EASA 2015

This weekend was the annual EASA conference, held at Rowan University. It also served as the annual meeting for MAFA, which is run by David Puglia (who also serves as editor as New Directions in Folklore). If you’re looking for a play-by-play recap, you’ve come to the wrong place. Due to a beautifully executed detour through Germantown and past the Rocky statue, my compatriots and I didn’t make it to the conference until well after it had started (and we most certainly didn’t make a scene upon entering… nope!)

Puglia moderated the plenary session as a conversation between Simon Bronner, Angus Gillespie, James Deutsch, and Anthony Buccitelli on the symbiotic relationship between the disciplines Folklore and American Studies. All of the participants made some great points, including Puglia’s comment that both American Studies and Folklore claim an academic and a public mission and should be actively working together. Dr. Bronner noted that at Penn State, folklore is integrated into the American Studies curriculum, and James Deutsch lamented that my own alma mater, George Washington, has since ended its Folklife concentration (which makes me wonder if I was the last person to graduate from that program…). In addition, Gillespie took a moment to mention the work John Vlach (my GW advisor) did throughout his career to integrate more substantive methodologies into Folklore, helping the field respond to criticism of its own methodological approaches.

I’ve always considered American Studies and Folklore as two sides of the same coin, searching to answer the same questions but from different source materials. To illustrate, while American Studies has (maybe permanently) moved away from “big” questions about American identity, Folklore has, at least somewhat, picked up the slack. Yin and yang, indeed.

Really the only other session I can speak on authoritatively was my own, which was totally not redundantly titled: Mass Media(ted): Mediations on Pop Culture.

I kicked things off right at 8am with my presentation on poplore, which I already covered here.

After me, Kendra Kreitzer (PSH) gave an interesting talk on how genetic engineering as shown in Jurassic Park is theoretically possible, but raises some paradoxical ethical questions about what role a possible Chickenosaurus would have in scientific research and society.

Austin Peay’s Dwonna Goldstone followed Kendra by looking at the role of TV shows like Good Times, All in the Family, and The Jeffersons in today’s dialogue on racial identity and history. Dr. Goldstone took the audience through her impressions of giving a quasi-mandatory African American history course to a predominantly Southern white male audience who operate under the impression that if they simply don’t talk about race, the problem goes away. She noted a few times how clips from these shows were either met with silence or outrage, depending on the student.

Last but not least was Jared Rife (PSH), who presented on The Lathe of Heaven and how PBS became a mediator for various levels of cultural critique.

All of us approached popular culture from various viewpoints, but all demonstrated how popular culture remains a fruitful area of study.

Most of my memories of the weekend, however, will be tied to the trip getting there and back. Riding with Sue, Jared, and Spencer, a long and potentially anxiety-filled trip was nothing but hilarious. Jared impressed me with his driving skills. Spencer impressed me with his ability to sing showtunes and pontificate on the status of the trucking industry (“It really is a Golden Age of Trucking — what with Audible and podcasts…”). And Sue, well, Sue impresses me every day she doesn’t complain about it being cold. When we “missed” the “turnoff” and ended up driving through Germantown (“Hey, there’s Charles Barkley’s house! And there’s Allen Iverson’s shack…”), I got a whole new appreciation for the aesthetics of the Philadelphia suburbs.

Then, coming back — and really it couldn’t have ended any other way — we ran out of gas turning onto Main Street in Middletown, PA; the gas indicator read “0” the last half-mile until we could finally get to a gas station (where we had to wait 15 minutes for the line to clear). And to think, I didn’t even want to go to EASA this year!

For more insight into the weekend, check out #easa2015 on twitter and facebook.