Research and Creative Coffee Featuring: Andrew L. Giarelli, Ph.D.

Research and Creative Coffee is a series of events aimed to be a platform for discussions about publications, projects and working papers of AAU Faculty as well as AAU students.

The upcoming event planned for February 28th, starting at 9.30 am, in Room 1.33, will be devoted to the research paper: “Cheyennes and Folklorists: 130 Years of Fieldwork“, by Andrew L. Giarelli, Ph.D. As the discussants of the paper, we will welcome Eva Eckert, Ph.D., Distinguished Senior Lecturer, Anglo-American University, and PhDr. Jan Hornát, Ph.D., Head of the Department of North American Studies, Charles University.

Abstract of the paper:

Cheyenne narrative is among the most consistently and problematically collected Native American narrative in the history of folklore fieldwork. Some of these problematizations themselves may reflect arguments within the field of American folkloristics. Ceremonial artificiality, untrustworthy or unsubstantiated translations, graftings of the colonizers’ literary forms, and politicizations affect nearly all collections over the past 120 years, including my own in Northern Cheyenne country from 1981–84. Starting with a review of the dramatic re-evaluations of Native American folklore collecting standards over the past half-century and then positioning the earliest Cheyenne ethnographers into the field’s turn-of-the-century politics, this paper surveys a wide range of collected and published Cheyenne folklore from 1890 until the present.

These events are open to the public.