San Antonio College Library

"Ghosts and the supernatural appear throughout modern culture, in any number of entertainment, commercial, and other contexts. Popular media's commodified representations of ghosts can be quite different from what people believe about them, based on tradition or direct experience. Belief and tradition and popular or commercial nevertheless continually feed each other. They frequently share space in how people think about the supernatural. In Haunting...

Presents Kiowa stories against the historical background of the tribe's life in the Yellowstone, their migration onto the northern Plains with its horse-buffalo culture, and their entry into the southern Plains where they and their Comanche allies dominated Indian life.

Describes the characteristics of folk cultures and discusses the procedures used by social scientists to study folklife.

The people of Eastern Europe have a long and rich cultural history. Central to that history are the folktales, traditions, and customs of the region. Some elements of Slavic folklore, such as vampire legends and Easter eggs, are well known, while others are more obscure. And when the Slavs came to America, they brought much of their folklore to the new world, where it continues to flourish today. This book is a short but thorough introduction to Slavic...

"Types of the Folktale in the Arab world is an index and preliminary analysis of folktales told by the diverse ethnic groups that populate what is commonly called the Arab World. It is also a comprehensive and interdisciplinary guide to tales told in related cultural spheres, from sub-Saharan Africa to Turkey and beyond. It is destined to become an indispensable reference work for all who are interested in Arab culture and the folktale."--Jacket.

To protect their identity and values, Africans enslaved in America transformed various familiar character types to create folk heroes who offered models of behavior both recognizable to them as African people and adaptable to their situation in America. Roberts specifically examines the Afro-American trickster and the trickster tale tradition, the conjurer as folk hero, the biblical heroic tradition, and the badman as outlaw hero. -- Publisher description...

Here is a rich compendium of hundreds of legends, stories, beliefs, and magic collected from oral sources in preindustrial Scandinavia. In this rural society, the people lived close to nature and believed themselves an integral part of it. This volume focuses on beliefs that illustrate the central aspects of a traditional worldview, rather than on prose narratives considered for their literary value.

Drawing on many examples including an American slam poet, a Tibetan paper-singer, a South African praise-poet, and an ancient Greek bard (Homer) the author shows that although oral poetry predates writing it continues to be a vital culture-making and communications tool. Based on research on epics, folktales, lyrics, laments, charms, etc.--Back cover.