JAF article of potential interest (forward)

[Mary Bucholtz]

I'm forwarding the following message on behalf of the Journal of American 
Folklore.

Mary
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Dear List Members,

The Journal of American Folklore has recently published an article that may 
be of interest to members of this discussion list.

Davis, Coralynn V. "Pond-Women Revelations: The Subaltern Registers in 
Maithil
Women's Expressive Forms." Journal of American Folklore 121, no. 481, 
(Summer 2008): 286-318.

Ponds are ubiquitous in the Maithil region of Nepal, and they figure 
prominently in folk narratives and ceremonial paintings produced by women 
there. I argue that in Maithil women's folktales, as in their paintings, 
the trope of ponds shifts the imaginative register toward women's 
perspectives and the importance of women's knowledge and influence in 
shaping Maithil society, even as this register shift occurs within plots 
featuring male protagonists. I argue further that in the absence of a habit 
of exegesis in their expressive arts, and given the cross-referential, 
dialogic nature of expressive practices, a methodology that draws into 
interpretive conversation the multitude of expressive forms exercised by 
Maithil women enhances analytical access to Maithil wome'?s collective 
perspectives on their social and cosmological worlds.

The article is available through the print journal, and also in full text 
at Project Muse.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_american_folklore/toc/current.html

Journal of American Folklore is the journal of the American Folklore 
Society.  Information about JAF can be found at

http://www.afsnet.org/publications/jaf.cfm.

Harris M. Berger
Associate Professor of Music and Associate Head
Department of Performance Studies
Texas A&M University

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Mary Bucholtz, Professor
Department of Linguistics
3607 South Hall
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3100
phone: (805) 893-5415
fax: (805) 893-7769
http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/bucholtz/
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