Course Outline
FOLK 2404: Urban Legend
Ian Brodie
T-Th, 1-2:15, Winter 2017
office: CE-263C
e-mail: [email protected]
Calendar Description
A study of contemporary legends, conspiracy theories, and rumour in North American culture, with an examination of
how they function and how they affect our perceptions.
Fair Warning
Participants in the course should be advised that much of the material being studied may be considered offensive,
or potentially trigger adverse reactions. Sexuality, racist attitudes, and religion are all discussed at length, and
your fellow students may struggle to express opinions in a way suitable for classroom discussions. Let us go into
this with patience, and not seek out offense when none is necessarily meant.
Different Kind of Fair Warning
I’m writing a new book and one of the things I need to do is refresh myself on some aspects of legend and
belief. Since I have forty excellent students I’m going to take the advantage and work through my reading
list with you. This should be fun.
Required Texts
Everything is on Moodle. A reading a day. Read it, come to class, we discuss it, we move on.
Evaluation
Database Assignment
Annotation Assignment
Midterm
Final Exam
30%
40%
15%
15%
Class-by-Class Breakdown and Reading Schedule
I used to break things down by unit, compartmentalizing everything. This semester I’m simply moving from
one article to another. There is an order and a rationale to it but I’m approaching it more as an unfolding of
the complexities of legend scholarship with one topic seguing into the next.
Jan. 5
Beginnings
Jan. 10
Hufford, David J. 1982. Traditions of Disbelief. New York Folklore 8.3/4: 47-56.
Jan. 12
Barnes, Daniel R. 1996. Interpreting Urban Legends. Contemporary Legend: A Reader, ed.
Gillian Bennett and Paul Smith, 1-16. New York: Garland.
Jan. 17
Ellis, Bill. 1989. When is a Legend? An Essay in Legend Morphology. The Questing Beast:
Perspectives on Contemporary Legend IV, ed. Gillian Bennett and Paul Smith, 31-53.
Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Jan. 19
Buchan, David. 1992. Folkloristic Methodology and a Modern Legend. Folklore Processed: in
Honour of Lauri Honko on his 60th Birthday, ed. Reimund Kvideland, 89-103.
Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.
Jan. 24
Bennett, Gillian. 1999. Belief and Disbelief. “Alas, Poor Ghost!”: Traditions of Belief in Story
and Discourse, 9-38. Logan, UT: Utah State UP.
Jan. 26
Goldstein, Diane E. 2007. Scientific Rationalism and Supernatural Experience Narratives.
Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore, ed. Goldstein, Sylvia Ann
Grider, and Jeannie B. Thomas, 60-78. Logan, UT: Utah State UP.
Jan. 31
Ellis, Bill. 2001. The Varieties of Alien Experience. Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live,
142-159. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Feb. 2
Turner, Patricia A. 1993. Conclusion: From Cannibalism to Crack. I Heard it Through the
Grapevine: Rumor in African-American Culture, 202-220. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Feb. 7
Goldstein, Diane E. 2004. What Exactly Did They Do with That Monkey, Anyway?
Contemporary Legend, Scientific Speculation, and the Politics of Blame in the
Search for AIDS Origins. Once Upon a Virus: AIDS Legends and Vernacular Risk
Perception, 77-99. Logan, UT: Utah State UP.
Feb. 9
Whatley, Mariamne H. and Elissa R. Henken. 2000. Of Gerbils and Stomach Pumps:
Homophobia in Legends. “Did You Hear About the Girl Who …? Contemporary Legends,
Folklore, & Human Sexuality, 91-113. New York and London: New York UP.
Feb. 14
Conn, Joel. 2011. A Pocahontas by any other name: A legend regarding naming from
Scotland. Contemporary Legend series 3 1: 1-28.
Feb. 16
Midterm Exam
Feb 21 and 23
Midterm Break
Feb. 28
Gallo, Marcia M. 2014. The Parable of Kitty Genovese, the New York Times, and the
Erasure of Lesbianism. Journal of the History of Sexuality 23.2: 273-294.
Mar. 2
Frank, Russell. 2004. When the going gets tough, the tough go photoshopping: September
11 and the newslore of vengeance and victimization. New Media & Society 6.5:633658.
Mar. 7
Peck, Andrew. 2015. At the Modems of Madness: The Slender Man, Ostension, and the
Digital Age. Contemporary Legend series 3 5: 14-37.
Mar. 9
Tolbert, Jeffrey A. 2015. “Dark and Wicked Things”: Slender Man, the Folkloresque, and
the Implications of Belief. Contemporary Legend series 3 5: 38-61.
Mar. 14
Kitta, Andrea. 2015. “What Happens When the Pictures Are No Longer Photoshops?”
Slender Man, Belief, and the Unacknowledged Common Experience. Contemporary
Legend series 3 5: 62-76.
Mar. 16
Tucker, Elizabeth. 2007. Legend Quests. Haunted Halls: Ghostlore of American College
Campuses, 182-210. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Mar. 21
Hammond, Joyce D. 1995. The Tourist Folklore of Pele: Encounters with the Other. Out
of the Ordinary: Folklore and the Supernatural, ed. Barbara Walker, 159-179. Logan,
UT: Utah State UP.
Mar. 23
Lindahl, Carl. 2005. Ostensive Healing: Pilgrimage to the San Antonio Ghost Tracks.
Journal of American Folklore 118.468: 164-185.
Mar. 28
Holly, Donald H., Jr. and Casey E. Cordy. 2007. What’s in a Coin? Reading the Material
Culture of Legend Tripping and Other Activities. Journal of American Folklore
120.477: 335-354.
Mar. 30
Course evaluations / conclusions / exam preparation
Apr. 4
Buffer day
Database Assignment – Ongoing, to be completed by March 7
An opportunity to experiment with a new assignment, this requires you to discover five contemporary
legends—or what you can argue is something akin to contemporary legend—in your day to day life. Using
the database option on Moodle, you will create a record that identifies the source (Internet, popular
culture, or IRL) of the legend, describes the “text / texture / context” of its performance, and justifies why
you think it is a legend. After entering two entries you will be able to see your classmates contributions and
add comments: you must comment on at least three other entries.
More detailed instructions will be available once the database template is completed, which will be by the
end of the second week of classes.
*There are a number of television programmes –Urban Legends Exposed, Mythbusters, and the like – and
websites – particularly snopes.com – which are not to be cited in this ‘legend-spotting’ exercise.
Annotation assignment – Due March 30
Students will conduct a short ethnographic collecting exercise, in which they will collect a contemporary
legend text in as natural a context as possible, which they will in turn transcribe, identify, and search for
parallel versions.
They will also include a short write-up (1200-1500 words) providing a description of the narrative context,
interpreting how the legend is interpreted by the performer, by the group in which it was performed, and
by the student him- or herself, and reflecting on the nature of the collection exercise itself. Library /
database research is expected, with at least three academic citations to provide context for your legend /
argument for legendry.
I have no problem with double-dipping: you may choose one of the items collected for the database
assignment and expand on it.
Midterm and Final Exams
Multiple-choice and short answer questions based on readings and lectures.
Midterm February 16; final in exam period.
General Policies
Assignments:
All assignments must be completed in order to pass this course.
Late or missed assignments:
The two assignments are due by midnight of their respective due dates. Anything later than that will be
penalised at one mark per day.
About Internet sources
If you must use them, at the very least use Google Scholar to start your searches. And remember, if you can
find something, cut and paste it, and claim it as your own, I can certainly find it again and expose you.
Plagiarism:
Plagiarism is defined by the university calendar as follows:
Plagiarism is the act of representing the intellectual work of others as one’s own. Such misrepresentation is treated as a serious
violation of academic standards and principles. When a student submits work for a course, it is assumed that the work is
original except where the student properly acknowledges the use of other sources. Of course, good scholarship often requires
drawing on the work of others, but any borrowed material – including words, ideas, data, statistics, graphics and other
intellectual matter, whether drawn from print, electronic, or other non-print sources – must be fully acknowledged according
to the accepted practices of the relevant discipline. (CBU Calendar)
This means that when you use sources, whether they are from the library, from the Internet, or (as is often
the case in folklore) from interviews with people, you must clearly distinguish both (a) what are someone
else’s ideas as opposed to your own, and (b) what are someone else’s words as opposed to your own. I
have found that many students leave themselves open to the charge of plagiarism by either doing little to
clearly make the distinction between their own work and someone else’s, or (more often) not quite
grasping the concept of what the essay is. An essay is more than a number of sources interwoven with some
linking material: it is an effort at expressing an original idea which is more often than not based in part on
other peoples’ own efforts at expressing similar or parallel ideas.
So, of course (as the policy says) you will be quoting and drawing ideas from other people, but remember:
•
There is nothing wrong with quoting somebody, even quoting them extensively, provided that
you recognise and indicate in the text that this is not your idea or words but those of someone else.
•
There is nothing wrong with paraphrasing somebody, provided that you recognise and indicate
in the text that, although they may now be your words, they are someone else’s ideas.
•
A list of references (bibliography, works cited, etc.) is simultaneously both mandatory and
insufficient for citing.
So, practice safe essay-writing: clearly indicate how you are using sources, and hand-in something that goes
beyond an artful compilation of other people’s ideas and aims at some kind of synthesis between what
others have said and what you have to say.
Any student who plagiarises will automatically receive a mark of zero on the assignment: he
or she will not have the opportunity to resubmit; and the Dean of Arts and Social Sciences
and, if different, the student’s Dean, will be informed.