This course focuses on the experience and folklore of Nordic Americans, with particular attention to the Upper midwest, the primary region for Scandinavian settlement, where Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish communities and cultural practices were established and have evolved. Following a broad consideration of the ways in which the immigrant and ethnic experience wrought changes in old world folk traditions, we proceed to examine Nordic American farmsteads, fish camps, towns, neighborhoods, churches, and landscapes; everyday seasonal practices, festivities, foodways, and dance music; songs, names, brief verbal expressions, tales, legends, and true stories; handicrafts and decorative arts; and the roles played by individuals, organizations, socio-economic and technological changes, and ideologies in their sustenance, decline, or transformation. Each class session combines lecture with discussion and incorporates slides, sound recordings, and film excerpts. Readings include historical and conceptual essays, autobiographical reminiscences, excerpts from ethnographic novels, and descriptions, transcriptions, and case studies of particular forms of folklore. Students are expected to participate actively in class sessions, maintain a weekly journal on course readings, complete an archival research assignment working with primary materials in the Mills Music Library, and conduct field research leading to a class presentation and a final project.

For more information, contact:

Jim Leary
Folklore Program
306 Ingraham Hall 262-8107
jpleary@facstaff.wisc.edu