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Preface and acknowledgments -- Theories and definitions -- Practice theory in folklore and folklife studies -- The handiness of tradition -- Toward a definition of folklore in practice -- Practices and practitioners -- Rethinking the boogieman: a praxeological inquiry into the origin, form, and cognition of a troubling folk character -- Who's your daddy?: proverbial and psychological meanings in practice -- The shooter has Asperger's: autism, belief, and wild child narratives -- Who's that knocking on my door?: Barnacle Bill again and again -- Implications and applications -- From farm to. farmers' markets: Amish folk society in the age of fast capitalism -- The year of folklore and other lessons of public heritage -- Are folk museums still relevant? -- Folkloristic practices in a converging hyper era -- Notes -- References -- Index.

America stocks its shelves with mass-produced goods but fills its imagination with handmade folk objects. In Pennsylvania, the ""back to the city"" housing movement causes a conflict of cultures. In Indiana, an old tradition of butchering turtles for church picnics evokes both pride and loathing among residents. In New York, folk-art exhibits raise choruses of adoration and protest. These are a few of the examples Simon Bronner uses to illustrate the ways Americans physically and mentally grasp things. Bronner moves beyond the usual discussions of form and variety in America's folk material cu

The red string: The cultural history of a Jewish folk symbol / Elly Teman -- A synagogue in Olyka: architecture and legends / Sergey R. Kravtsov -- Yiddish in the aftermath: speech community and cultural continuity in displaced persons camps / Miriam Isaacs -- "National dignity" and "spiritual reintegration": the discovery and presentation of Jewish folk music in Germany / Jascha Nemtsov -- "Take down mezuzahs, remove name-plates": the emigration of objects from Germany to Palestine / Joachim Schlör -- Holocaust narratives and their impact: personal identification and communal roles / Hannah Kliger, Bea Hollander-Goldfein, and Emilie Passow -- Ambivalence and identity in Russian Jewish cinema / Olga Gershenson -- The delicatessen as an icon of secular Jewishness / Ted Merwin -- Hasidism versus Zionism as remembered by Carpatho-Russian Jews between the two World Wars / Ilana Rosen -- The sublimity of the Jewish type: Balzac's belle juive as virgin Magdalene aux camélias / Judith Lewin -- As goyish as lime Jell-O?: Jack Benny and the American construction of Jewishness / Holly A. Pearse -- Jewish coding: cultural studies and Jewish American cinema / Mikel Koven

The dualities of house and home in Jewish culture / Simon J. Bronner -- The domestication of urban Jewish space and the North-West London eruv / Jennifer Cousineau -- Every wise woman shoppeth for her house: the sisterhood gift shop and the American Jewish home in the mid-twentieth century / Joellyn Wallen Zollman -- Reimagining home, rethinking sukkah: rabbinic discourse and its contemporary implications / Marjorie Lehman -- From sacred symbol to key ring: the ḥamsa in Jewish and Israeli societies / Shalom Sabar -- 770 Eastern Parkway: the Rebbe's home as icon / Gabrielle A. Berlinger -- From the nightclub to the living room: gender, ethnicity, and upward mobility in the 1950s party records of three Jewish women comics / Giovanna P. Del Negro -- Samuel Rawet's Wandering Jew: Jewish-Brazilian monologues of home and displacement / Rosana Kohl Bines -- Home in the Pampas: Alberto Gerchunoff's Jewish gauchos / Mónica Szurmuk -- Domesticity and the home (page): blogging and the blurring of public and private among Orthodox Jewish women / Andrea Lieber -- Culture mavens: feeling at home in America / Jenna Weissman Joselit -- At home in the world / David Kraemer -- The co-construction of Europe as a Jewish home / Joachim Schlör -- Reflections on 'Culture Mavens' from an Australian Jewish perspective / Suzanne D. Rutland -- There's no place like home: America, Israel, and the (mixed) blessings of assimilation / Michael P. Kramer --The last word: a response / Jenna Weissman Joselit

Is hunting a bygone activity, out of touch with modern life; or is it valuable as an escape from it? Does hunting promote violence, not just to animals, but to humans as well? Is hunting, with its connection to the land and frontier experience, a heritage worth preserving? These questions form the foundations for discussion in Killing Tradition: Inside Hunting and Animal Rights Controversies. Simon J. Bronner sorts through the issues and goes behind the headlines to examine the basis of this hotly-charged subject. Using case studies as evidence, Bronner looks at a topic at the center of modern

For centuries, new sailors from European and North American countries have embraced often brutal hazing in an elaborate ceremony at sea called 'crossing the line' (British-American) and 'Neptunusfeest' (Dutch). Typically enacted upon crossing the equator, the beatings, dunks, sexual play, mock baptisms, mythological dramas, crude shavings and haircuts, and drinking and swallowing displays have attracted a number of protests and even bans as well as staunch defenses and fond reminiscences. The custom has especially drawn criticism since the late twentieth century with the integration of women into the military and the questioning of its hierarchical codes of manliness. In this study, the persistent ceremony's changing meaning into the twenty-first century is examined with considerations of development, structure, symbolism, performance, and function. A timely study revising previous assumptions about the custom's origins, diffusion, and functions. - Al sinds de 16e eeuw worden zeelieden uit Europa en Noord- Amerika geconfronteerd met een meedogenloze en ingewikkelde ontgroeningsceremonie op zee. Het ritueel,'crossing the line' of Neptunusfeest, wordt voltrokken wanneer zeelieden voor het eerst op zee de evenaar passeren. De ceremonie gaat gepaard met verbaal en fysiek geweld, (kaal) scheren of knippen, onderdompelen en kielhalen, een seksueel getint rollenspel, spot-dopen,mythologische voorstellingen en alcoholgebruik. De omstreden ceremonie wordt de laatste decennia steeds vaker bekritiseerd in verband met de integratie van vrouwen binnen de marine en de met het gebruik verbonden hiërarchische codes van mannelijkheid. In deze studie worden de veranderende betekenissen van het gebruik geanalyseerd en wordt gekeken naar ontwikkeling, structuur, symboliek, performance en functies. Op basis van deze analyse biedt Bronner een nieuwe interpretatie over de herkomst, de verspreiding en de functies van het gebruik en wijst hij op de implicaties zowel ten aanzien van de ethische aspecten als van de genderverhoudingen in de postmoderne samenleving.

For centuries, new sailors from European and North American countries have embraced often brutal hazing in an elaborate ceremony at sea called 'crossing the line' (British-American) and 'Neptunusfeest' (Dutch). Typically enacted upon crossing the equator, the beatings, dunks, sexual play, mock baptisms, mythological dramas, crude shavings and haircuts, and drinking and swallowing displays have attracted a number of protests and even bans as well as staunch defenses and fond reminiscences. The custom has especially drawn criticism since the late twentieth century with the integration of women into the military and the questioning of its hierarchical codes of manliness. In this study, the persistent ceremony's changing meaning into the twenty-first century is examined with considerations of development, structure, symbolism, performance, and function. A timely study revising previous assumptions about the custom's origins, diffusion, and functions.

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.

At the end of the twentieth-century and early twenty-first century, "Who's Your Daddy?" spontaneously chanted by large crowds at sporting events in the United States drew national press attention. Journalists usually reported the ritualized chanting of the question being of recent origin, but differed over whether it was meant to be offensive or endearing. In this essay, I use linguistic, paremiological, historical, folkloristic, and ethnographic research to show that the phrase could be considered a "proverbial interrogative" indicating social dominance associated with patriarchy and probably dates to the American frontier experience in the mid-nineteenth century. Through the twentieth century, it became associated with African-American street culture and the "beat scene," often with sexual connotations. In its latest iteration, I argue with reference to "frame theory" that the frame of sports allowed for psycho-logical projection in this and other folk sayings of anxieties about declining power of men in a feminizing American society.

For centuries, new sailors from European and North American countries have embraced often brutal hazing in an elaborate ceremony at sea called 'crossing the line' (British-American) and 'Neptunusfeest' (Dutch). Typically enacted upon crossing the equator, the beatings, dunks, sexual play, mock baptisms, mythological dramas, crude shavings and haircuts, and drinking and swallowing displays have attracted a number of protests and even bans as well as staunch defenses and fond reminiscences. The custom has especially drawn criticism since the late twentieth century with the integration of women into the military and the questioning of its hierarchical codes of manliness. In this study, the persistent ceremony's changing meaning into the twenty-first century is examined with considerations of development, structure, symbolism, performance, and function. A timely study revising previous assumptions about the custom's origins, diffusion, and functions.