April 20, 2011

Beijing Duck 2008: Culinary Tourism, Cultural Performance, and Heritage Protection

Posted by folkpub under Central Asia, Foodways, Tourism
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Beijing Duck 2008: Culinary Tourism, Cultural Performance, and Heritage Protection

Curtis Ashton
Utah State University

Abstract:
During the 2008 Olympic season, two rival restaurants in Beijing saw an opportunity to proclaim their signature dish of Beijing Roast Duck as authentic cultural heritage. Among the strategies they employed to bolster their claims, both restaurants took advantage of new laws to open museums about their duck. Culinary Tourism as developed by Lucy Long and other folklorists provides a useful framework for analyzing this cultural performance.

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April 8, 2011

Emily Mendenhall, ed. Global Health Narratives: A Reader for Youth.

Posted by folkpub under Book Review, Health
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Emily Mendenhall, ed. Global Health Narratives: A Reader for Youth. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009. Pp. xvii+216, glossary, contributors, line drawings, maps, index. $21.95 paper.

Nicholas Hartmann
Memorial University of Newfoundland

Global Health Narratives: A Youth Reader has social action at its core, utilizing the personal experience narrative to promote intercultural dialogue and to reveal the realities of how health issues affect youth throughout the world.  Inspired by a course on narrative and health at Emory University, Mendenhall’s collection is a starting point for its readers, whether they are sixth-graders, university age, or scholars, to reflect upon their own health experiences. (more…)

 

April 1, 2011

The Snob, the Rube and the Connoisseur

Posted by folkpub under Foodways, Popular Culture
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The Snob, the Rube and the Connoisseur: Sideways and the Legitimation of “Culinary Capital”

Margot Finn
University of Michigan

Abstract:

In this essay, I analyze the critically-acclaimed 2004 film Sideways and its effect on the U.S. wine industry. I argue that part of the film’s popular appeal was its successful negotiation of two desires that often seem contradictory: the desire to appear sophisticated in the realm of food and drink and the desire to avoid seeming pretentious or be branded a “food snob.” Ultimately, Sideways argues that “good taste,” which functions a form of “cultural capital,” is meritocratic. Like all meritocracies, the “meritocracy of taste” obscures the structural differences that make the tastes and practices constructed as valuable and desirable more accessible to some people. It also enhances the pleasures and rewards of having good taste, by constructing “culinary capital” as the result of talent and effort rather than wealth and privilege. I argue that the “Sideways Effect”—an increase in the demand for and price of Pinot Noir and decrease in the demand for and price of Merlot following the film’s successful showing in theaters—is evidence that the film reinforced exclusive taste hierarchies rather than promoting an inclusive ideology of “good taste.”

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March 25, 2011

Philip Hayward. Bounty Chords: Music, Dance and Cultural Heritage on Norfolk and Pitcairn Islands.

Posted by folkpub under Book Review, Dance, Music
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Philip Hayward.  Bounty Chords:  Music, Dance and Cultural Heritage on Norfolk and Pitcairn Islands.  Eastleigh, UK:  John Libbey & Co, 2006. Pp 256.  £15.00.

Kevin Hood
Indiana University

In Philip Hayward’s Bounty Chords seemingly every aspect of music on Pitcairn Island and Norfolk Island is examined to the finest detail, leaving no proverbial stone unturned.  From the settlement of these South Pacific colonies to the present day, Bounty Chords gives the reader an interesting, though somewhat burdened history of expressive arts on the islands.

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March 21, 2011

Fruits and Culture: A Preliminary Examination of Food-for-Sex Metaphors in English-language Caribbean Music

Posted by folkpub under Foodways, Gender, Music, Sexways
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Fruits and Culture: A Preliminary Examination of Food-for-Sex Metaphors in English-language Caribbean Music

Lyra Spang
Indiana University

Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways that food, sexuality and gender roles interact in the Anglophone Caribbean, specifically in the country of Belize. Using analysis of food-for-sex metaphors in popular music, it explores the role of homosociality and separate gender roles in defining food and sexuality as highly charged spaces for cross-gender interaction. The objective of this exploratory analysis is to determine whether these two areas of interaction overlap to form a highly gendered “food-sex arena” that shapes discourse about food, sexuality and gender roles therein.

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March 10, 2011

Jerry M. Hay. Rivers Revealed: Rediscovering America’s Waterways.

Posted by folkpub under Book Review, North America, Rivers
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Jerry M. Hay. Rivers Revealed: Rediscovering America’s Waterways. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Pp. ix + 308, photographs, index. $19.95 paper.

Callie Clare
Indiana University

It is clear in reading Rivers Revealed that Jerry M. Hay is more than just knowledgeable about the rivers running through America’s heartland. Hay has made these rivers his life and has concerned himself not only with understanding the vessels that operate on them but also with their anatomy and how they flow and grow during their most peaceful of times and their most dangerous. Each chapter is a narrative about his experiences on the river, starting out with a story of him as a 15-year-old boy in a johnboat following a group of canoeists down the river for a multi-day 200-mile trip. The rest of the stories stem from this one, recounting the experiences of the wide-eyed 15-year-old as he ages and navigates the entire Wabash River, makes his own boat, rides on a towboat, and works for the Delta Queen Steamboat Company as a riverlorian on two of the most romanticized riverboats in the country: the Delta Queen and Mississippi Queen, which have since been retired, no longer to be seen traveling the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. (more…)

 

March 4, 2011

Biscuit Revivalism: Salvaging Southern Foodways in the Family and Beyond

Posted by folkpub under Foodways, History, Narrative | Tags: , |
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Biscuit Revivalism: Salvaging Southern Foodways in the Family and Beyond

Whitney Brown
University of North Carolina

Abstract:

The field of folklore has been preoccupied historically with  authenticity.  But what happens to authenticity when real life  necessitates practical changes to tradition?  Through the material  culture and memories of the kitchen and table, “Biscuit Revivalism”  traces the evolution of Southern foodways across three generations of  one family.  Their lifestyle and dietary changes give rise to many  questions about tradition and its continuity (or obliteration), and  their particular story is emblematic of a larger one transpiring  across the modern-day South.  This paper considers the influence of  memory, nostalgia, class, education, travel, feminism, politics, and  health as it explores the process by which individuals negotiate the  traditions of family and region.  A meditation on tradition, “Biscuit  Revivalism” demonstrates that not only genes, but also stories,  recipes, and skillets tie the twenty-first century Southern woman to  the her Depression-era counterparts.  While by turns it is  romanticized, hybridized, or cast aside completely, tradition, in  fact, finds its strength in change. (more…)

 

May 11, 2010

Kenneth L. Untiedt, ed. Folklore: In All of Us, In All We Do.

Posted by folkpub under Book Review, Gender, History, Occupational Folklore
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Kenneth L. Untiedt, ed. Folklore: In All of Us, In All We Do. Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 2006. Pp.xi+298, photos, illustrations, index. $34.95 cloth.

B. Grantham Aldred
Kendall College

At first blush, Folklore: In All of Us, In All We Do appears to be a straightforward collection of Texan folklore, a gathering of diverse materials under a regional banner.  And indeed, it serves well in this capacity.  However, the collection goes deeper than that and examines a more compelling question using these texts: the relationship between folklore and history.  Collected into five thematic sections, Folklore: In All of Us, In All We Do gives insight into the rich tapestry of Texas folklife from the eyes of its various contributors. (more…)

 

May 3, 2010

Heroes Are Over With: Possibilities for Folk Hybridity in “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”

Posted by folkpub under Internet, Participatory Culture, Popular Culture
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Heroes Are Over With: Possibilities for Folk Hybridity in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Katie L. Ramos
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Abstract:

Folklorists have long sought to illuminate the blurry boundary between contemporary popular culture and folk culture, and in the information age that boundary is fuzzier than ever.  The internet provides tools for the folk to produce creative works and disseminate them widely while remaining mostly anonymous.  These tools have also allowed greater interaction between producers of popular media and their fan (folk) base.  Camille Bacon-Smith and Henry Jenkins have identified a “participatory culture” in which fans produce their own creative works (on and offline) in response to popular film and television.  The more recent phenomenon of internet-based high-budget programming has led to an even greater level of interaction between media producers and their fans.  One example is Joss Whedon’s 2008 web production Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.  Whedon was known for friendly interaction with his fans, but when he developed Dr. Horrible he encouraged them to engage actively in creative play with the musical, partly through a contest that asked viewers to create their own video responses to the musical.  The ten best were included on the DVD release.  This paper examines how the producers and fans of Dr. Horrible entered into a (lopsided) reciprocal performance, inventing and re-inventing a shared, creative event. (more…)

 

April 26, 2010

Stephen Benson, ed. Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale.

Posted by folkpub under Book Review, Folktales
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Stephen Benson, ed. Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008. Pp. 209, index.

Jeana Jorgensen
Indiana University

Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale is a timely contribution to the growing body of scholarship on contemporary fairy tales. The seven essays in the book focus on contemporary fiction authors who utilize the tropes, structures, and intertexts of fairy tales in their writing. Time itself is also one of the topics of discussion, from the artistic “lateness” in Robert Coover’s writing to the non-linear narratives found in A. S. Byatt’s tales. The theoretical and cultural contexts of this book range from postmodernism to postcolonialism, second-wave feminism to post-feminism—all of which are situated in time and space, occurring after or continuing beyond their originary impulses. The aims of this book, described by Benson in his introduction, are to explore the works of the “fairy-tale generation” of writers (including Robert Coover, Margaret Atwood, A. S. Byatt, Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie, and others), to probe the contemporaneity of fairy tales despite their archaic origins, and ultimately to “account for the considerable time spent by contemporary fiction in the company of the fairy tale” (15). Time is thus a major structuring element of this book, and each chapter contributes to a nuanced understanding of the creative intermingling of fairy tales, fiction, and values. (more…)

 

April 19, 2010

Public, Private; Contemporary, Traditional: Intersecting Dichotomies and Contested Agency in Mainline Protestant Worship Music

Posted by folkpub under Belief, Music, North America
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Public, Private; Contemporary, Traditional: Intersecting Dichotomies and Contested Agency in Mainline Protestant Worship Music

Deborah Justice
Indiana University

Abstract:

The current ‘contemporary’/’traditional’ worship music controversy, although cloaked in the guise of novelty, illustrates how the historical  interplay between embracing and abandoning black-and-white oppositions is unfolding within post-millennial Western Christianity. Over the past forty years, mainline Protestant churches have used worship music to negotiate a culturally-relevant space for themselves within the contemporary reconfiguration of American religious practice. As such, many North American and Western European Christians have come to conceptualize their current religious practices through the ‘traditional’/'contemporary’ dichotomy. Praise-band-led ‘contemporary’ worship contrasts with organ-and-choir-based ‘traditional’ worship in visible and audible ways: musical style, text, instrumentation, dress, and physical space. This ‘contemporary’/’traditional’ binary’s pervasive themes resonate with previous dichotomous models applied to religious study, such as Weber’s routinized/charismatic, Benedict’s Apollonian/Dionysian, Sachs’ logogenic/pathogenic, and sociologist Mark Chaves’ intellectual/emotional. Yet, while current mainline Protestant organizational and expressive behavior resonates with these historical dichotomies, it also moves beyond explanation by any of these theories alone (as well as moving beyond the fundamentally group-defining “us” versus “them” opposition). This paper suggests the public/private opposition as an analytical tool to cut in a slightly different direction against the grain of the oft-dichotomized sphere of mainline Protestant religious musical practice. While no single dichotomy can explain current mainline Protestant practice – subjectively, emergently employing overlapping dichotomies to create and negotiate meaning – the public/private binary probes fundamental points of differentiation. (more…)

 

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