You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Working the Field: Accounts from French Louisiana records reflections on the fieldwork conducted in French Louisiana by a group of anthropologists and folklorists from Louisiana, the United States, Canada, and France between the 1970s and 2000. Contributors cast a critical look at the core anthropological concepts of field informants, and knowledge. Reassessing, they propose that the field, identities, and knowledge acquired are not set entities but rather are a matter of construction. Personal profiles of the researchers (native or outsider, activist or academic, man or woman, black or white) contribute to frame the investigations. Essays also illustrate the shifting of these identities during and after the research in response to personal, relational, and political circumstances. This volume is a vital addition to the body of work on French Louisiana and Cajun and Creole Culture, and it provides an understanding of the true nature of anthropological fieldwork that is of great value to anyone attemmpting to research in a modern setting.
To ensure continuity and foster innovation within the discipline of folklore, we must know what came before. Folklore in the United States and Canada is an essential guide to the history and development of graduate folklore programs throughout the United States and Canada. As the first history of folklore studies since the mid-1980s, this book offers a long overdue look into the development of the earliest programs and the novel directions of more recent programs. The volume is encyclopedic in its coverage and is organized chronologically based on the approximate founding date of each program. Drawing extensively on archival sources, oral histories, and personal experience, the contributors explore the key individuals and central events in folklore programs at US and Canadian academic institutions and demonstrate how these programs have been shaped within broader cultural and historical contexts. Revealing the origins of graduate folklore programs, as well as their accomplishments, challenges, and connections, Folklore in the United States and Canada is an essential read for all folklorists and those who are studying to become folklorists.
None
None
Most people believe that consumer Christmas is a recent creation. However, it was more than a century ago that the consumer spirit of Christmas blossomed. Few societies illustrate this spectacular development better than French Canada. Here, the new spirit of Christmas that came to prevail imposed itself through two battles. On the one hand, New Year’s Day, which had been the true focal point of the winter season in French Canadians’ culture, was supplanted by the Nativity. On the other hand, Baby Jesus was replaced by Santa Claus. In seeking to understand how Christian celebrations became at the turn of the twentieth century the commercial event par excellence for French Canadians, this book invites the reader to question the genesis of seemingly immemorial traditions.
Une réflexion sur l’ancrage culturel francophone nord-américain et ses expressions, à travers le récit individuel sous toutes ses formes.