Mon. 2/26, Goodwin and Norman on Jokes, Option 1
Transcribe a joke from a live performance (this can be a rendering not involving verbatim transcription and not requiring a tape recorder) using yourself or a friend, family member, or great joketeller you know. The joke should refer to some body image(s). For your position paper, analyze the joke briefly using some of the theories or methods in one or both of the articles. To do this well, you will want to discuss the joke with the person who tells it, or analyze your own use of the joke. What does your joke and analysis add to the ideas developed by Normin and Goodwin? How did you find their approaches helpful or illuminating? What new methods or theories about your joke have you developed?
Wed. 2/28 Native American Stories and Scheub's analysis of Body and Image in Oral performance, Option 2
This assignment is particularly challenging because the Native American stories are not at all transparent to anyone unfamiliar with traditions of tale-telling, the culture, or the symbolism of many images and events in the tale. Nonetheless, after reading Scheub's study of imagery, repetition, audience involvement, and narrator gestures and uses of the body 9 (in Africa), re-examine the tales. Look for patterns of repetition, points at which body images occur, and where gestures might occur. Then read one out loud, thinking about the significance of repetitions, of references to the body, and movements of the body that could occur while the tale is told (yours, those of your audience) and how they relate to the movements of the characters). What new aspects of the stories come into focus using techniques of analysis offered by Scheub?
Fri. 3/2 Tales from the Grimm Brothers and a retelling by Susan Gordon, Option 3
For Friday, all the assigned stories deal with some kind of loss or transformation of body part or body function, and most of them link this loss or change to some charm, a curse, a brush with some magical place or substance, or with a form of punishment or debt. Think about how Susan Gordon's story introduces new sets of interpretative strategies regarding the symbolism of the body, ways of retelling or methods of understanding these tales that allow for a reformulation of body image or body symbol.
For your assignment, discuss how you might reinterpret one of these tales, or "perform" it (even in another medium, such as dance or cartoons). Consider how you might use body movement, gesture, alternative images, or ideas about the body that you find empowering, or resistant to norms you wish to be liberated from, or able to speak in a special way to a particular audience (such as children, or elders, or a community you are a member of). You might mention how your treatment of the tale is influenced by any of the interpretative or theoretical readings, such as Scheub, Sklar, Butler, etc.