The Folklore Program trains intellectual leaders in folkloristics for the twenty-first century. The program seeks to provide a deep, critical, and theoretically-informed reading of folklore scholarship from the seventeenth century through the present. Students are urged to develop a particular field of expertise in folkloristics. At the same time, graduate students are advised to develop a strong grounding in another discipline or a multidisciplinary perspective — such as race and ethnic studies, performance studies, science, rhetoric, narrative theory, ethnomusicology, materiality, women's and queer theory, or others — in order to bring new perspectives into folkloristics work.
The program is truly international in scope, seeking to challenge the Eurocentric roots of folkloristics by bringing in critiques and alternatives from outside the Euro-American orbit, particularly through study with leading folklorists from around the world who come to Berkeley each year as visiting faculty members.
Undergraduate Program
There is no undergraduate program in Folklore, but relevant courses are available in Anthropology, Art History, Italian, Music, Scandinavian, Slavic, Spanish and Portuguese, and other departments. Undergraduate research positions are available through the Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (URAP). Student applications and supporting materials are due in the Program Office in 301 Campbell Hall on the first day of the second week of classes each term.
Terms offered: Spring 2011, Summer 2006 10 Week Session, Spring 2006
This course examines a broad range of theories that elucidate the formal, structural, and contextual properties of narratives in relation to gestures, the body, and emotion; imagination and fantasy; memory and the senses; space and time. It focuses on narratives at work, on the move, in action as they emerge from the matrix of the everyday preeminently, storytelling in conversation--as key to folk genres--the folktale, the legend, the epic, the myth. Theories of Narrative: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of seminar per week
Summer: 6 weeks - 10 hours of lecture per week 8 weeks - 7.5 hours of lecture per week
Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
This seminar explores the emergence of notions of tradition and modernity and their reproduction in Eurocentric epistemologies and political formations. It uses work by such authors as Anderson, Butler, Chakrabarty, Clifford, Derrida, Foucault, Latour, Mignolo, Pateman, and Poovey to critically reread foundational works published between the 17th century and the present--along with philosophical texts with which they are in dialogue--in terms of how they are imbricated within and help produce traditionalities and modernities. Theories of Traditionality and Modernity: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Prerequisites: Graduate standing or consent of instructor
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit with instructor consent.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 2 hours of seminar per week
Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This seminar explores the emergence of notions of tradition and modernity and their reproduction in Eurocentric epistemologies and political formations. It uses work by such authors as Anderson, Butler, Chakrabarty, Clifford, Derrida, Foucault, Latour, Mignolo, Pateman, and Poovey to critically reread foundational works published between the 17th century and the present--along with philosophical texts with which they are in dialogue--in terms of how they are imbricated within and help produce traditionalities and modernities. Theories of Traditionality and Modernity: Read More [+]
Rules & Requirements
Repeat rules: Course may be repeated for credit with instructor consent.
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of seminar per week
Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This seminar focuses on artworks made by migrating peoples chronicling their journeys (Hmong storycloths, Aztec codices), and artworks made by others who made migration a major theme (Dorothea Lange photographer of dustbowl migrants to California, Jacob Lawrence chronicler of the migration north of African Americans). Also, we focus on the arts of traditional communities that base their artifact production on longstanding, ecologically localized and distinctive practices. Issues include nostalgia, memory, trauma; cultural heritage the selection of what is to be seen, remembered, recoiled from, embraced, what is to be taught to future generations/outsiders concerning fear, courage, pride, self-definitions, accusations, and authenticity. The Arts of Migration, Vernacular Arts: Read More [+]
Hours & Format
Fall and/or spring: 15 weeks - 3-3 hours of seminar per week
Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Collaboration in ethnographic praxis on a local and global scale in folkloristics, sociocultural, linguistic, media, and medical anthropology, producing projects grounded in meaningful engagement with communities. Graduate students, working with lay mentors and faculty, will design and begin implementation of projects that break through infrastructures of theory, research, pedagogy, and practice that reproduce racial hierarchies and that erase anti-racist alternatives.
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