HU Credits: 2

Degree/Cycle: 2nd degree (Master)

Responsible Department: Jewish & Comp. Folklore Prog.

Semester: 2nd Semester

Teaching Languages: Hebrew

Campus: Mt. Scopus

Course/Module Coordinator: Dani Schrire

Coordinator Email: dani.schrire@mail.huji.ac.il

Coordinator Office Hours: Monday 13:15-14:15

Teaching Staff:
Dr. Dani Schrire

Course/Module description:
In the course we will read articles that engage rumours as a folkloristic genre in relation to similar genres (legends, urban legends, gossip and conspiracy) and in different historical contexts (blood-libels, war. "race", epidemics, internet). We will engage this opic in the context of folklore-research, history, everyday life culture and popular culture.

Course/Module aims:
In the course we will follow the way rumours operate and the contexts in which they flourish. We will determine the differences between rumours and similar phenomena. We will deepen our understanding in genre-theory.

Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
1. differentiate between rumours and similar phenomena.
2. point to the mechanism of rumours.
3. analyse the reasons that explain the diffusion of rumours and their relative stability.
4. record a rumour while noting the problems that recording such knowledge poses.
5. generalize from a single appearance of a rumour to the principal context in which it appears, as well as providing an interpretation for this context.

Attendance requirements(%):
80

Teaching arrangement and method of instruction: We will read a text every week, which will be discussed in class. As a preparatory discussion we will use online forums in the "Moodle". During the course we will document one rumour as an assignment. The final paper will be devoted to an analysis of a rumour.

Course/Module Content:
Genre theory, rumours, gossip. urban legends. legends, conspiracies, internet rumours, methodology and theory of rumour research, rumour at war, rumour and "race", Antisemitic rumours, rumours and colonialism, academic rumours, globalization of rumours

Required Reading:
Hans-Joachim Neubauer, The Rumour: A Cultural History, trans. Christian Braun (London and New York: Free Association Books, 1999): 1-6.
Gary A. Fine and Patricia A. Turner, “How Rumor Works?,” in Whispers on the Color Line: Rumor and Race in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 53–80.
עליזה שנהר-אלרעי, מספר, סיפור, קהל: הסיפור העממי היהודי והישראלי (תל-אביב: הקיבוץ המאוחד, 1994): 105-134.
Galit Hasan-Rokem, “Rumor in Times of War and Cataclysm: A Historical Perspective,” in Rumor Mills: The Social Impact of Rumor and Legend, ed. Gary Alan Fine, Véronique Campion-Vincent, and Chip Heath (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2004), 31–51.
Véronique Campion-Vincent, “From Evil Others to Evil Elites: A Dominant Pattern in Conspiracy Theories Today,” in Rumor Mills: The Social Impact of Rumor and Legend, ed. Gary Alan Fine, Véronique Campion-Vincent, and Chip Heath (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2004), 103–122.
Russell Frank, Newslore: Contemporary Folklore on the Internet (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011): 63–95.
מרק בלוך, הרהורים של היסטוריון, תר' חיים רינגוורץ (תל אביב: רסלינג, 2009): 59-89.
Patricia A. Turner, I Heard It Through the Grapevine: Rumor in African-American Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 1–32.
ישראל יעקב יובל, שני גויים בבטנך: יהודים ונוצרים - דימויים הדדיים (תל אביב: עלמא / עם עובד, 2000), 175–203.
Edgar Morin, Rumour in Orléans (New York: Pantheon Books, 1971), 17, 55–66.
Ann Laura Stoler, “‘In Cold Blood’: Hierarchies of Credibility and the Politics of Colonial Narratives,” Representations no. 37 (1992): 151–189.
דני שרירא, "איסוף שברי הגולה: חקר הפולקלור בישראל בשנות ה-40 וה-50 במבט ביקורתי" (חיבור לשם קבלת תואר דוקטור בפילוסופיה, האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים, 2011), 85–102.
Gary Alan Fine and Bill Ellis, The Global Grapevine: Why Rumors of Terrorism, Immigration, and Trade Matter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 201-220.

Additional Reading Material:
Amy Shuman and Galit Hasan-Rokem, “The Poetics of Folklore,” in A Companion to Folklore, ed. Regina Bendix and Galit Hasan-Rokem (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 55–74.
David Coady, “Rumour Has It:,” International Journal of Applied Philosophy 20, no. 1 (2006): 41–53.
Emilio de Ípola, “Bembas. The Life and Death of Rumors in a Political Prison (Argentina 1976–83),” Diogenes 54 (2007): 140–161.
Nicholas DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia, “Rumor, Gossip and Urban Legends,” Diogenes 54, no. 1 (2007): 19–35.
Alejandro Paz, “The Circulation of Chisme and Rumor: Gossip, Evidentiality, and Authority in the Perspective of Latino Labor Migrants in Israel,” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 19, no. 1 (2009): 117–143.
Patrick B. Mullen, “Modern Legend and Rumor Theory,” Journal of the Folklore Institute 9, no. 2/3 (1972): 95–109.
Timothy R. Tangherlini, “‘It Happened Not Too Far from Here...’: A Survey of Legend Theory and Characterization,” Western Folklore 49, no. 4 (1990): 371–390.
Gary Alan Fine and Bill Ellis, The Global Grapevine: Why Rumors of Terrorism, Immigration, and Trade Matter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 51–72.
Jean-Bruno Renard, “Negatory Rumors: From the Denial of Reality to Conspiracy Theory,” in Rumor Mills: The Social Impact of Rumor and Legend, ed. Gary Alan Fine, Véronique Campion-Vincent, and Chip Heath (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2004), 223–239.
Charles L. Briggs, “What We Should Have Learned from Américo Paredes: The Politics of Communicability and the Making of Folkloristics,” The Journal of American Folklore 125, no. 495 (2012): 91–110.
Penny Roberts, “Arson, Conspiracy and Rumour in Early Modern Europe,” Continuity and Change 12 (1997): 9–29.
Georges Lefebvre, The Great Fear of 1789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary France. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982).
John Roberts, “African American Belief Narratives and the African Cultural Tradition,” Research in African Literatures 40 (2009): 112–126.
ש. אנ-סקי, חורבן היהודים בפולין, גליציה ובוקובינה - מלחמת העולם הראשונה, תר' ש.ל. ציטרון (תל אביב: שטיבל, 1936).
Maria Margaroni, “Antisemitic Rumours and Violence in Corfu at the End of 19th Century,” Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History 3 (2012): 267-288.
David Samper, “Cannibalizing Kids: Rumor and Resistance in Latin America,” Journal of Folklore Research 39 (2002): 1–32.

Course/Module evaluation:
End of year written/oral examination 0 %
Presentation 0 %
Participation in Tutorials 25 %
Project work 65 %
Assignments 10 %
Reports 0 %
Research project 0 %
Quizzes 0 %
Other 0 %

Additional information: