Megaphone (Georgetown, Tex.), Vol. 90, No. 12, Ed. 1 Thursday, November 16, 1995 Page: 5 of 12
twelve pages : ill. ; page 16 x 14 in. Digitized from 35 mm. microfilm.View a full description of this newspaper.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
, •*’ i v; } l
F
TT
*» ' r”. T'
SURROUNDINGS
p ag e
NOVEMBER 16. 1995
Culture Shock
Socolov transcends local legend
Chloe Puett
Megaphone staff
SU folklorist Dr. Emily
Socolov has transcended her
research and become a bit of a
local legend herself. Not only
is she only on campus two days
a week, but when she is here,
she teaches classes like Women
in Folklore, and gives speeches
on Pocahontas as related to
virtual reality. Despite field
work in Latin America and panel
discussions in Louisiana,
Socolov found time to talk with
the Megaphone about her
interesting life and agenda.
Q: What is your background?
A: I have a PhD in Folklore and
Folklife from the University of
Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
It’s from the department of
folklore and folklife, it’s not a
part of anthropology, or
English, which is the typical
place you find folklore studies.
My research is primarily in
Mexico, although I’m interested
in Latin America in general, i
work on folk drama, I work on
folk religion.
The work on
Pocahontas is sort of a
digression for me. I haven’t
worked with Native American
representations in popular
culture, and that really Is what
the Pocahontas piece is about.
This year, we had our
annual Folklore Society
meetings ir Lafayette,
Louisiana. So, the topic that
they chose was “Creolization”
which is a term that comes from
linguistics. It deals with
language and what happens
when cultures meet and new
languages, sometimes called
“creoles,” emerge.
Thinking about that, 1
thought of a range of case
studies where women are kind
of at the vortex of a creolizing
situation. In certain situations,
when races come together, very
often a lot of symbolic
significance is given to a
particular woman who may be
the scapegoat. Or like Malinche
was, for instance, in Mexico
where you have the Spaniards
coming, meeting a Mexican
woman who translated for
them, and became the consort
or wife of Cortez, had a son
with him, and has all of this
negative stereotyping heaped
on her for beginning the
mestizo race. I knew people
working on different case
studies in popular culture that
repeated this' pattern. That’s
why I was interested in
Pocahontas, because she was
called, by historians of the early
twentieth or late nineteenth
century, as the mother of us all.
As sort of the “mother of us
all,” the symbolic mother of
the North American race.
1 set up a panel at the
Folklore meetings, where I
spoke on Pocahontas, someone
spoke on Malinche or Doha
Malina
i n
Mexico,
someone
spoke
on the
Yellow
Rose of
Texas,
who is
a very
interesting figure, Emily
Morrigan, and then, there were
other cases that came up. So,
[we focused on] how women
become symbolic of racial
contact, the good and the bad;
on the one hand “mother of us
all,” on the other hand, traitor
to her race. Even though
Malinche is attributed with
giving birth to the mestizo race,
it was clear that there were
other babies born to other
conquistadors prior to her son
with Cortez, but there’s a highly
symbolic quality. 1 like to work
on case studies that involve
key cultural figures, the Virgin
Guadalupe for instance.
So, I don’t even qualify
the work on Pocahontas
because I really tend to work
on Latin American, mostly
Mexican subjects.
The session was called
"Women as Vectors of
Creolization.” My paper at that
meeting was “Can she paint
with all the colors of the wind?:
Pocahontas and virtual reality. ”
Today [Tuesday] I’m going to
give a talk, as part of this virtual
community series, that’s not so
much about Pocahontas as a
vantage point of looking at the
I’ve taught at UT. I was
in the anthropology
department for a year, now I’ve
been here for a year. I’ve taught
Introduction to Folklore,
Folklore in the Family, Folklore
of Women, which is what I’m
going to teach next term. I’ve
taught Cultural Anthropology,
Folk Religion of Latin America
and the Caribbean, and
Ethnography
of Mexico is
what I’m
finishing up
now. I’m also
interested in
teaching
about
material
culture, and
the aesthetics
of everyday
life, if you
could phrase
it that way.
What are
things we surround ourselves
with, what can we learn from
artifacts?
I'm interested in
expressive culture, that's one
of the ways that folklore is
explained.
Q: You’ve said you were at UT.
What exactly brought you to
SU? ,
A: When we moved to the area,
I looked at a range of places.
Southwestern was the most
exciting to me, no question
about it. I think there are a
wonderful range of teachers,
the students are excellent. I
think that there’s commitment
to academics and intellectual
pursuits that impress me. It
didn’t feel like an overblown
high school.
Things like the Brown
Symposium are very
impressive, intellectually.
Q: What exactly do you do
here?
A: I’m an assistant professor in
the Sociology and
Anthropology department
here. Folklore, to talk about
the discipline, is similar to
cultural and social
anthropology. It’s just that
folklorists tend to look at the
expressive, creative parts of
culture. We tend to study
kinship, rather than economic
arrangement in a culture. I
would want to study the art,
the dance, the music and
of genres in folklore.
Q: You mentioned doing field
work, what does that entail?
A: My Field work is in Central
Mexico, in a rural part of Mexico
city. I’ve also done field work
on the border, I’ve worked for
the Smithsonian Institute doing
field work in the Presidio
Ojinaga area of the Texas-
I I
Dr. Emily Socolov, an assistant professor in the Sociology and Anthropology department,
lectured about Pocahontas on Tuesday, (photo by Leslie Barnes)
Mexico border. That’s in the
state of Chihuahua, near the
Big Bend.
I was asked to do a
survey of folk culture in the
area. I found everything from
people who made a special kind
of asadero cheese to people
who carve and make quilts. I
went all the way from one side
of the border to the other and
talked to a whole range of
people. Then I brought three
of the informants, the people
that I interviewed, to
Washington for a festival of
border culture, where I worked
as an interpreter.
Aside from Mexico, I’ve
done research with Afro-
Cubans as part of my study of
religion. That was in New York,
San Jr in, Miami and Austin.
I’ve done studies with Bolivians,
also. I encourage all students
to do field work, and by far, it's
one of their favorite things.
Q: What exactly did you do for
the Smithsonian Institute?
A: The Smithsonian has a
division which is called the
Office of Folklife and Cultural
Studies, and that is the one
division of the Smithsonian that
is not a museum. This office
has an annual festival of
American Folklife [during July].
The curator of this festival
decided that she wanted to
focus on the border. So, I was
hired by a group called Texas
Folklife here in Austin as a field
worker. My assignment was
and Presidio, and I just drove
down there and met as many
people as I could.
I went to a ranch in
Candalaria, looking at spurs
and finding out about
butchering techniques,
examining relationships
between Mexican vaqueros and
Anglo cowboys. I was looking
at an entire range of traditions.
Basically, it’s a matter
of going into a community,
finding people whoso fields are
interesting, or tod, or
representative, or eAt.uplary.
[You look for] people that are
enormously capable of doing
things and that are valued
within their own culture. It’s
not a question of me coming in
and saying, “1 like that artist.”
Basically, what we do
as folklorists is look to see what
the culture itself values and
puts forth. There's a kind of
local connoisseurship.
Q: Are you doing any research
presently?
A: The topic that I’ve been
mentioning is Material Culture
of Latin American Folk Religion.
So, I’m refining a set of studies
on the Virgin of Guadalupe, the
Afro-Cuban religion tradition
of Saint Barbara and Shango,
one being a Catholic saint, one
being an African orisha.
Material culture means
ideas embodied. Things as
indicative of larger cultural
concepts. Because of the rich
traditions of representations in
Latin America, you have a lot of
artifacts to talk about. So, when
you talk about a hybrid culture,
the culture in Haiti coming
together with French
Catholicism let’s say, you have
two very strong symbol s vstems
and you can watch things that
happen visually.
It’s a study of folk
religion, really, but rather than
through theology or liturgy or
in the objects that are produced.
So, I’m working on a set of
those studies.
I’m trying to work these
case studies and essays into a
book on the material culture of
Latin American folk religion.
I’ve prQbably been working for
at least five years on different
case studies, and I’ve given
conference papers on most of
them.
jr
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Newspaper.
Megaphone (Georgetown, Tex.), Vol. 90, No. 12, Ed. 1 Thursday, November 16, 1995, newspaper, November 16, 1995; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth634089/m1/5/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Southwestern University.