Short answer/essay
1. What are the differences between elite/high culture, popular/normative culture, and folk culture? Give an example of each.
2. What does the contemporary legend of "The Hook" reveal about modern American values concerning gender and sexuality?
3. What are the three stages that define a Rite of Passage? Name a rite of passage that occurred in your life. Discuss the impact on your own identity and your community.
4. Describe four functions of spirituals/slave songs for slaves.
5. Brunvand writes that urban legends can survive if they have three basic elements. Describe these three elements, and show how they work in one urban legend of your choice.
6. What is "communitas?" Where does one find it? Describe, with detail, one example of communitas from your reading.
7. In Carr's article on Grateful Dead music, what is his primary argument? Name three reasons Carr gives to support his argument.
8. What were the reasons for the German efforts to collect folklore or popular antiquities? Give at least two reasons with short explanations.
9. Define the term vernacular folklore as a geographic context. Give three examples, using Eugene or the Pacific Northwest in at least one of the examples.
10. From Living Folklore, identify three categories of folklore including examples of each. Which of the three categories interests you the most, and why?
11. Barre Toelken describes the "twin laws of folklore," two elements of folklore that complement each other. What are these twin laws, and how do they interact?
12. Provide four diverse examples of "text" in folklore study. Describe why each is "text."