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Syllabus

DESCRIPTION

Mythology, folk tales, and fairy tales have enchanted people for centuries. They were (and still are) an important source of entertainment. But, myths and tales also serve another purpose, that is, they serve as a historical lens into world culture and society. History books are filled with the names and dates and events that shaped our world. It is the myths and tales, however, which have been adopted and appropriated by societies that can teach us about world history. This course introduces students to the original versions of fairy tales and makes them aware that the tradition continues to present times.

We will, at times, adopt a case-study approach and work in class will be based on the analysis of primary sources and discussion of secondary sources. This seminar takes up a series of interesting questions through weekly discussions led by you. For example, we will ask questions, such as: How can folklore, the human imagination, and fantasy, which often have been excluded as legitimate sources for knowing about past societies, actually help us understand a great deal about those societies? What have been the effects of supernatural experiences and beliefs on history in a broad sense?

GOALS

The goal of this course is also to demonstrate with a narrow focus on a handful of tales the complex history of these stories and their impact on our culture and contemporary scholarship.

EXPECTATIONS

This class is a high level, reading intensive seminar. Each week you will need to prepare certain readings before class, which we will discuss in detail. We will also examine a variety of textual, visual, and oral primary sources collectively in order to become familiar with the data historians use in order to study popular culture. Over the course of the semester, students will be expected to conduct original research; informed by our collective readings and conversations, this research will combine primary sources and scholarly literature to illuminate further one aspect of folk lore and fairy tales. This research, along with our engagement of contemporary scholarship and primary sources, will enable us to come to provisional answers to the course’s guiding questions, which remain productively unresolved among the scholarly community.

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