folklore

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• SOURCE: Contingent
  5/28/2023
  

  When Witches Took Flight

  by Chris Halsted

  The modern association of witches and flight in fact emerged from a relatively obscure corner of medieval church writings that gained prominence in the context of contemporary political anxieties about women's political influence. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  11/8/2022
  

  How Did Childhood Folklore Spread Before the Internet?

  "Folklore is by its nature not handed down by an authority. It is of the people, by the people—even if those people are children."

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  10/10/2022
  

  Ancient Flood Tales May be More than Myth

  The climate crisis is pushing some historians and folklorists to reconsider indigenous societies' origin stories of flooding and geographic cataclysm. Should science take this perspective into account? 

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• 9/18/2022
  

  What Casey Jones Tells Us about the Past and Present of America's Railroad Workers

  by Scott Huffard

  Although it's difficult to separate fact from fiction around his life, the famed railroad engineer had something in common with today's rail workers: being stretched to the limits of health and safety by companies' pursuit of profit. 

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• SOURCE: Religion News Services
  11/29/2021
  

  Taylor Swift Takes a Familiar Path to Hell and Back

  by Peter Manseau

  "In its own way, “All Too Well” tells a story not unlike myths of yore. It dabbles not in mythology, per se, but in the so-called “monomyth,” popularized as “The Hero’s Journey” by the folklorist Joseph Campbell almost 75 years ago."

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• SOURCE: TIME
  4/19/2021
  

  What the Rise and Fall of the Cinderella Fairy Tale Means for Real Women Today

  by Carol Dyhouse

  "Cinderella dreams an impossible dream: she isn’t a helpful role model for today’s young girls thinking about their future, and is unlikely to regain the intense hold over the female imagination that was evident in the 1950s."

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• SOURCE: American Scholar
  3/13/2021
  

  The Baddest Man in Town

  by Eric McHenry

  Writer Eric McHenry recounts picking up the documentary trail (started in the 1970s by John Russell David) of the notorious "Stagger Lee" Shelton, whose reign of terror in early 20th century St. Louis became immortalized in song and legend.

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• 3/7/2021
  

  Four Things You (Probably) Don't Know about the Werewolves of the Ancient World

  by Daniel Ogden

  Movie werewolves come mostly from the pulp fiction of the early 1900s. But werewolf stories date back to the literature of the 12th century, which most likely drew from even older stories preserved in folklore since the times of ancient Greece and Rome. 

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  2/18/2021
  

  How a Mass Suicide by Slaves Caused the Legend of the Flying African to Take Off

  by Thomas Hallock

  A major trope of African American folklore converted an ill-fated effort at escape into a tale of freedom. Though the "flying Africans" story has been told and recorded throughout the African diaspora in the Americas, St. Simons Island, Georgia, is the home of the myth. 

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• 1/31/2021
  

  Lawrence Gellert, Black Musical Protest & White Denial: An Interview With Steven Garabedian

  by Aaron J. Leonard

  Steve Garabedian's new book reexamines the life and work of Lawrence Gellert, a Jewish New Yorker who relocated to the South, recorded African American songs, and clashed with the growing establishment of white folklorists. Is it time to reappraise Gellert's contributions to the preservation of Black musical culture?