Reading Time: 7 minutes Folklore and disability interact in many ways, some upholding norms & some challenging them, but I would argue that understanding representations of disability in folklore can yield many insights into identity and power.
Myth & Folklore
Exploring the intriguing, revealing world of myth and folklore from a secular perspective.
Posted inArts
The Strawman Ghosts of ‘The Great Divorce’
Reading Time: 12 minutes When Christians write parables or allegories, they never worry about their characters not acting like people at all. That’s not the point of the story. The story is meant only as a framework to use to defeat strawmen.
Posted inBooks
‘The Great Divorce’ Horrified Me (Review)
Reading Time: 8 minutes Today, let’s review The Great Divorce — and get an idea of how its ideas have unfortunately infested Christians’ thinking today.
Posted inCulture, General, Myth & Folklore
Multiplicity Decenters Authority
Reading Time: 5 minutes I’ve been thinking recently about how cultural traditions confer authority, and how in two realms – religion and dance – I see multiplicity dispersing authority (this will make sense after I explain it, I promise).
Posted inEducation, General, Myth & Folklore
What I’ve Been Up to in the Folklore World
Reading Time: 5 minutes A lot of academic work is invisible and goes unrewarded…well, somehow a bunch of rewards just dropped into my lap all at once, so I thought I’d share them here (since my blog varies in its folklore content but that’s kinda my main profession, at least for now!).
Posted inEducation, General, Myth & Folklore
What Is the Point of Academia If Not the Community?
Reading Time: 4 minutes The pandemic is making us all rethink many things; for me, a major point of reflection is the role of community in university life, and what to do when we are without it.
Posted inEducation, General, Myth & Folklore
Meme This Class
Reading Time: 4 minutes What do you do when you’re teaching a year-long course, First Year Seminar, and pick up some new students in the spring semester? Have students make memes to explain the previous semester!
Posted inCulture, General, Myth & Folklore
It’s Not Free Speech Oppression If Your Idea Is Too Crappy to Entertain
Reading Time: 5 minutes I keep seeing COVID-19 deniers and fans of toxic medicines claiming that their free speech is being violated when they’re denied platforms, and… no. Read a history book, or look to folklore studies for illumination. I delved into the free speech topic a few years ago while I was teaching at UC Berkeley. I made […]
Posted inGeneral, Myth & Folklore
#FolkloreThursday: Taylor Swift’s Folklore
Reading Time: 5 minutes This is a blog post I never thought I’d write, but last week Swift and her fans overwhelmed the #FolkloreThursday hashtag, and gave folklorists everywhere tons of discussion fodder.
Posted inCulture, General, Myth & Folklore
#FolkloreThursday: Folklore of/and Alcohol
Reading Time: 6 minutes With many jokes circulating about quarantine daydrinking and the like, I thought it’d be a good time to examine the folklore of and around booze for a #FolkloreThursday post. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve blogged for #FolkloreThursday, and looking back at the archives, I’d already done a pretty extensive job of discussing major […]