Folklore Theses and Dissertations

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https://hdl.handle.net/1794/11750

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Open Access
An' if it Harm the Least: Nature-Centered Belief in the U.S. Military
(University of Oregon, 2016-10-27) Knott, Emily; Gilman, Lisa
This thesis is the result of my work with the Military Nature-Centered community. The first thing is does it examine some of the distinctive features of the population, such as its history, sense of community, magical consciousness. It then presents the military Nature-Centered community as an emergent tradition.
Open Access
Anime Music Videos and Storytelling: Performing Channels of Communication
(University of Oregon, 2016-10-27) Harris, Sabra; Fenn, John
Anime Music Videos (AMVs) are transformative works that provide channels of communication between the viewer and the viewed. The editors who make AMVs have distinct communities built on the evolution of anime conventions in the United States but have prospered and transformed globally. In the performance of technology, AMV editors find ways of using mass-mediated texts to express themselves, to convey emotions, and to communicate social messages. They make new associations by combining materials and display these associations in sophisticated ways on social forums like the Internet and anime conventions. The associations are interpretive and articulate how storytelling, rather than a fixed and linear one-way flow, is nonlinear, a negotiation between the storytelling performer and audience.
Open Access
Birding and Sustainability at the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary: A Folkloric Analysis
(University of Oregon, 2011-06) Rabun, Sheila J., 1985-
The Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary (AMWS), located on the Humboldt Bay of northwestern California in the town of Arcata, is an excellent example of reciprocity between humans and the natural environment. The AMWS is a constructed wetland ecosystem that works in conjunction with the town's wastewater treatment plant, providing a healthy habitat for birds and other wildlife and a context for the folkloric activity of birding. Interviews with seven local birders at the AMWS and an analysis of the material, economic, biological, social, and spiritual implications of the activity in context serve to support the assertion that reciprocity is an important factor in the sustainability of folkloric interactions between humans and the natural environment.
Open Access
Bridging the Gap: How the Digitalization of Language Revitalization Programs Can Connect the Displaced and Disconnected in Native American Communities
(University of Oregon, 2024) Miller, Gabrielle M.
This research examines how the digitalization of language classes that use communication technology can help bridge a gap between Native American community members who feel displaced or disconnected from their culture while understanding the relationship that language, place, and identity have on this issue. For this research, I conducted a series of ethnographic interviews with two participating groups: Two language teachers belonging to the Confederated Tribes of Coos Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw, and three participants who have expressed feelings of displacement or disconnection from their culture. Along with my interviews, I include my own experiences with this topic and feelings of displacement and disconnection. This study analyzes and explores these topics using a folkloric lens in order to understand the relationship that Native American language revitalization efforts have on identity, highlighting the importance of cultural and community connections. My analysis shows that there is a strong correlation between issues with identity in Native Americans and their connection to place, native language, and connections to culture. I conclude that the inclusion of online forums such as online classes, social media, and meetings that utilize communication technology such as Zoom, within Native American language revitalization efforts, aids in feelings of connection to culture, language, and community for displaced or disconnected community members, ultimately aiding in their views of identity.
Open Access
Bridging the Gap: How the Digitalization of Language Revitalization Programs Can Connect the Displaced and Disconnected in Native American Communities
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Miller, Gabrielle; Lowthorp, Leah
This research examines how the digitalization of language classes that use communication technology can help bridge a gap between Native American community members who feel displaced or disconnected from their culture while understanding the relationship that language, place, and identity have on this issue. For this research, I conducted a series of ethnographic interviews with two participating groups: Two language teachers belonging to the Confederated Tribes of Coos Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw, and three participants who have expressed feelings of displacement or disconnection from their culture. Along with my interviews, I include my own experiences with this topic and feelings of displacement and disconnection. This study analyzes and explores these topics using a folkloric lens in order to understand the relationship that Native American language revitalization efforts have on identity, highlighting the importance of cultural and community connections. My analysis shows that there is a strong correlation between issues with identity in Native Americans and their connection to place, native language, and connections to culture. I conclude that the inclusion of online forums such as online classes, social media, and meetings that utilize communication technology such as Zoom, within Native American language revitalization efforts, aids in feelings of connection to culture, language, and community for displaced or disconnected community members, ultimately aiding in their views of identity.
Open Access
“Cacao as the Key to the Doors of Perception”: Embodied Spirituality, Transcendence, and Healing through Ritualized Entheogen Consumption
(University of Oregon, 2022-02-18) Burby, Taylor; Wojcik, Daniel
Over the last two decades, cacao has become a sacrament within increasingly popular syncretic religious ceremonies that promote the energetic healing of the sacred self. Cacao is a psychoactive substance that is regarded by members within some new religious communities as a plant medicine; when mixed with water and imbibed, practitioners believe they are ingesting the physical manifestation of a cacao spirit, a fifth-dimensional being known for her transformative “heart-opening” and “grounding” properties. This thesis considers ethnographic data and documentation of cacao ceremonies as presented by Keith’s Cacao’s, Ora Cacao’s, and Embue Cacao, as well as survey data of 118 ceremony participants and the analysis of cacao producers’ websites. This thesis explores the emergence, features, and appeal of these entheogenic ceremonies; cacao’s construction as a product and symbol; the reputed therapeutic benefits of ceremonial participation; and what it means for practitioners to achieve numinous healing experiences with cacao’s guidance.
Open Access
The Croagh Patrick Pilgrimage: Identity Construction and Spiritual Experience at Ireland's Holy Mountain
(University of Oregon, 2011-06) Johnson, Mira C., 1985-
The Reek Sunday Pilgrimage at Croagh Patrick in County Mayo, Ireland is a syncretic event that incorporates official Catholic religious narratives of Saint Patrick, folk narratives of the site's Celtic pagan significance, local histories of the Great Irish Famine of the 19th century and personal narratives with a physical engagement with the landscape to create a spiritual experience. The pilgrimage serves as a performative event that allows participants to formulate and perform alternative spiritualities and identities, blurring the distinctions between pilgrim and tourist, sacred and profane. An emerging tradition at Croagh Patrick illustrates this by emphasizing the historical and national significance of the famine villages along the ancient pilgrimage path, the Tochar Phadraig, embracing these sites, and pilgrimage to them, as sacred.
Open Access
Dear Mr. Hiker Man: Negotiating Gender in a Masculinized American Wilderness
(University of Oregon, 2017-09-06) Cox, Nikki; Silverman, Carol
Nature based spiritual pilgrimage in the form of hiking and backpacking demonstrates a deeply rooted connection between the individual and the environment. However, wilderness as a concept has been constructed through a male lens. Male voices have been championed over their female contemporaries. The rigid gender expectations projected within the binary sex/gender system reinforce the idea that nature is a “boys’ club.” By deconstructing the concept of wilderness, I illuminate a gender bias in outdoor pursuits. I explore the ways women have negotiated their own diverse and intersectional identities within the gendered space of wilderness.
Open Access
Does This Tallit Make Me Look Like a Feminist? Gender, Performance, and Ritual Garments in Contemporary Conservative/Masorti Judaism
(University of Oregon, 2016-11-21) Nudell, Talia; Silverman, Carol
This paper explores the way contemporary American Conservative Jewish communities express ideas of egalitarianism and feminism through active use of specific ritual garments (tallit and tefillin). It addresses the meanings that these garments currently have on individual, communal, and institutional levels. Additionally, it considers women’s changing roles regarding ritual and participation in these communities. It also considers that in this context, when women take on additional religious obligations they are simultaneously representing feminist and religious issues and actions, and the conversations between these ideas.
Open Access
Envisioning the Goddess: Modern Pagan Iconography of the Feminine Divine
(University of Oregon, 2021-04-27) Snyder, Christal; Bayless, Martha
This thesis investigates the iconography used by specific groups of modern Pagan women in the contemporary United States to represent the feminine divine, the meanings attributed to them by women and by broader communities, and the values these images and meanings reinforce. Through a collection of goddess iconography, interviews with female practitioners, and participant observations in Neopagan events, the personal and communal values of this spiritual movement are explored. This thesis will follow a multi-disciplinary approach, which combines folklore, anthropology, and gender studies. Subcultural scholarship will help to establish whether or not goddess spirituality falls under such a distinction as well as to illuminate the ways in which the images might be subverting the dominant Western culture.
Open Access
Folk Art, Nationalism, and Identity in a Kyiv, Ukraine Souvenir Market
(University of Oregon, 2014-06-17) Grewatz, Abby; Silverman, Carol
Since the collapse of the USSR independent Ukraine has used politics and culture to define a separate national identity, in contrast to Russia. Through a performance studies lens I describe Kyiv's largest souvenir market, Andriyivsky Uzviz, and place it in the context of nationalism and cultural promotion. I draw on Conquergood who situates the performing of culture at the intersection of history and identity, and Kapchan who notes that markets are key sites where ethnic identity is defined within sociopolitical frameworks. While profit and customer demand are important to vendors in the Uzviz, Ukrainianness is consciously emphasized through their folk art items. Vendors wear national costume, sell "traditional" Ukrainian items, and explicitly identify as Ukrainian, not Russian. Through one Uzviz folk artist I illustrate vendors' use of folk arts to express Ukrainian cultural identity and show how the market is a microcosm of the larger nationalist movement in Ukraine.
Open Access
Folk Networks, Cyberfeminism, and Information Activism in the Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon Series
(University of Oregon, 2017-09-06) Wyer, Sarah; Gilman, Lisa
This thesis explores how the Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon event impacts the people who coordinate and participate in it. I review museum catalogs to determine institutional representation of women artists, and then examine the Edit-a-thon as a vernacular event on two levels: national and local. The founders have a shared vision of combating perceived barriers to participation in editing Wikipedia, but their larger goal is to address the biases in Wikipedia’s content. My interviews with organizers of the local Eugene, Oregon, edit-a-thon revealed that the network connections possible via the Internet platform of the event did not supersede the importance of face-to-face interaction and vernacular expression during the editing process. The results of my fieldwork found a clear ideological connection to the national event through the more localized satellite edit-a-thons. Both events pursue the consciousness-raising goal of information activism and the construction of a community that advocates for women’s visibility online.
Open Access
Folklore and Mythology in Neil Gaiman's American Gods
(University of Oregon, 2017-09-06) Dixon, Sean; Wojcik, Daniel
This thesis provides a critical analysis of the use of folklore and mythology that exists in Neil Gaiman's award-winning novel, American Gods. I focus on the ways in which American Gods is situated within an intertextual corpus of mythological and mythopoeic writing. In particular, this study analyses Gaiman’s writing by drawing upon Mircea Eliade’s ideas about mythology and Northrop Frye’s archetypal criticism to discuss the emergence of secular myth through fantasy fiction.
Open Access
Ideas of Order: The Meaning and Appeal of Contemporary Astrological Belief
(University of Oregon, 2016-10-27) Thornton, Tracy; Wojcik, Daniel
Astrology is a belief system that has existed for almost 2,500 years. This enduring form of belief has not been effectively studied by scholars and thus we know little about why beliefs commonly stigmatized as superstitions continue to appeal to people today. My research, based on fieldwork and interviews with astrologers in the Portland, Oregon area, demonstrates that the longevity of this belief system may be attributed to its ability to provide meaning and purpose to people. Throughout history, astrology has been adapted to and has evolved within the cultures in which it exists, and its latest adaptation reveals a close connection to the New Age movement. Astrological worldviews, which assume a correlation between predictable celestial cycles and human activity, are rooted in a premise of fatalism, but this analysis reveals a nuanced view of fate that often is empowering rather than limiting.
Open Access
Its a Dog's Life: Contemplating the Human-Animal Relationship through Dog Adoption Narratives
(University of Oregon, 2017-05-01) Silvestrini, Nicole; Gilman, Lisa
Dog adoption is a popular way for people to find pets in the United States. With dog adoption comes dog adoption narratives, ideologically about the dog, told by humans for humans. Dog adoption narratives, a genre of personal experience narrative, enact a series of formalized conventions that reveal societal binaries, tensions, and anxieties in the interspecies relationship. Using an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, I highlight the way these narratives are performed, organized, and interpreted. By comparing the adoption narratives of two different groups, people who regularly visit dog parks and people who do dog rehabilitation work, I argue that these narratives yield insight about the way humans perceive dogs in the United States within the context of how humans themselves want to be perceived by other humans. Dogs become a form of cultural capital and dog adoption narratives a reflection of cultural attitudes towards, and informed interactions with, the human-dog relationship.
Open Access
“I’ll Look into This on My Own”: Knowledge and Resistance in Narratives of Contraception among College-Educated American Women
(University of Oregon, 2018-09-06) Tully, Hillary; Silverman, Carol
For every method, there's a story - the IUD that almost killed her, the male birth control that almost happened, the weight gained and the moods changed. Whether a narrative of personal experience or one heard through the grapevine, stories about contraception illuminate critical issues in reproductive health today. Using ethnographic data deeply colored by ongoing partisan rhetoric around reproductive rights and the body, I discuss the dynamics of power at play in patient experience, the performance of social complaint and institutional critique, and vernacular conceptualizations of health and embodiment in the contraceptive regimen.
Open Access
Jimmying the Locke: On the 1982 Model Provisions for the Protection of Folklore, Decolonizing Intellectual Property Rights, and Forty Years of Stasis
(University of Oregon, 2022-10-04) Travers, Benjamin; Lowthorp, Leah
In this work I chart the past forty years of efforts towards developing international policy for the protection of cultural property. I do so by firstly examining the 1982 Model Provisions on National Laws for the Protection of Expressions of Folklore Against Illicit Exploitation and Other Prejudicial Actions, and then, secondly, I consider the current state of negotiations within the Intergovernmental Committee (IGC) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). I also give significant attention the Eurocentric disposition of the global intellectual property regime and argue that the international IP regulatory system is a colonial apparatus and a potent modernizing technology of the West. I propose that there has been little meaningful progress in international forums to develop protective mechanisms over the past forty years and that, in light of this failure, resources and collective efforts must be reallocated accordingly towards alternative means of safeguarding cultural production and recognizing non-Western modalities of authorship and property.
Open Access
“Just Because I’m a Fisherman, Don’t Assume You Know Who I Am”: Fisherpoetry and the Construction of Masculinity
(University of Oregon, 2018-09-06) McMullen, Bradford; Gilman, Lisa
This thesis examines the ways in which masculinity is constructed and performed by commercial fisherman poets. Focusing on the writings of cisgender male poets, this thesis examines the ways in which competence and credibility are developed as the highest standards of masculinity, how discussions of the environment contribute to the development of masculinities, and how the relationships depicted in fisherpoetry mirror real-world relationships and develop standards of multiple masculinities.
Open Access
Lacing Skates and Unlacing Corsets: Gender Play and Multiple Femininities in Roller Derby and Neo-Burlesque
(University of Oregon, 2017-05-01) Helweg-Larsen, Jules; Gilman, Lisa
Lacing Skates and Unlacing Corsets: Gender Play and Multiple Femininities in Roller Derby and Neo-Burlesque. Contemporary roller derby and neo-burlesque, as an athletic sport and a framed staged performance respectively, each provide a space that encourages gender play through interactions between participants and audience and the role of physical body. In this thesis, I discuss how each activity allows for a multiplicity of feminine identities and commentary by performers on the social and cultural expectations of women. Drawing on performance theory, ritual theory, and gender studies, along with fieldwork, I explore how this commentary comes from participants simultaneously critiquing and embracing those expectations in their performances through costuming, use of the body, and the presence of an audience who interpret the events.
Open Access
Managing Boundaries: The Role of Narratives at a 9-1-1 Call Center
(University of Oregon, 2013-07-11) Rothstein, Megan; Wojcik, Daniel
Dispatchers and calltakers who work at 9-1-1 call centers are confronted with memories of emergencies they must address at work even though they are not physically present at the event. The language they use to talk about their work thus always references a potentially traumatic experience processed second-hand. These telecommunicators use personal messaging through the dispatch platform, verbal communication, and texting in cellphones to tell stories about their work and manage emergency response. Often two to three mediums are used in order to communicate different aspects of the same narrative. Through storytelling, dispatchers manage an environment influenced by social hierarchies, workplace command structures, gender dynamics, and the emotional stress of the calls they must process. The fragmented experiences of dispatchers are reflected in the disjointed methods and narrative structures of their storytelling. This study offers an approach to multi-modal communication and presents an analysis of an occupational folk group not previously studied by folklorists.