Moving beyond “the Media”: Critical Intersections between Folklorization and Mediatization

Thursday
May 17, 2018
1:30-2:45 pm

Condon Hall 204
1321 Kincaid St.

This lecture points beyond discussions of how folklore is disseminated in “the media”—including social media—by drawing attention to what can be learned from research on “mediatization,” particularly as emerging in Latin America and Europe. Rather than projecting folklore and “the media” as distinct Bourdieuian social fields, it suggests that we attend to heterogeneous and shifting relationships between folklorization and mediatization by looking analytically and ethnographically at parallels between critical efforts in both arenas to rethink fundamental disciplinary objects and replace a focus on products in favor of processes.

Charles L. Briggs is the Alan Dundes Distinguished Professor of Folklore in the Department of Anthropology of the University of California, Berkeley, where he also co-directs the Medical Anthropology Program and the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine. His books include The Wood Carvers of Córdova, New Mexico; Learning How to Ask; Voices of Modernity (with Richard Bauman); Competence in Performance; Stories in the Time of Cholera (with Clara Mantini-Briggs); Making Health Public (with Daniel Hallin); and Tell Me Why My Children Died (with Clara Mantini-Briggs).

Sponsored by: Folklore, Anthropology, School of Journalism and Communication, Oregon Humanities Center
and Linguistics