New Publications

The First Book of Jewish Jokes: The Collection of L.M. Büschenthal.

Elliot Oring (Ph.D. ’74), released The First Book of Jewish Jokes: The Collection of L. M. Büschenthal in 2016. The book takes the Jewish joke back two centuries. It explores where the concept of “Jewish jokes” comes from and how jokes as a genre were attached to the Jewish people in the first place. The purpose of the translation and collection of the anthology was to try and get the study of the Jewish jokes and humor more generally defined on some kind of historical footing.

Bill Ivey released Folklore: Unlocking the Secrets of Our Post-Enlightenment World in the fall of 2018. In this work, Ivey seeks to discuss the end of the Enlightenment, and it’s hand in the the linked threat of human rights around the world. He also argues the Folklorist’s role in reversing this negative trend of thought, and the tools at their disposal to help shape a better world.

Folklore: Unlocking the Secrets of Our Post-Enlightenment World.

Arthur J. Lawton, Ph.D. ’13, published Friedrichtown Kinder-Anstalt (1745-1750): Records of a Moravian Boy’s School, Kirchenbuch, Vol. 1 in 2018. Lawton has been researching Henry Antes who owned the land and home in which the boy’s school was held since 1964.

Friedrichtown Kinder-Anstalt.

Department Lecturer Brandon Barker published Folk Illusions: Children, Folklore, and Sciences of Perception. Bloomington University Press 2019, with Claiborne Rice.

Folk Illusions: Children, Folklore, and Sciences of Perception.