Today, the long-assumed belief in the permanence of an enlightened world is suddenly open to challenge. Human rights, participatory government, and social justice are losing global influence, and the world of ordinary people is pushing back against Enlightenment conceits. Accumulated anger links Taliban, Tea Party, and Trump, threatening women's rights, social justice, and democracy. To understand and counteract the threat to these ideas, we must set aside embedded explanations and embrace a new frame of observation and tolerance grounded in the power of belief, legend, and tradition. In Rebuilding an Enlightened World, Bill Ivey explores how folklore offers a unique and compelling new way to understand the underlying forces disrupting the world today. If we are to salvage the best of the Enlightenment dream and build a better future, we must begin to listen, patiently and inquisitively, in order to interpret the customs, norms, and traditional practices that shape all human behavior.

After the crisis of 2008, the social contract between the financial industry and everyone else was badly broken-perhaps, it seemed, irrevocably. Since then, banks have paid out billion-dollar settlements and Congress has passed some new laws, but a deeper rapprochement is still missing. John Taft has gathered some of the greatest financial minds of our time to explore how Wall Street can harness the same creative energy that invented credit default swaps and channel it towards the public good- in the form of a stable retirement system, investment strategies that protect the environment and reward responsible corporate behavior, and a financial industry with a culture of ethics, integrity and client focus. These perspectives, from a who's who of leaders in the field, offer a blueprint for a new kind of responsible finance and banking that secures the future for everyone. Contributors include: * Robert Shiller on financial capitalism and innovation *Charles D. Ellis on restoring ethical standards *Sheila Bair on regulatory reform *John C. Bogle and Mary Schapiro on rebuilding investor trust *Judd Gregg on long-term fiscal imbalances *Barbara Novick on the retirement savings gap *David Blood on sustainable finance. With so much brainpower in the financial sector, the potential for change is limitless. A Force for Good is the call to action the industry sorely needs.

Winner of the 2020 Chicago Folklore Prize CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2020 Despite predictions that commercial mass culture would displace customs of the past, traditions firmly abound, often characterized as folklore. In The Practice of Folklore: Essays toward a Theory of Tradition, author Simon J. Bronner works with theories of cultural practice to explain the social and psychological need for tradition in everyday life. Bronner proposes a distinctive “praxic” perspective that will answer the pressing philosophical as well as psychological question of why people enjoy repeating themselves. The significance of the keyword practice, he asserts, is the embodiment of a tension between repetition and variation in human behavior. Thinking with practice, particularly in a digital world, forces redefinitions of folklore and a reorientation toward interpreting everyday life. More than performance or enactment in social theory, practice connects localized culture with the vernacular idea that “this is the way we do things around here.” Practice refers to the way those things are analyzed as part of, rather than apart from, theory, thus inviting the study of studying. “The way we do things” invokes the social basis of “doing” in practice as cultural and instrumental. Building on previous studies of tradition in relation to creativity, Bronner presents an overview of practice theory and the ways it might be used in folklore and folklife studies. Demonstrating the application of this theory in folkloristic studies, Bronner offers four provocative case studies of psychocultural meanings that arise from traditional frames of action and address issues of our times: referring to the boogieman; connecting “wild child” beliefs to school shootings; deciphering the offensive chants of sports fans; and explicating male bravado in bawdy singing. Turning his analysis to the analysts of tradition, Bronner uses practice theory to evaluate the agenda of folklorists in shaping perceptions of tradition-centered “folk societies” such as the Amish. He further unpacks the culturally based rationale of public folklore programming. He interprets the evolving idea of folk museums in a digital world and assesses how the folklorists' terms and actions affect how people think about tradition.

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Feared and worshiped in equal measure, snakes have captured the imagination of poets, painters, and philosophers for centuries. From Ice Age cave drawings to Snakes on a Plane, this creature continues to enthrall the public. But what harm has been caused by our mythologizing? While considering the dangers of stigma, Erica Wright moves from art and pop culture to religion, fetish, and ecologic disaster. This book considers how the snake has become more symbol than animal, a metaphor for how we treat whatever scares us the most, whether or not our panic is justified. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in the The Atlantic.

To ensure continuity and foster innovation within the discipline of folklore, we must know what came before. Folklore in the United States and Canada is an essential guide to the history and development of graduate folklore programs throughout the United States and Canada. As the first history of folklore studies since the mid-1980s, this book offers a long overdue look into the development of the earliest programs and the novel directions of more recent programs. The volume is encyclopedic in its coverage and is organized chronologically based on the approximate founding date of each program. Drawing extensively on archival sources, oral histories, and personal experience, the contributors explore the key individuals and central events in folklore programs at US and Canadian academic institutions and demonstrate how these programs have been shaped within broader cultural and historical contexts. Revealing the origins of graduate folklore programs, as well as their accomplishments, challenges, and connections, Folklore in the United States and Canada is an essential read for all folklorists and those who are studying to become folklorists.

Claiming Space examines the growing tradition of decorating mortarboards at college graduations, offering a performance-centered approach to these material sites of display. Taking mortarboard displays seriously as public performances of the personal, this book highlights the creative, playful, and powerful ways graduates use their caps to fashion their personal engagement with notions of self, community, education, and the unknown future. Claiming the space of these graduation caps is a popular and widespread way that individuals make their voices heard, or rather seen, in the visual landscape of commencement ceremonies. The forms and meanings of these material displays take shape in relation to broader, ongoing conversations about higher education in the United States, conversations grounded in discourses of belonging, citizenship, and the promises of the American Dream. Integrating observational fieldwork with extensive interviews and surveys, author Sheila Bock highlights the interpretations of individuals participating in this tradition. She also attends to the public framings of this tradition, including how images of mortarboards have grounded online enactments of community through hashtags such as #LatinxGradCaps and #LetTheFeathersFly, as well as what rhetorical framings are employed in news coverage and legal documents in cases where the value of the practice is both called into question and justified. As university administrators and cultural commentators seek to make sense of the current state of higher education, these forms of material expression offer insight into how students themselves are grappling with higher ed's promises and shortcomings. Claiming Space is a meaningful contribution to folklore, cultural studies, media studies, and education.

"Draws together the work of thirty-nine leading international experts on the European Enlightenment (c1660-1800) to offer informed, comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of this period as both an historical epoch and a cultural formation".--BOOKJACKET.