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SUGGESTIONS FOR SECOND WRITING REQUIREMENT PAPER TOPICS
One very good suggestion is that you consult with one of us before you start writing, and possibly during the process of working on your paper. Students tend to pick topics that are way too large. Have one of us help you narrow things down. Consistently, students who do consult write better papers.
Your rough draft will be due the last week of March; Thursday, March 27 at 5PM is the latest that you can hand your rough draft in. Rough draft should be AT LEAST 5-6 pages long and you will have an easier time if your rough draft is longer than that. You will get your rough draft back about 2 weeks after you hand it in. The final version of the paper is due at the same time as the final exam, that is no later than 5pm on May 9
Purpose: You are supposed to write a formal paper, in standard expository style. This means that you should deal with a theory and a body of data. You should present a thesis, such as "The jingles used in American commercials have a structure similar to that of Russian charms and, like Russian charms, seek to exploit all available powers to achieve the desired result." You should test this thesis using a body of data. You should then formulate a conclusion. When you do this, you are performing the sort of work professionals do, and not only professional folklorists, but all professionals.
One obvious approach to the second writing paper is to expand your collection project or one of the small essays that you did for this course. You will find appropriate suggestions below. Please remember that second writing requirement work should total 20 pages. Thus, if the collection project and this paper are linked, the two together should be 20 pages. Right now I am assuming 10 pages minimum for the collection project and 10 pages minimum for the second writing requirement paper. You can make adjustments in consultation with us, however. Your paper does not have to be connected to your collection project. You might wish to use this as an opportunity to explore a different aspect of this course.
What not to do:
Do not write a book report. Do not write a summary of this course or a related course that you have taken from me or from someone else.
Also, I do not want a catalogue of weird practices from the world over. The paper should have a thesis that you set out to examine.
Please do not examine life cycle rites. It is true, as Van Gennep, Turner, and others say, that life cycle rites have much in common with yearly cycle rites, but they are also quite different. Yearly cycles rites are rites of status reversal and life cycle ones are rites of status elevation. I am afraid you might get yourself into trouble examining something that we do not cover here and that I cover in a different course. Therefore, please avoid this topic.
PAPER FORMAT
This is a formal paper. We expect you to document according to a nationally accepted standard. You may use endnotes rather than footnotes. You may even give author and page in parentheses in the text with a full bibliography at the end. As I said, any nationally accepted standard will do. See something like the Chicago Manual of Style, or Kate Turabian's book, or the Modern Language Association guidelines. You must have both notes and a bibliography.
If you use oral sources, you must credit these just as you would a printed source. Give name of the person from whom you recorded your information; date and place information collected; name of collector. If the collector is you, note this in the introduction or the first time a citation of an oral source appears. Sometimes the age, sex, race, social position of the person from whom you collected are relevant. Check with one of us if in doubt. If the material is secret or if the person interviewed does not want his or her identity divulged for some reason, state this at the beginning. Give all information as above, but omit name. You may need to give age, socioeconomic position, etc. as before. Do so if it is relevant, but does not reveal identity. Again, check with one of us.
SOME POSSIBE TOPICS:
1) Explore witchcraft accusations. Read up on witchcraft theories in books such as Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A Regional and Comparative Study or Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft. Next, find some witchcraft cases and apply something like Macfarlane's "blame the victim" thesis. For Russian and Ukrainian material, you can use my article on witchcraft beliefs in Ethnologies or Russell Zguta's study of court documents. If you use something like my article for case data, be sure you have your own approach. Do not give me my own arguments back.
You will find additional case data in:
Eklof and Frank, The World of the Russian Peasant
Ivanits, Russian Folk Belief
Worobec, Peasant Russia
Semenova Tian-Shanskaia, Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia
2) One of your classmates kindly pointed out that there is a move to canonize Rasputin in some of the more right-wing and nationalistic quarters of the Orthodox Church. Read up on these developments. See what the arguments for canonizing Rasputin are and examine the justifications offered for Rasputin's behavior. Try to find patterns to the thought processes used and compare to what we have been discussing in this course.
3) Christine Worobec recently published a book called Possessed. It talks not about witchcraft accusations, but about people who were victims of the evil eye and other malefice. What does being a victim have in common with being a witch? What are the thought processes of the victim? What are the thought processes of the people dealing with the victim?
4) As suggested at the beginning, you might explore commercials further. I have not tried this, but, on the surface at least, the jingles that are used in some commercials do indeed have at least some of the traits of charms. Take a number of jingles and see if you can find a common structure. Then compare to the structure of incantations given by Ryan.
5) The book I am using for the principles of magic is Bogatyrev, Vampires in the Carpathians. Its original title is Magical Acts and that title is more reflective of its content. Read that book and apply to a set of related commercials. Can you see any patterns in American commercials? Do they prefer certain magic principles over others? What might this indicate?
6) The return of the dead, telekinesis and other supernatural phenomena are frequently treated in American film. Pick a topic that is discussed in your last two readings, such as the return of the dead, and compare its cinematic treatment to the real beliefs about the felt presence of the dead presented in Alas, Poor Ghost. You should use a very limited number of films. One might well be enough. Check with us. Compare real belief to cinema and analyze.
7) Select some one folk medicine practice and analyze. Compare to the analysis in Hanchuk's Word and Wax. Look for magic thinking. OR see how the persistence of a folk practice serves as a way of maintaining ethnic identity, the way the wax ceremony helps the Ukrainians in Canada retain a tie to the homeland.
The above are just suggestions. There are lots more possibilities and you are quite welcome to be original in your choice of topics. Just check it with us before you proceed.
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