TTh 1-3:10
Katherine Borland
F2018
366-9268
Course Description
Folk festivals, popular celebrations and carnivalesque
rituals are not simply expressions of religious sentiments and spiritual
ideals; they are also very often key sites in which larger social issues
and political conflicts are expressed, mediated, challenged and in some
cases spill over into physical violence. This course will introduce you
to the theories of festival behavior along with exploring a wide range
of festivals and other public enactments: including football, the Passion
of Christ, Mardi Gras, Jonkonnu, Latin American Conquest Dramas, the Luling
Watermelon Thump and the Do Dah Parade. You will be encouraged to observe
and interpret a festival in our own community as well as research festival
from the perspective of history, literature, psychology or some other field
in which you have substantial training.
Requirements and Evaluations
Attendance: 100 points. Students will be docked 5
points for each unexcused absence. Absences will be excused [docked 1 point] only on receipt of a valid doctor's note.
One Bibliographic Exercise--posted to the Website. 250 pt. Students will review a decade of festival scholarship in the Journal of American Folklore and produce an annotated bibliography with an introduction that describes the state of the scholarship during that decade. Due fourth week.
A Term Paper on a particular festival or an aspect of festival. 400 pts. Students will develop a paper (8-12 pages) based on an approved topic and will prepare a brief (10-15 minutes) oral presentation on their work. Presentation: tenth week; Paper: finals week.
Please also note. All readings must be completed before class discussion. Failure to be prepared will result in students being marked absent for class discussion.
Plagiarism is a serious academic violation. If you have any questions about how to cite a source or idea, please ask.
Accomodations will be made for those who have a
proven need. Please see me immediately if you anticipate requiring accomodations.
Readings
Course Packet
The Bacchae, Euripides
(available at the bookstore)
Festival Class Schedule
[may be subject to revision}
Week One Definitions
Stoeltje "Festival"
Stoeltje "Power and the Ritual Genres"
Durkheim Excerpt Elementary Forms of Religious Life
Smith "Structure of Aesthetic Response"
Film: Romeria de Pueblo
Assignment: Annotated review of Festival Articles in JAF due Week 4
Observation Paper on a Festival/Ritual/Public Enactment
due Week 8
Week Two The Game Metaphor, Football and Wrestling
Huizinga Excerpt from Homo Ludens
Bateson Excerpt from Theory of Play and Fantasy
Dundes "Into the Endzone for a Touchdown"
Guttman "The Fascination with Football"
Lincoln "The Dialectics of Symbolic Inversion"
Week Three The Drama Metaphor
Aristotle, Chapter 6 of Poetics
The Bacchae
Turner, "The Anthropology of Performance"
Bogatyrev, "Semiotics in the Folk Theatre"
Slides: Semana Santa in Seville
Passion of Christ in Masaya
Week Four: Carnival as Ineffective Safety Valve
Eliade "Definition"
Zemon-Davis "Women on Top"
Film: Carnaval del Pueblo
Assignment: Choose paper topic
Scott "Rituals of Reversal, Carnivals and Fetes"
Schechner "The Street is the Stage"
Bakhtin Presentation of argument, Rabelais and his World
Film Clips: "Caribbean Carnival"
De Caro and Ireland "Every Man a King"
Ware "'I Read the Rules Backward': Women, Symbolic
Film: Dance for a Chicken
Assignment: Pick a monograph and a festival topic to research
Week Seven: Reconstructions, Reenactments, and the Constructed
Nature of Tradition
Hobsbaum and Ranger, excerpt from The Invention of Tradition
Handler and Linnekin, "Tradition, Genuine or Spurious
Schechner "Restoration of Behavior"
Film Gathering Up Again
Week Eight: The Local vs. the Modern
Abrahams, "Shouting Match at the Border"
Stoeltje and Bauman "Community Festival and the Enactment of
Modernity"
Film Clips: Dance Dramas of the Conquest
Week Nine: Traditional and Modern Parodies
Lawrence "Notes on the Doo Dah Parade"
Kugelmas "Wishes Comes True: Designing the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade"
Abrahams "Christmas and Carnival on St. Vincent"
Film Clips: Jamaican Jonkunnu
Assignment Due: Field Observation of a Festival Performance
Week Ten: Student Presentations on Festival Research
Week Eleven Final Paper Due
SUPPLEMENTAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Julio Caro Baroja, Le Carnaval (Paris: Gallimard, 1979).
Gregory Bateson, Naven (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958.
William Beezley, et al., eds., Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources Books, 1994).
Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford, 1992).
Sandra Billington, Mock Kings in Medieval Society and Renaissance Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).
Jeremy Boissevain, ed., Revitalizing European Rituals (London: Routledge, 1992).
Stanley Brandes, Power and Persuasion: Fiestas and Social Control in Rural Mexico (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988).
______________. "The Day of the Dead, Halloween, and Mexican National Identity" JAF 111 (1998): 359-80.
Victoria Reifler Bricker. Ritual Humor in Highland Chiapas. Austin: Texas, 1973.
Ray B. Browne & Michael Marsden, eds., The Cultures of Celebrations (Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1994).
Olivia Cadaval, "Making a Place Home: The Latino Festival." In Stephen Stern and J.A. Cicala, eds. Creative Ethnicity, pp. 204-222. Logan: Utah State Univ. Press, 1991.
--------------------, "The Taking of Renwick: The Celebration of the Day of the Dead and the Latino Community of Washington, D.C.," JFR 22, 1985, pp. 179-93.
Abner Cohen, Masquerade Politics: Explorations in the Structure of Urban Cultural Movements (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
Colleen Ballerino Cohen, Richard Wilk and Beverly Stoeltje, eds. Beauty Queens on the Global Stage: Gender, Contests, and Power. New York: Routledge, 1996.
Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theatre in Nineteenth Century Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986).
F. A. De Caro and Tom Ireland, "Every Man a King: Worldview, Social Tension and Carnival in New Orleans," International Folklore Review 6 (1988): 58-66.
Robert Dirks, The Black Saturnalia: Conflict and its Ritual Expression on British West Indian Slave Plantations (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1987).
Alan Dundes and Alessandro Falassi, La Terra en Piazza: the Interpretation of the Palio of Sienna. Berkeley: California, 1975.
Umberto Eco, V.V. Ivanov, and Monica Rector, Carnival! (The Hague: Mouton, 1984).
Alessandro Falassi, ed., Time out of Time: Essays on the Festival (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987).
Joan M. Fayer and Joan F. McMurray. "The Carriacou Mas'" JAF 112 (1999): 58-73.
James Fernandez. "Convivial Attitudes: A Northern Spanish Kayak Festival in its Historical Moment," in his Persuasions and Performances. Bloomington: Indiana, 1986.
Dia de Los Muertos. Niwat: Univ. Press of Colorado, 1998.
Glassie, Henry. All Silver and No Brass. Bloomington, IN: Indiana, 1976.
Gluckman, Max. Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa. New York: The Free Press, 1963.
Ronald Grimes, Symbol and Conquest: Public Ritual and Drama in Santa Fe (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992).
Ramon Gutierrez & Genevieve Fabre, eds., Feasts and Celebrations in North American Ethnic Communities (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995).
Don Handelman, Models and Metaphors: Towards an Anthropology of Public Events (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Max Harris. "Moctezuma's Daughter: The Role of La Malinche in Mesoamerican Dance." JAF 109 (1996): 149-72.
Hill, Eric T. The Trinidad Carnival: Mandate for a National Theater. Austin: Texas, 1972.
California Press, 1990).
Michael Largey. "Politics on the Pavement: Haitian Rara as a Traditionalizing Process. JAF 113 (Summer 2000): 239-54.
François Laroque, Shakespeare's Festive World: Elizabethan Seasonal Entertainment and the Professional Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Carl Lindahl, "The Presence of the Past in Cajun Mardi Gras." JFR 33 (1996); 125-153.
Daniel Linger, Dangerous Encounters: Meaning As Violence in a Brazilian City (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).
Maire MacNeill. The Festival of Lughnasa. Oxford: Oxford, 1962.
Frank E. Manning, ed., The Celebration of Society: Perspectives on Contemporary Cultural Performance (Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1983).
Jerome Mintz. Carnival Song and Society: Gossip, Sexuality and Creativity in Andalucia. NY: Oxford, 1997.
Reid Mitchell, All on a Mardi Gras Day: Episodes in the History of New Orleans Carnival (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995)
Moore, Sally Falk and Barbara Myerhoff, eds. Secular Ritual. Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1977.
Olga Najera Ramirez. La Fiesta de los Tastoanes: Critical Encounters in Mexican Festival Performance. Albuquerque: New Mexico, 1997.
John W. Nunley and Judith Bettelheim. Caribbean Festival Arts: Each and Every Bit of Difference. Seattle: Washington, 1988.
Alexander Orloff, Carnival, Myth, and Cult (Worgl: Perlinger, 1981).
Akos Ostor, The Play of the Gods: Locality, Ideology, Structure, and Time in the Festivals of a Bengali Town (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
Susan J. Rasmussin. "Between Ritual, Theatre and Play," JAF 110 (1997): 3-27.
_______________. The Matachines Dance: Ritual Symbolism and Interethnic Relations in the Upper Rio Grande Valley. Albuquerque: New Mexico, 1996.
David Shepherd, ed., Bakhtin: Carnival and other Subjects (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993).
---------------------. "The Structure of Aesthetic Response" In Toward New Perspectives in Folklore. Eds. Americo Paredes and Richard Bauman. Austin: Texas, 1972: 68-79.
_______________. "Gender Representations in Performance: The Cowgirl and the Hostess." JFR 25 (3):219-41.
Victor Turner, ed., Celebration: Studies in Festivity and Ritual (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982).
_____________. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ Publications, 1986.
_____________. "Liminal to Liminoid in Play, Flow and Ritual: an Essay in Comparative Symbology." Rice University Studies vol 60. Houston: Rice, 1974: 53-92.
Arnold Van Gennep. The Rites of Passage. trans. M. B. Vizedom and G. L. Caffee. London: Routledge and Paul, 1960 (1909).
Evon Z Vogt. "A Study of the Southwestern Fiesta System as Exemplified by the Laguna Fiesta," American Anthropologist 57 (1950): 820-39.
Marta Weigle, Brothers of Light, Brothers of Blood: The Penitents of the Southwest. Albuquerque: New Mexico, 1976.
William Wiggins, Jr. "Lift Every Voice and Sing: A Study of Afro-American Emancipation Celebrations," in Discovering Afro-America, ed. Roger D. Abrahams and John S. Szwed. Leiden: EJ Brill, 1975: 46-57.