ANT 599

World Folklore

James D. Sexton, Regents' Professor

Seminar Room 106, Anthropology Building

This is a seminar (a forum for the exchange of ideas) on folklore from selected areas of the world.  The first three meetings will include topics on how to analyze legends, myths, and folktales in their cultural contexts emphasizing how different cultural and physical environments correlate with different attitudes, values, and beliefs.  Each subsequent seminar will be devoted to discussing ten stories each from Ireland (Henry Glassie and Sean O'Sullivan) France (Charles Perrault and Henri Pourrat), Germany (the Brothers Grimm), Thailand (Velder and Velder and others), Vietnam (Faurot, Terada, Nguyen and Sachs), Arabia (1001 Nights and Bushnaq), Australian Aborigines (Bernd and Bernd and others), Tlingit of the Pacific Northwest Coast (Swanson and Malin), Cherokee of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and Oklahoma (James Mooney and Kilpatrick and Kilpatrick); the Maya of Guatemala (Sexton and Bizarro), and the Yanomami of Venezuela Brazil (Wilbert and Simoneau and Chagnon).

Each set of the ten readings from each culture for each seminar will be accessible to each student in print, on electronic reserves, Net Library, and Web sites on the Internet.

The last two sessions will be reserved for student paper presentations that will analyze folklore from a culture of their choice, including any of the ones that we discuss in class. I will evaluate students based on their oral participation and their written papers.

Statue of the Brothers Grimm, Kassel, Germany.

(Photo by James Sexton)