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"Mould, Tom"
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Machines in motion : the amazing history of transportation
\"With intricately illustrated timelines, this book takes readers on a journey through the developmental history of various modes of transportation - from chariots to electric cars, dugout canoes to ocean liners, cable cars to bullet trains, and the many iterations in between. The fascinating stories behind each of these machines join together to reveal a comprehensive history of how new and inventive forms of transportation have built off one another to change our world.\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Introduction to the Special Issue on Fake News: Definitions and Approaches
More specifically, the study of fake news can benefit from folkloristic attention to the epistemologies and rhetoric of truth; the transmission process of performance and its impact on form, function, aesthetics, and content; and the nuanced understanding of institutional and vernacular power that do not always adhere to expected social or political identities, thanks to the multiplicity of roles we embody and the regular code-switching we engage in to manage them. [...]the authors in this special issue of JAF apply folklore methodology and theory to interpret fake news both as, and as stimulus for, expressive culture. The outpouring of memes, jokes, T-shirts, songs, protests, and public gatherings in response to Kellyanne Conway's repeated reference to the fictitious \"Bowling Green Massacre\" (Evans 2018; Goldstein 2018) or WIRED magazine's claim that CRISPR (gene-editing technology) could solve global problems like hunger, pollution, and disease (Lowthorp 2018) emerge in response to \"fake news,\" and, in doing so, they create their own folklore traditions. According to recent Gallup polls, trust in institutions in this country is at a record low (Norman 2016).
Journal Article
A Doubt-Centered Approach to Contemporary Legend and Fake News
The issue of fake news as it has risen to the fore in public and political discourse provides folklorists with an opportunity to not only weigh into the discussion with significant expertise, but also to reconsider our approach to the study of legend. In this paper, I propose a reorientation from a truth-centered approach to the study of legend to a doubt-centered one. Such an approach has the dual benefit of reorienting legend scholarship in new and productive ways while being particularly well-suited to the study of fake news.
Journal Article
The Welfare Legend Tradition in Online and Off-Line Contexts
Widespread contemporary legends assumed to be “everywhere” pose distinct methodological challenges to documenting living traditions in context. Welfare legends, for example, have persisted in the United States since before the 1960s, yet no vernacular texts exist in scholarly publication. This paper examines the vernacular tradition of welfare legends in face-to-face and online contexts in order to advocate for specific methodological strategies for collecting and analyzing widespread contemporary legends; to examine the boundaries, core claims, performance contexts, and uses of welfare legends in vernacular discourse; and ultimately to suggest a more inclusive approach to the study of contemporary legends.
Journal Article
Still, the Small Voice
Memorates-personal experience narratives of encounters with the supernatural-that recount individuals' personal revelations, primarily through the Holy Ghost, are a pervasive aspect of the communal religious experience of Mormons, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In accordance with current emphases in folklore studies on narrative and belief, Tom Mould uses ethnographic research and an emic approach that honors the belief systems under study to analyze how people within Mormon communities frame and interpret their experiences with the divine through the narratives they share. In doing so, he provides a significant new ethnographic interpretation of Mormon culture and belief and also applies his findings directly to broader scholarly folklore discourse on performance, genre, personal experience narrative, belief, and oral versus written traditions.
eBook
Choctaw Prophecy
Explores the power and artistry of prophecy among the
Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, who use predictions about
the future to interpret the world around them
This book challenges the common assumption that American Indian
prophecy was an anomaly of the 18th and 19th centuries that
resulted from tribes across the continent reacting to the
European invasion. Tom Mould’s study of the contemporary
prophetic traditions of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians
reveals a much larger system of prophecy that continues today
as a vibrant part of the oral tradition. Mould shows that
Choctaw prophecy is more than a prediction of the future; it is
a way to unite the past, present, and future in a moral
dialogue about how one should live. Choctaw prophecy, he
argues, is stable and continuous; it is shared in verbal
discourse, inviting negotiation on the individual level; and,
because it is a tradition of all the people, it manifests
itself through myriad visions with many themes. In homes,
casinos, restaurants, laundromats, day care centers, and
grocery stores, as well as in ceremonial and political
situations, people discuss current events and put them into
context with traditional stories that govern the culture. In
short, recitation is widely used in everyday life as a way to
interpret, validate, challenge, and create the world of the
Choctaw speaker.
Choctaw Prophecy stands as a sound model for further
study into the prophetic traditions of not only other American
Indian tribes but also communities throughout the world.
Weaving folklore and oral tradition with ethnography, this book
will be useful to academic and public libraries as well as to
scholars and students of southern Indians and the modern
South.
eBook
Overthrowing the Queen
In 1976, Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail with an
extraordinary account of a woman committing massive welfare fraud.
The story caught fire and a devastating symbol of the misuse
government programs was born: the Welfare Queen. Overthrowing
the Queen examines these legends of fraud and abuse while
bringing to light personal stories of hardship and hope told by
cashiers, bus drivers, and business owners; politicians and aid
providers; and, most important, aid recipients themselves. Together
these stories reveal how the seemingly innocent act of storytelling
can create not only powerful stereotypes that shape public policy,
but also redemptive counter-narratives that offer hope of a more
accurate, fair, and empathetic view of poverty in America today.
Overthrowing the Queen tackles perceptions of welfare
recipients while proposing new approaches to the study of oral
narrative that extend far beyond the study of welfare, poverty, and
social justice.
eBook
Counter Memes and Anti-Legends in Online Welfare Discourse
Using welfare memes as a case study, this research explores the characteristics and efficacy of counter memes, including anti-legend counter memes, as strategies for the critique of hegemonic discourse and pervasive stereotypes in the increasingly powerful realm of the internet and social media. Key findings suggest that while many memes that appear to counter dominant legends may do more harm than good, anti-legends as well as memes that target stigma are particularly effective due to competing strategies using parody, irony, and factual claims.
Journal Article
Refinishing the Story: Transforming Stories of Life into Life Stories
Some of the most common stories shared by recipients of public assistance are “origin stories”: personal experience narratives that describe how people found themselves in need of help. In terms of the narrative event, these stories initially appear complete, meeting common criteria for defining narrative. But participants also narrate futures that provide an alternative ending to their origin stories and, in doing so, reframe, redefine, and “refinish” these stories. Analysis of these alternative endings reveal narrators to be both bricoleurs and cultural commentators, often referencing two well-established narratives in US culture: the cultural myth of the American Dream and the legend of “the welfare queen.” Further, the move to imagine the future encourages narrators to transform stories of their lives into more holistic life stories, revealing the life story as an emic genre of folklore.
Journal Article