Defines the distinctive field of Jewish cultural studies and its basis in folkloristic, psychological, and ethnological approaches.Jewish Cultural Studies charts the contours and boundaries of Jewish cultural studies and the issues of Jewish culture that make it so intriguing—and necessary—not only for Jews but also for students of identity, ethnicity, and diversity generally. In addition to framing the distinguishing features of Jewish culture and the way...

Across the country and around the world, people avidly engage in the cultural practice of hunting. Children are taken on rite-of-passage hunting trips, where relationships are cemented and legacies are passed on from one generation to another. Meals are prepared from hunted game, often consisting of regionally specific dishes that reflect a community's heritage and character. Deer antlers and bear skins are hung on living room walls, decorations and relics of a hunter's most impressive kil...

The Jewish community of Greater Harrisburg became established after 1825, mostly by German immigrants who took up peddling and clothing trades. They were attracted inland from East Coast cities to Harrisburg, the growing upriver hub of trade that became Pennsylvania�s state capital in 1812. The community grew to 600 residents by the end of the 19th century and drew attention for a level of civic engagement well beyond that of comparably sized settlements. Immigration from eastern Europe in...

For much of the 20th century, the name Steelton represented a great industrial complex that stretched nearly four miles along the Susquehanna River near the state�s capital of Harrisburg. Immigrants from all over Europe, particularly Slavs and Italians, worked with African Americans from the South at the Bethlehem Steel Company and gave Steelton its reputation for ethnic diversity, second only to its fame for industrial productivity. Catholics, Protestants, and Jews filled the town�s vario...

In Folklore and Ethnology of the Modern World, Simon Bronner identifies “cultural engagements” that people use to reconcile tradition and modernity and confront the anxieties of the present by bringing together the past, often represented by tradition, and the immediate digital, unreal future. These socially bounded, symbol-laden practices integrate ritual, play, narrative, and object with the instrumental purpose of confronting paradoxes and tensions of modern life. They provide ...

Winner of the 2020 Chicago Folklore PrizeCHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2020Despite predictions that commercial mass culture would displace customs of the past, traditions firmly abound, often characterized as folklore. In The Practice of Folklore: Essays toward a Theory of Tradition, author Simon J. Bronner works with theories of cultural practice to explain the social and psychological need for tradition in everyd...

James Buchanan Elmore (1857–1942): Literary Ethnographer and Folk Poet details the life and work of Elmore as a “folk poet,” emphasizing the importance in the cultural understanding of the ethnographic insights he gave as a farmer in the midwestern region of the United States that experienced dramatic social change after the Civil War. In song and verse, folk poets write of community events and personalities associated with them and of manifestations of natural forces with effects...

American folklife is steeped in world cultures, or invented as new culture, always evolving, yet often practiced as it was created many years or even centuries ago. This fascinating encyclopedia explores the rich and varied cultural traditions of folklife in America - from barn raisings to the Internet, tattoos, and Zydeco - through expressions that include ritual, custom, crafts, architecture, food, clothing, and art. Featuring more than 350 A-Z entries, "Encyclopedia of American Folklife...

Folklore. Washington Irving and Mark Twain used it in their fiction; Sigmund Freud and William James incorporated it into their work; Henry Ford and Franklin Roosevelt promoted it. Their efforts were set against the background of folklorists who brought collections of traditional tales, songs, and crafts to the attention of a modernizing society. The ideas of these folklorists influenced how Americans thought about the character of their society and the directions it was taking.Her...

Americanness: Inquiries into the Thought and Culture of the United States analyzes several core themes that connect Americans because of, and despite, their pronounced diversity.The book investigates shared ideas and ideals, such as individualism, mobility, materialism, and future-orientation, that drive an overarching American worldview. Simon J. Bronner begins with ideas of space and time as they formed and changed through the history of the United States, before moving ...

Thirteen international scholars assess the profound impact of Soviet-era movements to study, apply, and perform folklore as a priority in socialist policy-formation and culture-building. Representing generations who lived through and after Soviet occupation, they reflect on the consequences of state-supported promotion of folk arts in a region called the Western Borderlands that include Baltic countries, Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, Belarus, Romania, and Hungary. In their incisive analyses, ...

The American essays of renowned writer Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) artistically chronicle the robust urban life of Cincinnati and New Orleans. Hearn is one of the few chroniclers of urban American life in the nineteenth century, and much of this material has not been widely available since the 1950s. Lafcadio Hearn's America collects Hearn's stories of vagabonds, river people, mystics, criminals, and some of the earliest accounts available of black and ethnic urban folklife in Amer...