ABOUT THIS BOOK

In Tradition in the Twenty-First Century, eight diverse contributors explore the role of tradition in contemporary folkloristics. For more than a century, folklorists have been interested in locating sources of tradition and accounting for the conceptual boundaries of tradition, but in the modern era, expanded means of communication, research, and travel, along with globalized cultural and economic interdependence, have complicated these pursuits. Tradition is thoroughly embedded in both modern life and at the center of folklore studies, and a modern understanding of tradition cannot be fully realized without a thoughtful consideration of the past’s role in shaping the present.

Emphasizing how tradition adapts, survives, thrives, and either mutates or remains stable in today’s modern world, the contributors pay specific attention to how traditions now resist or expedite dissemination and adoption by individuals and communities. This complex and intimate portrayal of tradition in the twenty-first century offers a comprehensive overview of the folkloristic and popular conceptualizations of tradition from the past to present and presents a thoughtful assessment and projection of how “tradition” will fare in years to come. The book will be useful to advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in folklore and will contribute significantly to the scholarly literature on tradition within the folklore discipline.

Additional Contributors: Simon Bronner, Stephen Olbrys Gencarella, Merrill Kaplan, Lynne S. McNeill, Elliott Oring, Casey R. Schmitt, and Tok Thompson

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Trevor J. Blank is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of English and Communication at the State University of New York at Potsdam and editor of Folk Culture in the Digital Age. Robert Glenn Howard is the Director of Digital Studies and a professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and editor of the journal Western Folklore.

REVIEWS

"The editors of Tradition in the Twenty-First Century are to be heartily congratulated for assembling a lively set of readings that raise important issues, ask useful questions, and offer lines of thought with the capacity to focus, refine, and extend the folkloristic encounter with perhaps its core intellectual construct, the elusive yet necessary concept of tradition."
—Journal of American Folklore

"The authors of this volume have indeed done a fine service to the whole field of folklore studies in showing directions of both future development of tradition in the contemporary world and the perspectives of its research. . . . Any essay in this collection actually requires (and is worth) a separate review since each of them stimulates discussion and future investigation."
—Folklore

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Living Traditions in a Modern World - Robert Glenn Howard and Trevor J. Blank

1. Thinking through Tradition - Elliott Oring

2. Critical Folklore Studies and the Revaluation of Tradition - Stephen Olbrys Gencarella

3. Vernacular Authority: Critically Engaging “Tradition” - Robert Glenn Howard

4 Asserting Tradition: Rhetoric of Tradition and the Defense of Chief Illiniwek - Casey R. Schmitt

5. Curation and Tradition on Web 2.0 - Merrill Kaplan

6. Trajectories of Tradition: Following Tradition into a New Epoch of Human Culture - Tok Thompson

7. And the Greatest of These Is Tradition: The Folklorist’s Toolbox in the Twenty-First Century - Lynne S. McNeill

8. The “Handiness” of Tradition - Simon J. Bronner

About the Contributors

Index

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