Teaching Genre in Context: Fieldwork and “Hanging Out” in Appalachia and Bulgaria

Abstract

Folklore classrooms often teach genre—a contested concept—as an introduction to the complexities of folkloristics. As folklorists interrogate the colonial legacies inherent to core concepts like genre, we must develop new teaching models that equip students to recognize cultural process while emphasizing how totalizing classification systems disenfranchise folk groups by obscuring cultural difference. This article juxtaposes experiments with sociality in East European folklife and Appalachian Ohio folklife, in which young people attempt to connect with older adults through culturally specific forms of sociality that do not easily fit within etic genre categories: the sedianka [work bee] in Bulgaria, daily bench talks, and “liars club” coffee meets in Appalachian Ohio. These examples illustrate the impact of intersectional identities on the legibility and usability of generic forms, while emphasizing how an understanding of genre framing can contribute to intergenerational relationship building. As Sabra Webber [2015] points out, emic genres that resist global classification can evade the totalizing, product-focused analysis that was built into colonialist systemization projects; attention to such forms can prioritize the agency of local cultural frameworks. Cross-cultural comparison offers fresh opportunities for examining how intersectional group dynamics are made visible through genre in our own folk groups.