Tag: John Baumann

Traditional Butchering in Oregon; A Folkloric Film Analysis

Presenter: Sarah Buck

Faculty Mentor: John Baumann, Carol Silverman

Presentation Type: Creative Work 2 (GSH 116)

Primary Research Area: Humanities

Major: Folklore

For generations, the Speelman family of Grants Pass, Oregon have been the unconscious preservers of traditional methods of butchering that nearly died out in the early 1900s. Transmitting their knowledge from father to son
and brother to brother, this butchering family presents a unique piece of oft overlooked Oregon folklore. Within this fieldwork project, fieldworker Sarah Buck discusses the theory and methodology which was used during her research, from staples of the folklore discipline to Jim Dodge’s writing on bioregionalism. The folkloric aspects of the Speelman family’s trade is defined and discussed using Dan Ben-Amos’ Towards a Definition of Folklore in Context as a communal knowledge of butchering that is a small cross-section of antiquity which is transmitted through family members verbally and through imitation. The Speelman family’s story is told in short documentary format, in which the fieldworker utilizes filmed interviews, her research and photographs.

The Great Tip-stery: An Exploration of Alice Sheldon’s Gender Play in the James Tiptree, Jr. Papers (1960’s-1970’s)

Presenter: Daisy Ahlstone

Faculty Mentor: Carole Stabile, John Baumann

Presentation Type: Oral

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: Folklore, Minor in WGS, and Film Studies

James Tiptree, Jr. was an award winning feminist science fiction author of the 1960’s and 70’s. When suspicion began to arise about the author’s identity, Alice Sheldon was forced to reveal herself as the woman behind the male pseudonym. However, before she was pressured into revealing her identity, Sheldon, as James Tiptree, Jr., was able to develop close relationships with many members of the science fiction community, particularly Ursula Le Guin and Joanna Russ. Their relationships, mostly contrived through epistolary communication, were incredibly flirtatious, intimate, and based heavily on the notion that James Tiptree, Jr. was a heterosexual man. How was Sheldon able to convince her friends of her male persona’s validity for so long, despite the intimacy of their letters? Looking at the Tiptree Papers collection in the Special Collections and University Archives to unpack the language Sheldon used with Le Guin and Russ to “prove” that she was in fact a man, Ahlstone found little, if any, of a stereotypically masculine voice, but rather that it was the traditionally male-gendered name, James Tiptree, Jr., as well as brief moments of physical description, that was the main factor contributing to the success of Sheldon’s persona.