When Dancing Plagues Struck Medieval Europe
The tarantella is named for a peasant woman from southern Italy whose tarantula bite started a contagious dancing fever!
There’s Someone Buried under the Floor!
The story of a building that will not stand until a living human being is imprisoned in its foundations is so common as to form it own genre.
“Telling the Bees”
In nineteenth-century New England, it was held to be essential to whisper to beehives of a loved one’s death.
Megafauna Memories?
Some folklorists have hypothesized that the mythical beasts and monsters of legend were actually inspired by shadowy collective memories of megafauna.
The Fairytale Language of the Brothers Grimm
How the Brothers Grimm went hunting for fairytales, accidentally changed the course of historical linguistics, and kickstarted a new field of scholarship in folklore.
What Amy Sherald Tells Us with Michelle Obama’s Dress
How do the artistic inspirations that portrait artist Amy Sherald cites for Michelle Obama’s dress impact our visual and cultural understanding of the portrait for the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery?
Why Were Americans Obsessed With Ghosts in the 1940s?
In 1940s America, two folklorists undertook the task of collecting and studying the "modern" ghost stories of their time.
The Shrines of September 11th
In the immediate aftermath of September 11th, impromptu shrines appeared.
A Bag of Old Songs from Elsewhere
Sidney Robertson Cowell might be starting to get the attention her rich life, first-rate writing, and broad work as an ethnomusicologist deserve.
The Linguistics of Other People’s Pants (and Other Dishonorific Epithets)
The linguistics behind "dishonorifics." In this kind of naming construction, clearly honorifics are added in an ironic, tongue-in-cheek way.