Tag Archives: Introduction

Group 6 Introductory Post

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For our group’s project, we decided to focus on football locker room traditions across the country. With the majority of the group members being football players themselves, this topic was particularly important to us. We made sure to focus on locker room traditions for both current and former football players. We made sure that we found folklore that was performed by two or more members of a team in a locker room because a defining characteristic of folklore is that it is shared among a group of “folk”. Our group had six total members and collected thirty pieces of folklore from thirty different sources. We interviewed both current and past football players from across the country. The interviewees spanned from 18 to 37 years old from a variety of schools across the country. Our interviews focused on specific locker room traditions at each school along with the potential meaning behind the tradition.

The folklore that we collected spanned a wide range of customary, material, and verbal folklore with a majority of items collected being fight songs and post-win traditions. Overall, there were a few interesting findings that our group took away from the collection process. The first takeaway is that despite the wide range of ages interviewed, traditions did not seem to change very much. Most of the traditions that were collected had been in practice for as long as anyone on and within the team remembers. Additionally, we found that most of these traditions were learned upon each interviewee’s arrival to their university and it was primarily the job of upperclassmen to continue to pass the tradition. Football is the ultimate team sport in which many times over one hundred individuals come together to achieve one common goal. Each player’s job is unique in and of itself but it’s the culmination of all the players that allows for a team to be successful. Therefore, some of the common overarching themes that we took away from the collected traditions were to invoke school pride, foster comradery, and take ownership of the locker room. In addition, football is both a mentally and physically taxing sport so some more themes that we found included providing motivation to compete and initiating an individual into the team.

As a group, we really enjoyed the collection process and hope you both enjoy and learn something from our collection. See the attached file for the presentation we have in class on 11/10/21.

Folklore-Collection-Presentation-1Download

Introduction

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Many of our superstitions relate to daily routines – what food we eat, what clothes we wear, and what actions or activities do we partake in (e.g. stepping out the door with your right foot on the day of an exam). This is likely due to the fact that our everyday routines are subject to change and are within our control, unlike the result of our actions (exam performance). Also, as expected, many of our superstitions exhibited elements of both homeopathic and contagious magic. Both terms were defined by Sir James George Frazer when he coined the term “sympathetic magic.” Homeopathic magic draws on the “Law of Similarity” of “like produces like” while contagious magic draws on the “Law of Contact” which states that there is a connection between a severed part and the original body that it was a part of. A superstition that we collected that draws on contagious magic is the Turkish tradition of swallowing a grain of rice draws on notions of contagious magic; the grain of rice makes “contact” with the prayer spoken by the parent, and this prayer is carried into the student when it is consumed. An instance of homeopathic magic would be avoiding wearing the color yellow in Spain because it is associated with the devil. The color yellow might not have directly come into contact with the devil himself, it is still associated with dark forces and would hence bring bad luck. While these two examples illustrate separate instances in which homeopathic and contagious magic are manifested in superstitions, many other items that were collected showed a combination of the two types of magic. 

In addition, we observed a few repeated pieces of collected folklore. One example of this was the superstition of eating kitkats before exams to channel good luck. This led us to conclude and see with our own eyes that many cultures and communities have similar superstitions, and that some of our superstitions are used by many different folk groups all over the world. Perhaps its possible that many of our collected superstitions originate from similar ancestral folk groups, or that the internet and other forms of communication have led to increased cultural diffusion of folklore around the world. 

Thank you for taking the time to review our collected folklore!

Group 5 Introductory Post:

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For our group’s project, we chose to focus on traditions and superstitions of the Dartmouth Cross Country and Track and Field teams. Specifically, we collected pre-meet traditions for these sports from both the men’s and women’s varsity teams at Dartmouth. We made sure to find pieces of folklore that were done by two or more members of the team, rather than individual superstitions, because a main characteristic of folklore is that it is shared among a group of people. We chose this topic because a few of our team members are on the cross country and track teams and because there are so many athletes that are a part of these teams, so we thought that there would be a lot of traditions and superstitions to examine. Our group had 7 members and collected a total of 30 pieces of folklore from 30 people. We interviewed current and past student athletes and coaches from both the men’s and women’s teams at Dartmouth. The interviewees spanned a wide range of years at Dartmouth, from graduates of the class of 1977 to the class of 2025. We interviewed athletes from both cross country and track and field teams because all cross country athletes are also part of the track team, so the superstitions and traditions that they experience also influence the track team culture.

The pieces of folklore that we collected spanned a wide range of customary, material, and verbal folklore. There were a few interesting takeaways that our group was able to gain from our interviews. First, because our interviews were able to span such different graduation classes at Dartmouth, we were able to see the changes in traditions over time. Although some traditions, such as the track team cheer, are exactly the same, others have been lost or morphed over time. Even since the current seniors’ freshman year, things have changed, with parts of traditions being eliminated and other traditions or superstitions being added. Another finding that we had was that freshmen didn’t know about these traditions before coming to Dartmouth, and they were taught about them by the upperclassmen. Some traditions became a “rite of passage” of sorts, such as the embarrassing stories that every athlete must tell at their first Ivy League Championship meet. Many of the traditions and superstitions we collected were created for team building, to bond everyone together before a competition. Additionally, Track and Field is an interesting sport because it is both an individual and team sport. Awards are given to the best competitors and then points are tallied up to determine which team had the best overall performance, and an award is given for this as well. This is likely why many traditions are designed to bond the team together, since everyone must want to work hard for their teammates in order for the team to win. Lastly, we believe that the origin of a lot of the collected folklore is in the fact that in Track and Field, you are unable to control what others do in the race or competition. Therefore, athletes often want to go into the event controlling everything they can, which is evidenced in their traditions/superstitions about appearance, playlist, meals, etc. on race day. This was a common theme that we saw throughout many of our traditions, though different athletes expressed this in different ways.

We hope you enjoy reading this collection! See attached for the presentation we gave in our RUSS 13 class on 11/10/21.

RUSS-Collection-PresentationDownload

Introduction

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Group 7 Folklore Collection Project

The goal of our project was to find any pre-competition superstitions and rituals that existed among the Men’s sports teams here at Dartmouth. We were open to both individual and team rituals, and then categorized them into their respective magical forms of superstitions.

            While many of the found superstitions were seemingly individual, we found that their origins were from deeply prior to Dartmouth. None of the informants were aware of the origin of their superstitions, but they all noted that it was either something that they grew up with in their region or were introduced to at Dartmouth.

            We conducted 35 total interviews and then graphed the results. At least one member from every Men’s Varsity sport was interviewed with the same five questions. We asked about superstitions on the individual and team level. The questions were as follows:

  1. Do you have any pre-competition superstitions, and if so, what are they?
  1. Does your team collectively practice pre-competition superstitions or rituals?
  2. Where did this superstition originate?
  3. How long has this superstition been practiced?
  4. Do you truly believe in this superstition, or is it just a routine/tradition that you like to keep doing?

In the folklore we collected, we found that the overwhelming majority of superstitions were classified as magical. Only one was sign and zero were conversion superstitions. We felt this was because many athletes feel like they create their own luck and success. Sign superstitions and conversion superstitions are based on outside influence. For example, a sign superstition is like if they see a black cat then they will not play well and a conversion superstition would be if they saw a black cat they would have to do ten pushups to have a good game later that day. Both of those types of superstitions involve the outside source of the cat that the athletes do not control. However, for magical superstitions, these are things that people can control for example, if an athlete eats well then they will play well. The athlete can choose to do something he knows will make him play better. So from this we concluded as we stated before, athletes believe more in creating their own luck and success rather than depending on an outside source to tell them how they will perform.

Breaking down the Magical superstitions by type, sympathetic was the biggest category, followed by homeopathic and then contagious. We think contagious was lowest because a majority of superstitions in this category include a severed body part or part of some magical item. Not many people carry around parts of magical items with them in modern times and most people do not carry around severed body parts to help them in sports. The contagious magic we did find involved someone changing their physical features like cutting their hair, not body parts. Finally we believe that sympathetic was the biggest category because sympathetic magic involves a connection between two things and the main goal in sports is to connect what is learned in practice to execution in a game. For example, if a player practices their rail shots then they will perform better in the squash match. The two are connected as the what the player does in practice should connect and happen in the game as well which is the basic principal of the cliche practice makes perfect. We think this sympathetic property in sports opens athletes up to having a larger number of sympathetic superstitions than magical superstitions of other types.

Introduction (written by Julia Cross)

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Goal:

The aim of this project was to determine the ways in which American Christmas folklore is or isn’t widely adopted. Given the diversity of the American population, and how Christmas has become somewhat removed from its initial Christian origins, we were curious to see the ways in which people from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds engage with the holiday.

Collection methods:

We chose to take an open ended approach. We started by asking very general questions about Christmas and a vague theme (such as gifts or food). Our subsequent questions sought to focus on something the informant placed importance on, or talked extensively about. Although we could use some practice, we aimed to give voice to the informant and let them decide what was important to them without imposing our own bias. 

Division of work:

Each group member collected from roughly 5 informants, for a total of 35 items in this collection. Initially, we sought to collect under 5 distinct themes: food (Evan Fu), gifts(Julia Cross), decorations(Josh Betts), pop-culture(Sunaina Sekaran and Jackson McGinley) and general events and activities(Dylan Lawler and Danny Hincks). However, since not every informant engages in any or all of these categories, the boundaries of each sub-group became blurred. Additionally, the categories themselves are not distinct: gift giving traditions go hand-in-hand with decorating a tree (which would be gifts and decorations), for example. 

Conclusions:

Ultimately, much of the American Christmas experience is very similar across the country. Many informants referenced things such as a tree or Santa Claus or a large dinner that they assumed to be common knowledge. Even the timing of when to open gifts seemed to be widely understood. However, within each over-arching activity, it was interesting to see sub-groups of folk, whether that’s a family or cultural group, put their own twists on these pieces of folklore, eventually making new and more intricate folklore items.

Introduction

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Given the members of our group consist of three Dartmouth women’s ice hockey players, we thought it would be very interesting to learn about how folklore is both similar and different amongst our main competitors, other Ivy League women’s ice hockey teams. Dartmouth in particular has many rituals and superstitions that occur before games. These traditions have developed over time and continue on each year, as they have been passed down from past players to current players. As we took a closer look into each 2021-22 Ivy League hockey teams and the individual players on them, we analyzed their superstitions to see if there were common tendencies with their game day routines. 

For this collection project we interviewed 12 women (at least one from each Ivy League Women’s Hockey team). We interviewed them over FaceTime to create an open and casual environment so each informant would be comfortable sharing their individual and team superstitions. These informants ranged from freshman-seniors in college. From these 12 informants, we were able to gather 18 different items of folklore.

We tried to get a range of perspectives from each hockey team, and each person we talked to provided a new view on the way we look at superstitions and how we interpret them – specifically amongst the women’s ivy league ice hockey teams.

Dartmouth Slang

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Collectors & Items Collected

Claire Azar: Blobby, Shmob, Fracket, Lines, Tails, Droco, Flitz, Class Year (’22, ’23, etc.), Trippees, Drillees

Dylan Bienstock: FFB, Flair, Sklodge

Harry Grigorian: Warm Cut, Dark Side/ Light Side, Colly P

Annie Revers: 3FB, Foco, Lou’s Challenge, Ledyard Challenge

Nathan Zhang: Blitz, BEMA, Bequest

Collin Kearns: Facetimey, Layup, The Fifty

Ben Ryan: NARP, Need, Good Sam

What are we collecting?

For our folklore collection project, we decided to investigate slang at Dartmouth. Whether it is acronyms for locations on campus or creative ways to refer to students or emails, Dartmouth students have a unique vocabulary. Slang is a pervasive part of campus culture and something students depend upon during their time here. Since slang is such an important part of daily life at Dartmouth, our group decided to take a poll of our friends, family members, teammates, and strangers in order to gain a better understanding of Dartmouth slang. While our informants come from diverse backgrounds and experiences, all are united by one common attribute: being past or present Dartmouth students.

What is the significance?

  • This project is significant because it offers an analysis of slang used by the Dartmouth community to signal belonging to a group. If you are not familiar with these terms it can become fairly obvious that you are not part of the Dartmouth community. This is why so many of these words are learned freshman year as the new class is assimilating to Dartmouth’s culture.
  • Slang allows us to easily communicate with one another and create a shared language 
  • This shared language: 
    • Allows students to connect members of their community (current students, professors, and alumni)
    • Provides Freshman an easier transition into Dartmouth by allowing them to feel quickly connected and a part of the community
  • This shared language is vital to everyday communication on Dartmouth campus and thus students often feel forced to participate in this shared experience or often feel left out if they are not aware of the culture terms

Questions we asked:

  • What is a phrase of Dartmouth slang that you have picked up?
  • Where/when do you think you first learned it?
  • What group knows/uses this word (a club? all of Dartmouth? members of a sports team?)?
  • Why do you think this slang came to be? Is it a shortened phrase, a description of a place, or something else?
  • Can you tell me anything else interesting about this slang?

Informants:

We collected from 23 informants for this project. To ensure that our sample of informants would help us achieve our goal of digging deeper into the origins and meanings of Dartmouth Slang, we chose students and alumni who we thought would be extremely involved on Dartmouth’s campus. We chose students from many different backgrounds and interest groups, so that we could get a variety of perspectives on Dartmouth Slang. Though, one thing that units all of our informants is that they were all once part of the folk group of Dartmouth students, and therefore are very acquainted with Dartmouth slang.

Informant Demographics:

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Overall observations from our collections:

  • Majority of terms were learned by people during their freshman year
  • Certain words are almost always learned on Trips, making trips serve as something of a facilitator for the language. 
    • Words like trippees obviously, but also basic words like layup or foco that are essential to becoming a Dartmouth student
  • Majority of other words are learned as students are exposed to new social situations
    • Biggest steps would be picking classes, going to the library, beginning to “go out”, and the frat ban ending
    • Words are learned in specific situations
      • For example, going to the library means you will learn FFB, while beginning to go to fraternities means you will learn words like lines and fracket

Website Introduction

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This group consisted of Maria Angelino ’23, Ross Parrish ’24, Nick Hepburn ’24, Carson Reich ’22, Ben Keeter ’22, Leonard St. Gourdin ’24, and Una Westvold ’22.

We interviewed five people each (35 total) about different freshman fall traditions, but the focus was on the DOC trips and Homecoming Weekend. The range of our interviewees was people from the class of 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, and alumni of Dartmouth College.

We found that most of the folklore we collected fit the category of ritual or customary practices. The folklore is designed to make the freshman class feel connected and force students to meet friends. It also creates commonality between older classes and the freshmen class because they have similar experiences. Dartmouth’s traditions are unique because of the isolated environment and the age of the institution. These freshman fall traditions, which are similar to initiation rites, are unlike any others found in other American colleges.

Defenses against supernatural creatures (The Introduction)

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Why we chose this topic: 

  • Supernatural beings are a uniquely good insight into the morals of a culture
  • Common practice to ward off found across many cultures,  but methods vary dramatically

Our process: 

  • We each chose a specific culture to focus on and collect stories from (e.g. Chinese, Sri Lankan, Nepali etc.)
  • Each of us collected 5 examples, so the seven members of the group collected 35 pieces of folklore total

Similar themes we noticed:

  • Spirits and demons the primary cause of many evils, particularly those thought beyond ancient human control like disease and famine
  • Across cultures, objects or symbols are used to ward off evil beings.
  • Across cultures, another method used to ward off evil beings is through behavior.  For example being naughty will get you punished so do not be naughty.