Conclusion: Section 1 of the seminar (Professor Alvarez )

I am very pleased to see the engagement all of you have crafted with the texts at hand. There is certainly a lot to say and dissect in each of the readings assigned. It is impossible to read everything there is to read about a "field" of study in 3 weeks ----it is silly to even propose that such a thing is possible. So, what have we attempted to do in these 3 weeks? I would argue we have established some basic coordinates for a map that can then be followed in multiple directions. I am delighted that some of you are already taking everything you are reading and using it as a heuristic devise to interpret, complicate, problematize YOUR OWN interests --either as a scholar or as an educated citizen. Our map should mark, by now, some fundamental posts in the study of folklore. Let me mention, in very broad strokes, some of the most prominent themes thus far:
1) the unabashedly historic nature and character of our main subject of study: "folk" as social category and subjectivity; we begin there --and we dig deeper there -for it is in the discursive formation of early modern Europe (mid-1650s) that we will find ideas and beliefs that still resonate as common sense today. I am tempted to teach a class next time that spends half the semester examining mainly this historic period in depth.
2) As a European transplant to the United States, ideas about "folk" and "culture" undergo a transformation; the nature of the transformation mirrors and echoes the mythological nature of American expansionism in the age of the 3 "E"s: empire, enterprise, and evolution.
3) The subject position "folk" is complicated further by the fact that in the USA there emerge two simultaneous paths of engagement with folkloristics: one conservative and often times paternalistic, racist, romantic; and one progressive path of working class agency and counter-hegemonic impulses. But one is always the other side of the other. It is a treacherous path to navigate and that in itself will become the main story of folklore studies in the U.S. (three steps forward, two steps back). Some things, though as Raymond Williams would say, are residual and some are emergent ---and it is in that dance that people (subaltern if you will) will unfold their own quest for representation, which inevitably at times will be a quest founded on the actions of un-doing having been "spoken for" already (by folklorists and others);
4) Intersecting these large conceptual signposts are other sideline conversations that also construct "subjects" --in this week's readings we focus on one minuscule section of the larger debate on "popular culture" --we see both how intriguing and interesting this conversation can be (I mean who does not get taken in by all of the examples of Great Depression era entertainment that Levine expounds?) -but also how self-referential (Levine being one of America's foremost historians sets off a debate that, frankly, is already outdated and not exactly provocative, but he commands the podium, so to speak...). I confess that I also found Kelley's and Lears' the best responses -better in some cases than Levine's own essay, which overstates his case considerably.

So, with these 4 major conceptual coordinates we conclude the first section of the seminar: mapping Sources, Histories, and Contexts. But while the lay out of a conceptual edifice is satisfying in some sense, we really have only begun to scratch the surface. The devil, as the saying goes, is in the details........and more than getting stuck on who is folk and who is isn't --what is popular culture and what isn't--- I am pleased beyond words to see that you are applying a model of discursive (and state) formation to the concepts; in other words, as I always say when I talk and write about my own work on stereotypes, it is not enough to say that something has "different meanings to different people" --yeah, that is true, but so what? The real crux of the matter is in understanding why and when and most importantly HOW some meanings STICK, while others SLIDE......

p.s. I am so grateful to have a point of view represented in the class from China/Taiwan -- a different intellectual and social trajectory that enters in conversation with the European-centric study of folklore.