Sustainable Pluralism: Linguistic and Cultural Resilience in Multiethnic Societies

Turning away from policy discourses of preservation, protection, and heritage, we look at the grassroots strategies by which minority languages and cultural practices are sustained in plural societies. Weak actors defend themselves and pursue their goals through the arts of accommodation, avoidance, and nichemaking. But cultural flourishing is not identical with human flourishing. How do the two intersect and diverge over time? Our international case studies come from Tibet, New Orleans, Mongolia, the Philippines, Greenland, Jewish Krakow, Russian Alaska, indigenous Honduras, Kyrgyzstan, the Lake Michigan Potawatomi, the Senegambian borderland, western China, and beyond. Ohio State UniversityMershon Center for International Security StudiesCenter for Folklore StudiesDepartment of LinguisticsDepartment of Comparative StudiesEvent Web pag

Folklore and Knowledge. American Folklore Society "Big Questions and the Disciplines" Project

The Teagle Foundatio

Culture Archives and the State: Between Socialism, Nationalism and the Global Market

The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.Culture Archives and the State assembles scholar-practitioners from Europe and Asia to discuss the political uses of culture archives. Not just the dusty preserve of researchers, archives define and discipline national identities, shape and censor national memories, as well as preserve cultural alternatives for future recovery. Their contents and uses are tensely negotiated between states, scholars, and citizens. Today archives have become key sites for the reconstruction of cultures and identities in transition. Emphasizing socialist and post-socialist settings, this comparative critical conversation brings together the actors inescapably involved in the instrumentalization of folklore: archivists working in state institutions with a mandate to preserve the national culture.Library of Congress. American Folklife CenterOhio State University. Office of International AffairsOhio State University. Center for Slavic and East European StudiesOhio State University. Middle East Studies CenterOhio State University. Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and CulturesOhio State University. Dept. of Slavic and East European Languages and LiteraturesOhio State University. Dept. of East Asian Languages and LiteraturesAmerican Folklore SocietyOhio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesWeb page announcement, conference website, conference poster, conference photo

Veterans Learning Community Research Symposium

Streaming video requires RealPlayer to view.The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.The Veterans Learning Community curriculum is a sequence of two general-education courses (GEC): a reading course that looks at representations of the experience of war in art, literature, and film from diverse cultures and time periods, followed by a second-level writing course that asks students to document their learning community’s knowledge and experiences. This symposium highlights the Veterans Learning Community final projects: Daniel Dixon, "The 'Absolute Professional': A Study of Green Beret Self-Representations"; Matthew Ausderan, "The War About a War: Analysis of PBS Frontline's Feature Documentary Bush's War"; Ambrose Schulte, "'Tough Transition': A Structural Analysis of Veterans' Separation Stories"; Erica Slone, "Visualizing the Experiences of War: A Study of Storytelling Through Art"; Chad McMahon, "The Patriotic Mother Archetype: A Gold Star Mother's Memoir"; Kyle Huston, "The 'Holocaust': The Emotional Metaphors Marines Use to Describe their Experiences"; and Joshua Green: "'Tired of Feeling Lucky': Recollecting Combat Duty."The Ohio State University. Division of Arts and HumanitiesThe Ohio State University. College of the Arts and SciencesThe Ohio State University. Center for Folklore StudiesThe Ohio State University. Department of Comparative StudiesThe Ohio State University. Institute of Collaborative Research and Public HumanitiesOhio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent Web page, streaming vide

Tales of Trickery, Tales of Endurance: Gender, Performance, and Politics in the Islamic World and Beyond

Professor Margaret Mills, retiring in June 2012 from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, has made major contributions to the study of women in contemporary Afghanistan, the folklore of the Persian-speaking world and South Asia, women’s oral traditions, and traditional pedagogies. She has helped us to think about the rhetorical dimension of oral traditions; the gendering of religious experience; the partitioning of the traditional public sphere into gendered and performative situations; how literacies and pedagogies are mobilized to form political identities; how individual and collective expressive repertoires respond to war and displacement. This conference assembles some of her former students and longterm colleagues to discuss new developments in these lines of research.Ohio State University. Division of the Arts and HumanitiesOhio State University. Deparment of Near Eastern Languages and CulturesOhio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent Web page, event photo

Escuchar a los objetos

This experimental section includes some parts of the performative event “The materiality of transformations: Listening to objects”, which closed the 14th SIEF conference held in Santiago de Compostela in 2019. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Regina Bendix, Dorothy Noyes, Sharon Roseman and Francisco Cruces conversed on stage about the cultural meanings of a selection of personal objects. By unveiling the stories contained in mezuzahs, hair, a serving platter and a shawl, they put the methodological power of the object/story couplet to the test. The benefits of articulating narrativity with materiality; the silent power of things in everyday life; the embedded character of storytelling, and some of its affective, moral and celebratory virtues were highlighted. The final event can be seen at <https://vimeo.com/362078953> from minute 00:52:50 to 01:31:00.Esta sección experimental incluye algunas partes del evento performativo “La materialidad de las transformaciones: escuchar a los objetos”, que clausuró el XIV congreso de SIEF celebrado en Santiago de Compostela en 2019. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Regina Bendix, Dorothy Noyes, Sharon Roseman y Francisco Cruces conversaron sobre los significados culturales de una selección de objetos personales. Al desvelar las historias contenidas en mezuzahs, cabello, una fuente o un chal, se puso a prueba el poder metodológico del par objeto / historia, los beneficios de articular la narratividad con la materialidad y el silencioso poder de las cosas en la vida cotidiana. Se destacó el carácter incorporado de la narración y algunas de sus virtudes afectivas, morales y celebratorias. Este evento performativo se puede ver en <https://vimeo.com/362078953> from minute 00:52:50 to 01:31:00

Lay and Expert Knowledge in a Complex Society: The AFS Teagle Foundation Project

The Teagle FoundationHow Do You Know What You Know? 2-3, Jay Mechling; Lay and Expert Knowledge in the Community College 4-5, Sean Galvin; Teaching to Live with Moving Horizons of Knowledge: Folklore Studies and New Social Problems 6-7, Jason Baird Jackson; Confronting Alternative Realities 8-9, Howard Sacks; Knowledge Gaps, Lay Experts and Feedback Loops 10-11, Sabina Magliocco; Fostering Critical Engagement through Experiential Learning 12-13, Danille Elise Christensen; Documenting Community Knowledges in Houston 14-15, Carl Lindahl; The knowledge gap as it relates to the concept of expert and lay knowledge 16-17, Tom Mould; What can student vets teach the teachers? An observer's perspective 18-19, Dorothy Noye

A discussion forum on how to return to “Tradition” today

UIDB/04038/2020 UIDP/04038/2020After the publication of Hobsbawm and Ranger’s groundbreaking The Invention of Tradition and ten years after Noyes’ essay, Tradition: Three Traditions, what do we, as specialists of European cultures, have to say about “tradition”? This forum invites a selection of scholars coming from various thematic fields and countries to think about the concept of tradition, considered as one of our first conceptual tools and ethnographic objects of investigation. The authors reflexively discuss in which ways their research experiences challenge their own perceptions, understanding, and reframing of tradition. More than mapping new and allegedly new – or better “recycled” – ways in which social, ethnic, religious, or political groups use and manipulate traditions, the authors also address their perplexities with the notion of tradition. They thus add a specific layer of reflection, touching on temporality, methodology, and theoretical frames, to their practices of folklore and ethnology today.publishersversionpublishe