The Folk Narrative Section of the American Folklore Society serves as a venue to showcase our members’ research into a broad variety of narrative genres (folktale, legend, myth, personal narrative, etc.) and theoretical approaches to narrative. We sponsor lectures, panels, and forums at the Society’s annual meetings with the goal of promoting new interest in what is one of the oldest and richest veins of scholarship within the field of Folklore.
Please join our Facebook group in order to receive updates and announcements about upcoming events.
Support our activities by buying stylish, narrative-themed merchandise from our CafePress store.
Contact Kerry Kaleba, the convener of this section, at [email protected].
Past Folk Narrative Section Sponsored Lectures & Sessions
2011 — Bloomington, IN
Fairy Tale Films and Realities: Four Views
Tracie Lukasiewicz (University of Miami), Neo-Magical Realism: A Study of Reality and Fantasy in Pan’s Labyrinth and Inception
Cristina Bacchilega (University of Hawai`i, Mānoa), Double Exposures: Storytelling and Fairy-Tale Traumas
Pauline Greenhill (University of Winnipeg), “This is the North, Where We Do What We Want”: Popular Green Criminology and the Red Riding Trilogy
Brian Ray (University of North Carolina, Greensboro), “I Can Recite, Therefore I Am”: Reinscriptions of Gender in Alice in Wonderland
Fantasies of War: Cross-Dressing and Identity in the Fairy Tale
Christine A. Jones (University of Utah), G.I. Jeanne: Hero(in)ism and War in the French Fairy Tale
Anne E. Duggan (Wayne State University), The Revolutionary Undoing of the Maiden Warrior in Riyoko Ikeda’s The Rose of Versailles and Jacques Demy’s Lady Oscar
Jennifer Schacker (University of Guelph), Slaying Blunderboer: Cross-Dressed Heroes, National Identities and Wartime Pantomime
2010 — Nashville, TN
Folk Narrative Section Invited Lecture
Dr. Ulrich Marzolph (Enzyklopädie des Märchens), What “Nights”? Expert Knowledge vs. Lay Perception of the World’s Most Famous Story Collection
Propp-ing Up the 21st Century
Jody Kolodzey (University of Pennsylvania), “I Love to Tell the Story”: Film, Folk Religion, and Narrative Functions
Dorothy Noyes (The Ohio State University), Fairytale Economics: Scarcity, Risk, Choice
Lynn Gelfand (University of Advancing Technology), Playing with Stories:Morphology and Meaning in Games Based on Fairytales
Dan Ben-Amos (University of Pennsylvania), discussant
2009 — Boise, ID
Repurposing Folktales I
Adam Zolkover (Indiana University). Rewriting Remus: Clever Rabbits, Sticky Situations,and the Politics of Reinterpretation.
Jeana Jorgensen (Indiana University). Magical Mirrors and Transformations: From Fairy Tale to Medicine.
Mary Hufford (University of Pennsylvania). An Eco-critical Approach to Fairy Tales.
K. Elizabeth Spillman (University of Pennsylvania). The Power of Pink Plastic: Fairy Tales, Commodification, and Carnival.
Repurposing Folktales II
Linda J. Lee (University of Pennsylvania). Ugly Stepsisters and Unkind Girls: Rethinking Reality TV’s Fairy Tales.
Benjamin Grantham Aldred (Indiana University). “Putting the ‘I’ in Interdiction: Function and Interactivity in Fairy Tale Games.”
Sandra K. Dolby (Indiana University). Folktales as Self-Help Narratives.
Donald Haase (Wayne State University). discussant
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