Sixth Class: Liberry!

I thought the tour was reasonably straightforward, so I won't reiterate too much. I'll make three bullet points.

1. As swell as RefWorks may be at helping you with your bibliographies, there's something amiss in the world when they (you know, the man) don't think you need to learn how to do references and citations by hand. It's a skill that really helps you explore the work and, in the practice of it, forces you to understand something about what - and more importantly why - information is considered necessary for academic purposes. It's kind of like learning how to cook: other people may be able to do it for you, but self-sufficiency is a good thing. If the benefits of a liberal arts degree are all about learning to express oneself and present an argument (and it therefore has applications far outside the disciplinary boundaries of which it is constituted), then you should learn it. This is not (entirely) an old coot decrying the younger generation, but I understand some things better (not 'than you' but 'than I would have otherwise') because I struggled to understand the apparati that surrounds their use.
   
2. As in all things - cooking, making love, calligraphy - as much as one wants instant gratification one will discover that taking time will yield better results. When you look up things in the databases - either the Novanet Catalogue or the MLA or PAIS - take time to look around. Look at the subfields and cross-references. Enter new search parameters if the first ones are too wide, too narrow, or off-kilter. Browse, don't hunt. You will be surprised how central serendipity is to the researcher: you can simply chance upon something while looking for something else (I know: 'Come on people now/Smile on your brother/ Everybody get together/ Learn to love one another right now').
   
3. And, in the name of all that is good, holy, and sacred to you, when you find something, read it. Read it. For goodness' sake read it. Take time to read it. Just sit your ass to an anchor, take a few minutes, and read it. You don't have to rewrite it: just read it. You don't have to translate into Urdu and then to Ugaritic: just read it. You don't have to write a Michel Foucault-style treatise on why it is incorrect or representative of a bourgeois attitude: just read it. Please, I beg you, read it.

For those of you who actually read this thing, you are getting advanced warning of a reading being put on reserve, Roland Barthes' "The Photographic Message." It's a hard one (don't... just don't), but should make you scratch your collective chins and ponder.

Fifth class: cramming the folklore down the throat-hole

But perfesser: I don't have any folklore! I can't think of anything!

errcoughcoughbullshitcoughcoughhmm

Take something that almost* everyone does, like Christmas. Think about what you do for it. Of course it's going to have a lot in common with other people's traditions. But in the details there are found elements that are dictated not by the outside world's expectations of how to partake in it but in the expectations of the particular group.

"Christmas isn't Christmas without ..." Tree? Sure. Presents? You betcha! Oranges? Umm... okay: not personally, but I've heard of that and, hey, why not. Pickles secreted about the woodpile? WTF?

Explore!

Now wasn't that easy? The same works for friendship groups (we all got Garfield tattoos!), sports teams (we dress the newbies up as women and leave them tied to the overpass!), and on and on. Think of what makes the group distinct, even if it is not wholly unique. (Ponder those two terms... a little more... a little more.... GOOD. Stop pondering.)

So, what do other people do? What is similar and distinct from the larger practice? What is particular to your group? Maybe, where did the practice, the variation, come from? That's why you need the library.

Write.

Submit.

Happy faces all 'round.

*The composition of CBU students permits me to make sweeping generalisations, but don't take me for exclusionary. Oh no. I'm 21st century man, through and through.

Fourth Class, but written, like, five minutes before the fifth, but posted the next day

For those who want a guide (more like Fodor's, less like For Dummies) to the first assignment

FOLK 101 – Paper proposal
Due: October 5th, 2006 Value: 20% of final

For this proposal you need three things:

1. Some semblance of an idea: by this time in the semester, you hopefully have some insight into what constitutes ‘folkloric’ or ‘vernacular’ behaviour. You should have been able to recognise such patterns of behaviour in some aspect of your day-to-day life (or that of your friends, neighbours, etc.). Something that is (a) part of the activities of a group (however defined) which (b) is communicated through informal means (oral, by example, through regular exposure, vernacularly produced ‘guides’) and (c) is based in par on a precedent (i.e. something happened before, and you do it again because of and in the manner of that previous occurrence). It somehow defines the group: the ‘group-ness’ is revealed through that activity. Even if you intend to study an individual (a Mi’kmaq basket maker, for example), they are representative of a larger group and work in a particular context.
2. Some background information on that idea: once you settle on a potential project, you go to the library and find out a little more about it: you want to look at similar activities as they occur elsewhere, and about the context in which your particular activities take place. If (for example) you were doing something on residence customs at CBU, you would look at both studies of residence life as they occur elsewhere, and at histories of CBU, industrial Cape Breton, etc.
3. A tentative plan for finding out more information through primary research: you now have an idea and a little knowledge: what else do you need to do to find out that little extra bit? Will you best be served with photographing objects? This would make sense if you are doing a project on material culture. Should you interview someone about the activity? This would be best for something about oral traditions. Should you maybe do an ethnography, a deep observation? This is suited for researching customs and rituals.

These three things translate into the three components of the proposal:

1. A brief (200-300 words) statement: it should define the parameters of the group and the activity (-ies). In other words, shape your semblance of an idea into a coherent piece of writing. It should also indicate how you plan to do the primary research (you tentative plan).
2. An annotated bibliography: take five items that you have come across in your library research, READ THEM (in case that wasn’t clear), and, in about fifty words per item, explain their basic position and why they are relevant to your research. (You should consult a standard style guide – MLA, Turabian, etc. – for how to do a citation.)
3. The completed research forms: by this time you know what and how you are going to do your research. Fill out the forms as best you can.

Type that puppy up, hand her in, and let the fun begin.

Download this

New Online Journal - Oral Tradition

On September 15, 2006, the academic journal ORAL TRADITION, founded in 1986 by the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition at the University of Missouri, entered a new chapter in its existence as an international and interdisciplinary forum for the study of worldwide oral traditions and related forms.

As of this date the journal became available electronically and free of charge at http://journal.oraltradition.org as a series of pdf (Adobe Acrobat) files, with key-word searching of all online texts and with embedded multimedia. In addition to the current issue (volume 21, number 1), four years of back issues have already been posted, and plans are underway to include the entire twenty-two years of ORAL TRADITION by the end of 2007.

Third Class: Quarters, Tar(a)bish, Hearts, Poodles, Cinderella... and ETHICS!

Does life get any more exciting than talking about ethics? Methinks not.

First, we wrassled with the issue of 'ownership': last class (which blogically has been remembered solely for its Top Gun aspects) we talked about the spurious idea of 'communal ownership'. If something belongs to 'the folk', then it in essence belongs to no one person: so I can come along, take it, and make it mine.

Some brave soul offered Tarabish as an example: it is a game 'owned' by Cape Bretoners. But now someone has come along and published a book that, first of all, offers the 'official' version and, second of all, makes money therefrom.

So I offered up the example of Hearts. When I was a sprig of a lad (the sprig being me and the lad being my father), I would spend many an evening at the New Edinburgh Pub in Ottawa playing Hearts with kith, and not with kin. The rules had been learned over the course of kith's respective childhoods. But then we went away to university and bought computers, and played Microsoft Hearts, which introduced us to new rules (principally the proscription against playing a heart or the Queen of Spades on the first round). When we came back after first-year, several of us had changed our way of playing, having learned the 'official' rules. No resolution was found, and eventually we stopped playing as we could not reconcile.

The question deals with the difference between a type and a version: there is the bidding, trumping, exchanging game that is recognisably something called Tarabish, and there are the specific instances of a group's rendition of that game. To establish one as the definitive way to play is to elevate a version to that of type.

A type is, in a way, the aggregate of all versions: we know how to recognise a version of Cinderella because it has enough of the features that are common to all versions and thus to the tale-type Cinderella; at the same time, we only know the tale-type Cinderella because we have gathered enough individual stories and recognised patterns between them to file them all under the general heading 'Cinderella. It's a chicken-and-egg scenario or, for vegans, a bean and sprout one.

My poodle, Fifi, is a poodle because she shares a series of features - or motifs - with all other poodles: fluffy, strangely shorn, skittish, long-legged, canine, etc. But unless we had a large assembly of fluffy, strangely shorn, skittish, long-legged canines that were recognisably similar, we wouldn't have the category 'poodle' to begin with.

So (and this is the point): when we collect, we are collecting a version that is unique to the performer even when the type is considered 'communally owned' (and even when the performer prides themselves in an almost slavish rendition of the type and denies personal artistry). It's still theirs, and that is something we need to heed when collecting and - and this is the point - subsequently distributing our collectanea.

More thics to come, campers. Read the AFS statement again (for those who didn't the first time), and CBU's Human Subjects Utilization Ethics Review - Application and Guidelines, and start to think about how to reconcile the two.