Western Folklore
Vol. 83 No. 2 – Spring, 2024
(Current Issue)
Postnational Folklore—Postnational Folk: Rethinking Communities, Identities, and Politics in the Age of Global Communications
Tok Thompson
ABSTRACT: The modern concept of the nation and the political form of the nation-state were deeply influenced by folklore scholarship. Johann Herder envisioned the nation-state as a political model made possible by keen attention to cultural communities. Now, at the end of modernity, how can contemporary folklorists come to better understand the new global communities, traditions, and identities, and their implications? How could folklore once again provide new models for identity, community, and (ultimately) governance, in the age of global communications?
Folklore in the Globalizing Present/Future and the “Antiquated Discipline” of the Past: A Response to Tok Thompson
José E. Limón
A Response: Imagining the Present as the Survival in Postnational Folklore
Juwen Zhang
Folklore and Futurity: Continuity Across the Break
Domino Renee Perez
Parry, Lord, and Their Legacy: The Human Face of Extraordinary Scholarship (click on title for full text)
John D. Niles
Victor H. Mair and Zhenjun Zhang, Ming Dynasty Tales: A Guided Reader Reviewed by Guohui Jiang
Maurizio Bettini, Women and Weasels: Mythologies of Birth in Ancient Greece and Rome Reviewed by Lauren Mckinnon
Kariamu Welsh, Esailama G. Diouf, and Yvonne Daniel, Hot Feet and Social Change: African Dance and Diaspora Communities Reviewed by Kylie Schroeder
Emily Hilliard, Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia Reviewed by Seanin Shearn