Abstract
What happens to the local character anecdote when it is told by someone who exists at the margins rather than at the center of community life? How do stories about other people function as negotiations of class, gender, and even ethnic identifications across lines of difference. This work complicates ideas of homogeneous communities and fixed identity categories that continue to govern our understanding of the genre, and requires us to rethink worn out binaries of insider and outsider, folk and modern.
Bio
Katherine Borland is Associate Professor of Comparative Studies in the Humanities and Director of the Center for Folklore Studies at Ohio State University. Currently, she is finishing out her year as Fulbright Bicentennial Chair of North American Studies at the University of Helsinki. She has published on a variety of topics, including solidarity arts, family folklore, international volunteering, dance, feminist ethnography, festival, and Central American immigration to the United States.