FW: [SEELANGS] Reading list for folklore volunteers

[Genevra Gerhart]

My friend Margaret, below, describes well what she is looking for:

Genevra Gerhart
 
ggerhart at comcast.net
 
www.genevragerhart.com
www.russiancommonknowledge.com
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Mckibben, Margaret [mailto:mmck at sccd.ctc.edu] 
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2010 5:38 PM
To: nataliek at UALBERTA.CA
Cc: Genevra Gerhart
Subject: RE: [SEELANGS] Reading list for folklore volunteers

Ah, Natalie, your book and Ivanits' book have long been on the list!

There is no lack of good scholarly material on Russian folklore which is
accessible to the general English-speaking reader.   And experience shows
that Western volunteers on folklore expeditions generally "get it" when it
comes to recording stories or songs or photographing textiles.

What  they don't get are the everyday lives of  informants.  The role of
alcohol,  male precedence, ramshackle exteriors with spotless interiors, the
litanies of personal woes,  nostalgia for the Soviet past, notions of
responsibility,  who's really in charge.  There is material here for a
library of scholarly treatises, but a working knowledge of the territory is
most easily absorbed through fiction.  

Should I suddenly find myself immersed in genteel society of 1860s Concord,
my memories of  Alcott's  Little Women books would be a pretty good starting
point for understanding my new milieu.  If I could find the equivalent for a
Kruschev-era kolkhoz, I'd be delighted.

Margaret

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