of the family of musical idioms called jazz. Attention
will be given to issues of style, to selected musicians, and to the
social, cultural, and scholarly issues raised by its study.
Contact: Guthrie
Ramsey;215-898-7573
FOLK 101 601 Introduction to Folklore
Dr. Lars B. Jenner
Lecture: Monday: 6:30-9:10; Logan 493
Fulfills General Requirement II: History & Tradition
Folklore is the culture of everyday life. From tales of Johnny Appleseed
to jokes about Monica Lewinsky, from cowboy songs to the kentucky fried
rat, from hooked rugs to the Mummers, we will explore the discipline as
defined by what people say, what people make, and what people do with
their bodies. Investigating the terms "folk" and "lore" through history,
the course will track the expansion of folklore study from traditional
verbal genres (proverbs, folktales, tall tales, fables, legends, ballads,
epics, jokes, riddles, etc.) to include, among other things, festivals
and popular entertainment, tourism and heritage sites, contemporary
belief, and alternative health systems. The course will provide you with
critical tools to dissect and interpret how we participate ourselves in
artistic cultural expression in various folk groups today.
Contact: Dr. Lars B.
Jenner
FOLK 154 401 The Image of Childhood in Literature: The
Construction and Reconstruction of Early Memories in Israeli and
Jewish Writings
Dr. Nili Gold
Lecture: Tuesday, Thursday: 1:30-3:00; Kelly Writers' House 202
Cross-listed with: AMES 154, COML 282, JWST 154
The course examines literary representations of childhood memories and
their validity. Special attention will be given to issues such as the
perception of the "other" in childhood; gender; early sexual counters;
Oedipal conflicts and the attachment to the land. Tensions between
reality and fiction and the point of view of the adult and the child will
be discussed. Textual analysis will greatly rely on psychoanalytic and
gender theories.
Contact: Dr. Nili Gold;
215-898-7466
FOLK 201 001 American Folklore
Leonard Norman Primiano
Lecture: Monday, Wednesday: 11:00 - 12:00; Stitler B26
Fulfills General Requirement in History and Tradition
Recitations:
FOLK 201 201 Friday 11:00-12:00; Williams 306 - Johanna Jacobsen
FOLK 201 202 Friday 11:00-12:00; Williams 319 - Shannon Geary
This course will examine American expressive culture through an
exploration of narrative; music; dance; drama; public events; material
arts and architecture; religion; medicine; politics; foodways; ways
of speaking; and customs surrounding and celebrating work, leisure,
childhood, family, aging, individuality, and community. In other words, we
will be studying the 99% of American life that often goes unnoticed by
other college courses! Special topics featured in 2001: tattooing,
piercing, branding and other forms of contemporary body art;
women's home altars; and the African-based North American religion called
"Vodou."
Contact: Dr. Leonard Norman
Primiano;610-902-8330
FOLK 230 401 Approaches to Narrative
Professor Regina Bendix
Lecture: Tuesday, Thursday: 1:30-3:00; Logan 392
Cross-listed with ANTH 238, COML 275
Fulfills General Requirement III: Arts & Letters
Fulfills 1/2 College Writing Requirement
Storytelling is a fundamental process in all human communities, fulfilling a
variety of social, psychological and aesthetic needs. This course explores a
wide spectrum of narrative forms (such as myths, legends, tales, jokes, etc.)
in traditional settings as well as in new media. The course also surveys
approaches to the study of narrative in folkloristics and related fields, and
students learn to identify and work with some of the major theoretical
approaches brought to the cultural study of narrative.
Contact:Professor Regina
Bendix; 215-898-5826
FOLK 270 601 Folklore and Sexuality
Dr. David S. Azzolina
Lecture: Tuesday: 6:30-9:10; Logan 392
Cross-listed with WSTD 270
Sexuality is usually thought of as being biological or social, divided
into categories of natural and unnatural. What often gets missed are its
creative and communicative aspects. Examining the constructed social
elements of sexuality requires attention to be paid to folklore in
groups, between individuals and on the larger platform of popular
technological media. The most interesting locations for exploration are
those places where borderlands or margins occur between genders, orientations,
and other cultural categories.
Contact: Dr. David S.
Azzolina; 215-898-5322
FOLK 290 601 Ethnicity and Migration
Debra Lattanzi Shutika
Seminar: Wednesday: 6:30-9:10; Logan 392
Cross-listed with SOCI 231, URBS 266, WSTD 256
Fulfills Distribution I: Society
Immigration is a popular topic in late twentieth-century America. On
nearly a daily basis, it is not uncommon to read media accounts of
politicians seeking to limit immigration numbers, particularly with
calls to close the "porous" border between the U.S. and Mexico. Man
Americans feels that our economy cannot sustain the current influx of
low-skilled immigrants, and worry that immigrants compete (or steal)
jobs from native workers. Contemporary immigration patterns in the U.S.
have fundamentally changed since the classical era of immigration at the
beginning of the century. Although numerous studies have demonstrated
that the above mentioned fears are not supported by research, America's
current apprehensions regarding immigration are more likely based on a
realization that in light of current immigration, the face of American
ethnicity is likely to be radically altered in coming years. This
course will review the historical basis for the concepts of ethnicity
and migration in the social sciences, focusing on folklore's position on
these topics and the folkloristic approach to vernacular culture, with
particular emphasis on the formation of transnational identities. We
will also consider the function of the concepts of ethnicity and
migration outside academe, in popular media (film, newspapers, and the
web),novels, and public discourse. We will investigate the invention of
the ethnic "other" and the ongoing negotiation of foreignness and social
group membership.
Contact: Debra Lattanzi
Shutika; 215-573-9619
FOLK 355 401 Readings in Jewish Folklore
Professor Dan Ben-Amos
Seminar: Wednesday: 2:00-5:00; Williams 302
Cross-listed with AMES 358
For the last forty five years folklorists in Israel have been recording and
transcribing folktales told by Jews who came to Israel from many countries.
In this course we will read - in Hebrew and English translation - tales that
were submitted to the Israel Folktale Archives. We will try to interpret
them by employing comparative, historical, literary and cultural
analyses.
Contact: Professor Dan Ben-Amos;
215-898-5857
FOLK 502 401 Fieldwork Theory
Seminar: Monday: 10:00-12:00; Williams 633
Professor Regina Bendix
Cross-listed with ANTH 506, WSTD 502
Undergraduates Need Permission
"Fieldwork" is the term folklorists and scholars in related fields use to
describe the process by which they arrive at their discipline's subject
matter. This includes everything from the pragmatic issues of collecting and
documenting materials to the complex relations involved when people study
people. Readings, short writing assignments, and class discussions will
probe this spectrum of concerns comprehensively. Brief exercises are
planned to experience different aspects of fieldwork. On this background
of theory and practice, students will work toward designing a fieldwork
based project and draft a funding proposal.
Contact:Professor Regina
Bendix; 215-898-5826
FOLK 503 401 Issues in Folklore Theory
Professor Roger D. Abrahams
Seminar: Tuesday: 10:00-12:00; Williams 633
Cross-listed with ENGL 503
Undergraduates Need Permission
An introduction to folklore for graduate students, concentrating upon
certain key issues in the theory and history of the discipline.
Contact: Professor Roger D.
Abrahams;215-898-5685 or 898-5145
FOLK 512 640 Spirituality ... & Health
Although many have attributed modern medicine's success to its liberation
from the ancient association of healing with religion, recent research
has shown that spirituality (the personal aspect of the sacred) and
relgion (the institutional forms of spiritual belief and practice) are
powerful influences in health decision-making and that most American
patients want spiritual matters discussed with their medical care.
Additional research has documented effects of spiritual belief and
relgious practice on physical and mental health, ranging from general
effects of religiosity on overall health and longevity to double-blind
studies of intercessory prayer. At the same time critics argue that the
research is flawed and that clinical involvement in religious matters is
unethical. This topic, once marginal, now appears in the pages of major
medical journals and has drawn the attention of the National Institutes
of Health. This course will examine a variety of spiritual traditions in
realtion to health, including major world religions and those groups with
highly specific health teachings such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian
Science and shamanic traditions. Competing points of view will be
considered in ethical, medical and cultural terms.
Contact: Professor David J.
Hufford; 610-566-8592
FOLK 533 401 Folk and Unorthodox Health Systems
Professor David J. Hufford
Seminar: Wednesday: 12:00-2:00; Logan 337
Cross-listed with RELS 505
Undergraduates Need Permisson
In 1997, 42% of Americans used "complementary & alternative medicine
(CAM) at least once and spent over $20 billion out of pocket in the
process. Since 1993 the National Institute of Health has had an
office, now a national center, devoted to CAM. Very few of the CAM
practices getting headlines today are new, and many are very old.
A debate rages in medical circles over whether the growing interest
in CAM is a blessing or a curse. And patients are largely on their
own in making decisions about herbs, energy healing, body work, or
spiritual practices for health. This course offers students the
opportunity to critically examine representative alternative/folk
health beliefs and practices and their cultural position in
American society. The philosophical and theoretical premises
behind these health systems will be analyzed and compared to the
premises of conventional, Western medicine and to one another.
This will include a description and discussion of current models
for understanding health behavior.
Contact: Professor David J.
Hufford;610-566-8592
FOLK 544 401 Art, Artists and Society
Professor Larry Gross
Lecture: Monday 3:00-6:00; Annenberg 108
Cross-listed with COML 572, COMM 544
Undergraduates Need Permission
Permission Needed from Department
Communicational, social, and psychological approaches to the study of the
creation and appreciation of aesthetic objects and events. Artistic
processes and products viewed in terms of cultural and historical
definitions of the nature of art and the role of the artist.
Contact: Professor Larry
Gross; 215-898-5620
FOLK 547 640 Seminar: Ireland and the UK
Dr. Margaret Kruesi
Seminar: Tuesday: 5:30-8:10; Nursing Education Building 121
Undergraduates Need Permission
We will study the cultures of Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales
from the perspectives of anthropology/ethnology, literature, and popular
culture. Topics include contemporary re-inventions of the Celtic and
Anglo-Saxon past; national identity--troubles on the borders;
post-colonialism; and the world-wide Irish diaspora (especially to North
America, England, and Australia). Among other issues, we will explore
problems of language loss, retention, and revival; the theme of exile and
the experience of immigration in memoirs, literature, and folksong; and
the marketing of culture for the tourist trade.
Contact: Dr. Margaret
Kruesi; 215-898-0876
FOLK 575 401 Environmental Imaginaries
Dr. Mary Hufford
Seminar: Thursday 12:00-2:00; Williams 723
Cross-listed with ENGL 584, ENVS 575, HSSC 575
Undergraduates Need Permission
Behind struggles over resource use and patterns of development are
collective fictions that relate us to our material surroundings.
"Environmental imaginaries" refers to the competing discourses that
arrange society around processes of development and change. This course
will heighten your awareness of the poetics and politics of competing
imaginaries and get you thinking about practical implications for
scholarship, planning, and citizenship. What are the narratives that
enable the separation of "culture" from "environment," the private from
the commons, life space from economic space? How are these narratives
grounded in such diverse sites as Appalachian strip mines, national
forests, and Sea World; and in such practices as nature talks, protest
rallies, and permit hearings? Drawing on theories of worldmaking, and on
case studies of culture and environment, we will explore the cultural
aspects of environmental policy, the potential of ethnographic fieldwork
as a strategy for community-based planning, and the legislative and
institutional toeholds for defending the commons on cultural grounds.
Coursework will include keeping a journal in which you relate course
readings to a current environmental issue of your choice, making an
in-class presentation, and a final paper.
Contact: Dr. Mary Hufford
FOLK 603 640 Food, Culture, & Society
Profs. Regina Bendix and Janet S. Theophano
Seminar: Monday: 5:30-8:10; Logan 392
Cross-listed with ANTH 601, RELS 603
Undergraduates Need Permission
Behind a simple proverb like "You are what you eat" lies a great deal of
food for thought. Human beings have always elaborated on the biological
necessity of eating, and this course will explore the myriad ways in
which people work, think, and communicate with food. The course will
survey the major approaches from folklore, anthropology and related
fields toward the role of food, cookery, feasting and fasting in culture.
Among the topics to be addressed are gender roles and differences in
foodways, the significance of food in historical transformations, the
transmission of foodways in writing and publishing, the relationship of
foodways to ethnicity and region, the intimate connection between food
and belief, and foodways in the global market place. Short exercises and a
term project will provide students with opportunities to research and
write about foodways from different angles.
Contact: Prof. Regina Bendix;
215-898-5826
Contact: Dr. Janet S. Theophano
; 215-898-5389
FOLK 605 401 Anthropology of Music
Professor Carol Ann Muller
Seminar: Tuesday: 2:00-5:00; Van Pelt Libary, MASeminar
Cross-listed with MUSC 605
This seminar in ethnomusicology examines music from a cultural perspective.
We investigate theoretical and methodological issues that arise when
music is situated within an ethnographic context. Theories from
anthropology and folklore are studied as they have been applied in
ethnomusicology, including structural-functionalism, structuralism,
symbolic anthropology, and performance theory. Topics include music and
social structure; ritual and performance; social change and historical
process; class, ethnic identity, and gender. Case studies from around
the globe enrich this exploration of music in culture.
Contact: Professor Carol Ann
Muller; 215-898-4985
FOLK 620 402 Feminist Theories
Professor Ann Farnsworth-Alvear
Professor Kathleen Brown
Seminar: Tuesday: 2:00-5:00; Moore Building 223
Cross-listed with HIST 620
Undergraduates Need Permission
This course gives students the opportunity to engage with the most
significant theoretical influences upon feminist thought and historical
scholarship in the last 35 years. Foucault, Bourdieu, Rubin, Butler, and
Freud are just some of the theorists we will discuss. We will also
incorporate recent works in feminist film theory and queer theory. Our
focus is twofold: working collectively through difficult theory that is
too daunting to tackle alone, and exploring possible applications of
feminist theory for feminist politics and historical studies of women,
gender and sexuality. Approximately half of our course reading will be
devoted to work designated as "theory" and the other half to recent
applications by historians.
Contact: Professor Ann
Farnsworth-Alvear; 215-898-5704
Professor Kathleen
Brown; 215-898-5281
FOLK 629 401 Theories of Myth
Professor Dan Ben-Amos
Seminar: Tuesday 12:00-2:00; Van Pelt Library, Weigle Teaching Seminar
Room, 4th Floor
Cross-listed with AMES 656, COML 662, RELS 605
Undergraduates Need Permission
Theories of myth are the center of modern and post-modern, structural and
post-structural thought. Myth has served as a vehicle and a metaphor for the
formulation of a broad range of modern theories. In this course we will
examine the theoretical foundations of these approaches to myth focusing on
early thinkers such as Vico, and concluding with modern twentieth century
scholars in several disciplines that make myth the central idea of their
studies.
Contact: Professor Dan
Ben-Amos; 215-898-5857
FOLK 639 401 Issues in Cultural Studies
Professor Barbie Zelizer
Lecture: Monday:1:00-3:00; Annenberg 318
Cross-listed with COMM 639
This course tracks the different theoretical appropriations of "culture" and
examines how the meanings we attach to it depend on the perspectives through
which we define it. The course first addresses perspectives on culture
suggested by anthropology, sociology, communication, and aesthetics, and then
considers the tensions across academic disciplines that have produced
what is commonly known as "cultural studies." The course is predicated on the
importance of becoming cultural critics versed in alternative ways of naming
cultural problems, issues, and texts. The course aims not to lend closure to
competing notions of culture but to illustrate the diversity suggested by
different approaches.
Contact: Professor Barbie
Zelizer; 215-898-4964
FOLK 706 401 Culture/Power/Identities
Professor Kathleen Hall
Lecture: Tuesday: 12:00-2:00; 3440 Market Street, 484
Cross-listed with EDUC 706, URBS 706
This course will introduce students to a conceptual language and the
theoretical tools to analyze the complex dynamics of racial, ethnic, gender,
sexual, and class differences. The students will critically examine the
interrelationships between culture, power, and identities through the recent
contributions in cultural studies, critical pedagogy and post-structuralist
theory and will explore the usefulness of these ideas for improving their own
work as researchers and as practitioners.
Contact: Professor Kathleen
Hall; 215-573-9612