Dear Reader,

Folklore Forum is pleased to continue our tradition of publishing the proceedings from the Indiana University/Ohio State University Folklore and Ethnomusicology Student Conference. The fourth annual conference took place March 25^th-26^th, 2011at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. The theme, “Mediating Culture: Experience, Harmony, and Discord,” was addressed in various and innovative ways by approximately fifty graduate and undergraduate students from universities as diverse as Portland State University, Oberlin College, and the University of Notre Dame as well as the two hosting institutions.  In addition to the traditional twenty minute paper and poster presentations, the 2011 conference also included ten minute paper presentations to facilitate discussion of early stage research. Indiana University alumnus Patrick Feaster gave a plenary presentation about his research in recovering some of the world’s oldest recorded sounds. Another exciting feature of the 2011 conference was the incorporation of Qualia’s 2011 PoJo Competition. Jeff Todd Titon presented the keynote address which is included in this issue in article form. Titled “Music, Mediation, and Sustainability”; it examines the banjo as mediator, largely though the work of artist William Sidney Mount.

The prizes for best graduate and undergraduate papers went respectively to Ozan Say of Indiana University for “Mediation of Belonging: Politics of Saint’s Days on the Island of Imbros” and Meagan Winkelman of the Ohio State University for “McMeaning in the Maw of the Masses.” Indiana University’s Chad Buterbaugh received the award for best ten minute paper for his presentation “The Mediation of Place Meanings in an Irish Story.” The award for best poster went to Timon Kaple of Indiana University for “Female Country-Rockabilly Musicians in Nashville, TN.”

In this issue we are happy to include several excellent articles based on presentations at the conference:

Matthew Hale’s article, “Shaping Theory, Bending Method, Tapping [New] Media: Ethnographic Craftsmanship and Responsive Design” employs the concept of mediation in two distinct forms: the methods of two luthiers as they mediate traditional guitar construction and design as well as the ways such information is mediated in ethnography. Hale calls for scholars to employ evolving technologies to create new “ethnographic things” to allow for greater flexibility and responsiveness. In “Multilocality and the Narration of Place Meanings in an Irish Story” Chad Buterbaugh analyzes the performance of a professional Irish storyteller named Eddie Lenihan, discussing the ways Lenihan mediates place meanings for an audience that may have no prior knowledge of the places in question. Buterbaugh incorporates an ethnopoetic transcript of the text to demonstrate how Lenihan’s performance, as well as the text of his narrative itself, helps to create this meaning. Meagan Winkelman’s article “McMeaning in the Maw of the Masses: Analyzing Fast Food Mash-Ups” takes a new approach to studying foodways by examining the ways teenagers and young adults create new foodstuffs out of already available fast food products. She examines not only the process and terminology for creating such foods but also the social and psychological roles these foods play in contemporary teenage life.

Tricia Ferdinand explores the connection of mediation with artistic creation in her article “Symbolic Ethnic Conflict: Ethnicity and Trinbagonian Identity.” Ferdinand reviews the historical processes which have created the current ethnic and social stratification of Trinidad and Tobago then demonstrates how certain cultural symbols mediate this stratification by promoting a nationalistic Trinbagonian identity. In “The Mothership Connection: Mythscape and Unity in the Music of Parliament” Kurt Baer also shows how artistic creation can be used to create a symbolic ethnic unity. Baer examines the lyrics, albums, performances, and promotional materials of the band Parliament to show how the mythology created by the band posits a place of solidarity and brotherhood.

I am particularly pleased that this issue makes use of the benefits Folklore Forum enjoys thanks to our online publication format. We are able to include good quality images of the artwork discussed in Titon’s article. Hale incorporates video and photographs from his fieldwork in his article and Winkleman is able to directly incorporate the YouTube videos she discusses in her article. As always we hope that readers will use the interactive format of this journal to continue the discussions from the conference.

Kristina Downs

Editor, Folklore Forum

Dear Reader,

In this issue Folklore Forum is pleased to present, after some delay, proceedings from the third annual collaborative conference between the Indiana University Folklore and Ethnomusicology Student Associations and The Ohio State University Folklore Student Association.  The 2010 conference was held April 2-3, 2010 at The Ohio State University in the brand new Ohio Union.  Drawing students from universities as diverse as Arizona State University, the Eastman School of Music, and University of Jyväskylä in Finland as well as the two schools involved in planning the conference, the 2010 conference focused on the theme of contact.  Diane Goldstein delivered the keynote address “The Power of the Personal:  Appropriation and the Narrative Gaze.”

Participants in the IU/OSU graduate student conference have often remarked on the productive discussions produced through the small size of the conference and the high caliber of the work presented.  We hope that this third issue highlighting the conference will help to continue those discussions. Continue reading “From the Editor” →

Dear Reader,

Folklore Forum is pleased to present in this issue proceedings from the second annual collaborative conference between the Indiana University Folklore and Ethnomusicology Student Associations and The Ohio State University Folklore Student Association. The 2009 conference took place at Indiana University on March 27-28 and featured papers and posters centered on the theme of the negotiation of the public and the private.

In this second issue based upon the proceedings of the IU/OSU graduate student conference, Folklore Forum will bring its readers more of the exciting and innovative work of today’s graduate students in folklore and will continue to explore the possibilities provided by our online publishing model.

In addition to papers from this conference, this issue includes a poster with an extended contextualizing abstract, which we hope will provide the basis for involved discussion of the fieldwork being presented as a kind of continuation of the poster session in which it was presented.

We hope that papers will engender as much discussion on this forum as posters and offer a study of the negotiation of performance in terms of genre and ethnic and linguistic identity by two Afghan storytellers as a particularly stimulating basis for such discussion. A version of this study won the 2009 Dan Crowley Memorial Research Prize from the Storytelling Section of the American Folklore Society.

The theme of the public and the private is taken up most strongly in an ethnomusicological paper about dichotomies in mainline protestant worship music. This paper examines the public/private dichotomy alongside others such as traditional/contemporary, routinized/charismatic, and Appolonian/Dyonisian, which have been brought to bear on the study of religion through one church’s musical choices in its two weekly services.

New media publishing is brought to the fore in an article about fan response and specifically fan-produced videos that arose in response to 2008’s Internet-circulated Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Forum is pleased to provide its readership with not only descriptions of the videos at issue, but the videos themselves.

We here at Folklore Forum had hoped to bring to our readers an experience of the conference beyond the papers and posters prepared specifically for it. Unfortunately, our efforts to include the roundtable discussion with which the conference closed and the keynote address were plagued with technical difficulties and cannot be presented. We are already working to remedy these problems with regards to the issue that will be based on the third iteration of this conference that will take place at The Ohio State University on April 2 and 3, 2010.

Once again we invite our readers to make use of our forum to continue the dialogue that these articles initiate.

Monica Foote
Editor, Folklore Forum

Dear Reader,

Folklore Forum is pleased to be debuting a new feature. In the fall of 2007, the folklore graduate students of Indiana University and The Ohio State University proposed to combine the graduate student conferences that each school had been hosting annually. The first of these combined IU/OSU conferences took place on the Ohio State campus in May of 2008 organized around the theme “Translation/Transformation”.  Participants came from Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin for two days of informative exchange on subjects of interest to students who are up and coming in the discipline. The proceedings included a keynote address by Alan Govenar on the process of working in the public sector and issues related to non-profit management and the development of documentary films, audio recordings, radio programming, touring exhibitions, and interactive media. The weekend ended with a roundtable discussion about the issues raised by the conference proceedings led by Jason Jackson, Teri Klassen, Amy Shuman, and Kirsi Haenninen followed by closing remarks from Dorothy Noyes.

This journal, having as part of its mission statement that it shall be “a space where up-and-coming scholars can interrogate existing paradigms and cultivate a rich intellectual landscape,” wanted to highlight some of the excellent work being done by students today that might not otherwise be given an audience beyond the attendees at the IU/OSU conference. To that end we offer here a selection of work showing the breadth of topics and the level of scholarship that were on display at the 2008 conference.

The conference was judged to be highly successful and has generated interest in increased participation from students in programs at Wisconsin, Missouri, and elsewhere in the Midwest. As folklore students create a more defined space for the presentation of their varied research results through the development of this graduate student conference, Folklore Forum intends to help open that space to a wider audience.

In order to reach that wider audience, Forum plans to make an issue of materials from this conference, in whatever form it may take in future, an annual feature. This year’s iteration of the conference, organized around the theme “Public and Private” will be taking place in Bloomington, Indiana on the 27th and 28th of March, and Forum will be pleased to bring you a selection of papers from this meeting, including the keynote address by Jim Leary, later on this year.

It is our hope that this window into student academic activity is illuminating to our readership, generates discussion and debate in our comments section, and inspires future work.

Monica Foote
Editor, Folklore Forum

From the Editor-in-Chief 

Dear Reader-

Undertaking a special issue in honor of Professor Roger Janelli was no small matter. It was daunting, needless to say cheeky, to attempt to provide scholarship that both illuminated issues vital to East Asia and that reflected well and well upon the work and approach of Janelli himself. We knew that our success hinged on just the right Guest Editor for the position. We were thrilled when Kyoim Yun agreed to come on board. A long-time mentee of Janelli and a Korean scholar in her own right, Kyoim brought personal and academic knowledge to bear upon this endeavor, investing of herself generously to help us construct an issue worthy of Roger Janelli. We thank her for her painstaking efforts.

And thank you, Professor Janelli.
It has been a pleasure.

Enjoy the issue.

Elizabeth A. Burbach
Editor-in-Chief
Folklore Forum

From the Guest Editor

This special issue of Folklore Forum is dedicated to Professor Roger L. Janelli, whose thirty-two years of distinguished scholarship and dedicated mentorship at Indiana University have deeply touched many students and scholars, green and ripened alike. When Curtis Ashton, then Editor-in-Chief of this journal, invited me in Fall 2006 to serve as guest editor for a Festschrift in Janelli’s honor, I gladly welcomed the invitation and was thankful to the current staff members for initiating the project. I approached this task as both a modest expression of my gratitude to Janelli and as an opportunity to draw the attention of fellow folklorists, ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, and other scholars to some of the latest interdisciplinary explorations of East Asia. Deciding which of the submissions should be published was a difficult process. Regretfully, we could not include all the work offered as a tribute to Dr. Janelli, although they reflected well the breadth and depth of his scholarship. Continue reading “From the Guest Editor” →