Visit the Courses page to view the Folklore-related courses being offered this fall.

Ülo Valk studied folkloristics at the University of Tartu from 1980 until 1986 and later worked as a research assistant, research fellow and senior research fellow at the folklore department of the Institute of Language and Literature. Since 1993 he has been teaching at the University of Tartu, where he defended his Dr. Phil. dissertation on the image of the Devil in Estonian folk religion in 1994. In 1995 he became professor extraordinary of Estonian and Comparative Folklore, and in 1998 full professor. During 2000-2001 he worked as a visiting professor of folkloristics at the department of anthropology, University of California, Berkeley; during 2003-2004 he was Fulbright Fellow at the Center for Folklore and Ethnography, University of Pennsylvania. During 2005-2009 Ülo Valk served the International Society for Folk Narrative Research (ISFNR) as its president. His research has mainly focused on genre theory of folklore, belief narratives, religious folklore in social context, and folk religion of South Asia. He is the editor of the journal Numen: International Review for the History of Religions (Brill) and principal investigator of two research projects: the international “Re-storied Sites and Routes as Inclusive Spaces and Places: Shared Imaginations and Multi-layered Heritage” (EMP340; 2020−2023) and ”Vernacular Interpretations of the Incomprehensible: Folkloristic Perspectives Towards Uncertainty” (PRG670; 2020–2024).

You may view the lecture here.

UC Berkeley Folklore and the Latinx Research Center are excited to welcome Professor Solimar Otero as she delivers this year's Alan Dundes Lecture:

"Archives of Conjure: Healing Materialities and Race"

Date: April 8, 2021

Time: 5:00 p.m. PST

You may register in advance here:

https://berkeley.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYlceCsrjIoHtCNmtXNFXQEm3t3xWgcdEXz

Abstract: In this presentation based on her book Archives of Conjure, Solimar Otero explores how Afrolatino spirits guide collaborative spiritual-scholarly activist work through rituals and the creation of material culture. By examining spirit mediumship through a Caribbean cross-cultural poetics, she shows how divinities and ancestors serve as active agents in shaping the experiences of gender, sexuality, and race.

Solimar Otero is Professor of Folklore in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University, and the Editor of the Journal of Folklore Research.  Her research centers on gender, sexuality, Afro-Caribbean spirituality, and Yoruba traditional religion in folklore, literature, and ethnography. She is the author of Archives of Conjure: Stories of the Dead in Afrolatinx Cultures (Columbia University Press 2020); Afro-Cuban Diasporas in the Atlantic World, (University of Rochester Press, 2010); co-editor of Yemoja: Gender, Sexuality, and Creativity in Latina/o and Afro-Atlantic Diasporas (SUNY Press 2013); and co-editor of Theorizing Folklore from the Margins: Critical and Ethical Approaches (Indiana University Press, 2021). Dr. Otero is the recipient of a Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund grant; a fellowship at the Harvard Divinity School’s Women’s Studies in Religion Program; and a Fulbright award. 

Listen to the BBC Sounds episode here.

You may view the Berkeley Folklore’s 2020 Open House, which took place over Zoom, here.

Anthony Bak Buccitelli is Associate Professor of American Studies and Communications, Coordinator of the Graduate Certificate Program in Folklore and Ethnography, and Director of the Pennsylvania Center for Folklore at Pennsylvania State University. He also currently serves as editor of the journal Western Folklore, and has previously served as co-editor of Cultural Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Forum on Folklore and Popular Culture.

Buccitelli is author of the book City of Neighborhoods: Memory, Folklore, and Ethnic Place in Boston (2016, University of Wisconsin Press). This volume was selected for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-supported Folklore Studies in a Multicultural World Series, and received honorable mention for the American Folklore Society’s 2016 Wayland D. Hand Prize, “given for the best book combining historical and folkloristic methods and materials.” He is also editor of Race and Ethnicity in Digital Culture Our Changing Traditions, Impressions, and Expressions in a Mediated World (2018, Praeger Books), a two volume edited collection that explores the role of folklore in the changing definitions, practices, and performances of race and ethnicity in the digital age. He has published numerous research articles and scholarly book chapters, which have appeared in Sage Research Methods Foundations, The Oxford Handbook of American Folklore and Folklife Studies, The Journal of American Folklore, and Oral History, among other venues.

This Fall, Charles Briggs redesigned his graduate seminar at the University of California, Berkeley (entitled “Theories of Traditionality and Modernity”) in such a way as to augment its engagement with decolonial approaches by including a series of five Conversations on Racism and the Politics of Culture. The goal was to record discussions that form both an asynchronous component of the course but also—available on a YouTube channel—will be of lasting value for other instructors, students at all levels, and anyone interested in these issues. Each is associated with a unit of the course, and readings were selected in collaboration with the guest.

You can view the most recent recorded conversations here.

Please click here to register for this virtual event.

This event is a one-time graduate admissions fair aimed at students historically underrepresented in masters, doctoral and professional programs at UC Berkeley. It is scheduled for 3:00PM-5:00PM PST on Thursday, October 22, 2020.

Check out Prof. Tim Tangherlini’s podcast, “Picking Apart Conspiracy Theories” here.

Here is the write-up about the podcast on Parsing Science:

“Is it an actual conspiracy, or just a theory about one? In episode 81, Tim Tangherlini from the University of California Berkeley’s Folklore Program discusses his research into how conspiracy theorists interpret and use what they believe is “hidden knowledge” to connect multiple human interactions that are otherwise unlinked … and how when one of these links is cut, they’re less able to hold together a coherent story about it. His open access article “An automated pipeline for the discovery of conspiracy and conspiracy theory narrative frameworks: Bridgegate, Pizzagate and storytelling on the web” which he published with Shadi Shahsavari, Behnam Shahbazi, Ehsan Ebrahimzadeh, and Vwani Roychowdhury on June 16, 2020 in the journal PLOS One.”