1:30 - 2:00

Mark Bender -- "Folklore Fieldwork in China"

Abstract:

        As a huge, multi-ethnic state, China offers great potential for the study of folklore. Government-sponsored collecting of folklore in China dates to the Book of Songs, a compendium of folksongs dating to the age of Confucius, around 470 BCE. Over the centuries official collections of folklore material were made at local and national levels, both in national 'music bureaus' and by local officials and gazetteers. In some cases, private individuals, such at Feng Menglong in the 15th century assembled their own collections. In the early twentieth century, models of folklore scholarship from Europe, the United States, and Japan strongly influenced young scholars such as Gu Jiegang and Zhong Jingwen, especially during the May Fourth Movement in the 1920s and throughout the 1930s. After decades of turmoil, folklore studies were revived in the early 1950s when massive government folklore collecting projects were launched in New China. Though folklore studies were interrupted by the chaos of the 1960s and 1970s, a revival began in the late 1970s which has resulted in more massive collecting projects and huge numbers of publications on folklore at national, provincial, and local levels. Folklore and ethnographic studies by foreigners working in China began in the 19th century, though were largely curtailed between 1949 and 1980. Since the mid-1980s, scholars (mostly from Japan, Europe, and the United States) have carried out folklore projects in China. Such work, however, entails engaging with both government and non-government agencies in China. This talk will discuss formal and informal aspects of doing archival research and fieldwork in China. Beginning with a brief history of folklore studies in China, the talk will offer insights into how folklore is regarded in China, emerging Chinese research goals, the effect of tourism and nationalism on folklore studies, and anecdotal accounts (from a foreigners perspective) of strategies for engaging folklore studies in China.

About Mark Bender:

Associate professor, Dept. of East Asian Languages and Literatures, The Ohio State University. Specializes in oral performance traditions in China and ethnic minority folklore and literature in southwest China.