Danny Parker’s Storytelling Legacy
Abstract
I will present and analyze an ethnographic interview (focusing on folklore) with my uncle who has colon cancer, but has had an eventful life that we all relive through his stories. I am documenting the stories our family has heard him tell for many years, so that his stories live on in our family lore, and so that I can better appreciate how folklore works in our world and reflects significant aspects of human psychology as well. Recording and documenting my uncle's stories and our family's traditions helped me appreciate this process very immediately as an important and interesting demonstration of how folklore can work in our lives. The project suggests something about humanity in the sense of what it means to be human and how we interact meaningfully through stories, reflecting important information about our family's and our culture's worldviews, while also embodying concepts of tradition and dynamism within folklore studies. I will specifically demonstrate how my interview fits the genres of parable and personal experience narrative. The whole interview process is a first person account about an interesting or unusual experience, told in an artistic (while also everyday) way, making it a good example of how folklore works in all our lives. I will analyze the stories and their place in our family culture according to both folkloristic and psychological perspectives.
Session Name:
Memory: An Interdisciplinary Discussion
Start Date
10-4-2015 2:30 PM
End Date
10-4-2015 3:30 PM
Location
HSB 202
Danny Parker’s Storytelling Legacy
HSB 202
I will present and analyze an ethnographic interview (focusing on folklore) with my uncle who has colon cancer, but has had an eventful life that we all relive through his stories. I am documenting the stories our family has heard him tell for many years, so that his stories live on in our family lore, and so that I can better appreciate how folklore works in our world and reflects significant aspects of human psychology as well. Recording and documenting my uncle's stories and our family's traditions helped me appreciate this process very immediately as an important and interesting demonstration of how folklore can work in our lives. The project suggests something about humanity in the sense of what it means to be human and how we interact meaningfully through stories, reflecting important information about our family's and our culture's worldviews, while also embodying concepts of tradition and dynamism within folklore studies. I will specifically demonstrate how my interview fits the genres of parable and personal experience narrative. The whole interview process is a first person account about an interesting or unusual experience, told in an artistic (while also everyday) way, making it a good example of how folklore works in all our lives. I will analyze the stories and their place in our family culture according to both folkloristic and psychological perspectives.