Wednesday, October 11, 3:30 pm–5:30 pm
session will be recorded and available for later viewing online
Chair: Elissa R. Henken (University of Georgia, emerita)
3:30 pm
Tales of the Supernatural as Told by My Parents
Victoria Blake (University of Houston)
4:00 pm
Covid Lore: Redefining Death in the Emergency Room
Stacy R. Nigliazzo (University of Houston)
4:30 pm
Scary Stories at Summer Camp: A Tradition of Gendered Education and Community
Sara Kaplan- Cunnningham (University of Houston)
5:00 pm
discussant
Carl Lindahl (University of Houston)
5:15 pm
optional discussion time
In these autoethnographic studies, three presenters examine their communities: a family using memorates to negotiate differing stances on the supernatural, emergency room professionals ritually responding to the covid pandemic, an all-girl summer camp cementing their relationships through legend telling. The vehicle for these explorations is a self-survey, in which each presenter begins by revisiting through memory critical instances when their community shared story and/or ritual. They describe the short- and long-term impact of each performance. After this highly subjective exercise, each presenter steps out of her ‘folk self’ and leans upon numerical analysis among other tools to identify the relationships articulated in their lore and weigh the importance of the performances for sustaining their communities.