folklore 
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SOURCE: Religion News Services
11/29/2021
Taylor Swift Takes a Familiar Path to Hell and Back
by Peter Manseau
"In its own way, “All Too Well” tells a story not unlike myths of yore. It dabbles not in mythology, per se, but in the so-called “monomyth,” popularized as “The Hero’s Journey” by the folklorist Joseph Campbell almost 75 years ago."
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SOURCE: TIME
4/19/2021
What the Rise and Fall of the Cinderella Fairy Tale Means for Real Women Today
by Carol Dyhouse
"Cinderella dreams an impossible dream: she isn’t a helpful role model for today’s young girls thinking about their future, and is unlikely to regain the intense hold over the female imagination that was evident in the 1950s."
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SOURCE: American Scholar
3/13/2021
The Baddest Man in Town
by Eric McHenry
Writer Eric McHenry recounts picking up the documentary trail (started in the 1970s by John Russell David) of the notorious "Stagger Lee" Shelton, whose reign of terror in early 20th century St. Louis became immortalized in song and legend.
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3/7/2021
Four Things You (Probably) Don't Know about the Werewolves of the Ancient World
by Daniel Ogden
Movie werewolves come mostly from the pulp fiction of the early 1900s. But werewolf stories date back to the literature of the 12th century, which most likely drew from even older stories preserved in folklore since the times of ancient Greece and Rome.
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SOURCE: The Conversation
2/18/2021
How a Mass Suicide by Slaves Caused the Legend of the Flying African to Take Off
by Thomas Hallock
A major trope of African American folklore converted an ill-fated effort at escape into a tale of freedom. Though the "flying Africans" story has been told and recorded throughout the African diaspora in the Americas, St. Simons Island, Georgia, is the home of the myth.
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1/31/2021
Lawrence Gellert, Black Musical Protest & White Denial: An Interview With Steven Garabedian
by Aaron J. Leonard
Steve Garabedian's new book reexamines the life and work of Lawrence Gellert, a Jewish New Yorker who relocated to the South, recorded African American songs, and clashed with the growing establishment of white folklorists. Is it time to reappraise Gellert's contributions to the preservation of Black musical culture?
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