Tradition in the Twenty-First Century: Locating the Role of the Past in the Present

Emphasizing how tradition adapts, survives, thrives, and either mutates or remains stable in today’s modern world, the contributors pay specific attention to how traditions now resist or expedite dissemination and adoption by individuals and communities. This complex and intimate portrayal of tradition in the twenty-first century offers a comprehensive overview of the folkloristic and popular conceptualizations of tradition from the past to present and presents a thoughtful assessment and projection of how “tradition” will fare in years to come. The book will be useful to advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in folklore and will contribute significantly to the scholarly literature on tradition within the folklore discipline.

Additional Contributors: Simon Bronner, Stephen Olbrys Gencarella, Merrill Kaplan, Lynne S. McNeill, Elliott Oring, Casey R. Schmitt, and Tok Thompson

Trevor J. Blank is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of English and Communication at the State University of New York at Potsdam and editor of Folk Culture in the Digital Age. Robert Glenn Howard is the Director of Digital Studies and a professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and editor of the journal Western Folklore.