FOLK

FOLK
Paper instructions:
Rites of passage are at the intersection of the personal and the public, as the folkgroup recognizes a change in the individual’s status within that group. For this assignment you are to describe in detail the celebration of a particular rite of passage. You should use as your primary example one specific rite in which you have participated directly. What transition was being marked? What activities were used to illustrate this marking? How did this particular occasion match and how did it differ from the way your folkgroup ‘normally’ or ‘typically’ celebrates this rite?
Library and/or archive research is required, and this assignment works best with something ‘ethnographic,’ i.e. either attending a rite or speaking with someone else who participated in it, and incorporating that into your writing.
I may be able to offer advice for source material: you should email your topic idea to me by November 1. If you are unsure of a topic I am willing to entertain other paper ideas.
Sources are to be noted in a bibliography. The essay should be approximately 8-10 pages.
PS: Don’t do birthdays.
(This is a course on custom, which is about how particular groups celebrate or commemorate critical moments on their calendar, either as a group or through an individual within that group making some sort of transition in status. I suggested that you could do something about customers celebrating a rite at a hotel, maybe even choosing a theme hotel to do it in, but you need to not only mention that but make that the primary focus of the paper.) CLICK HERE FOR MORE ON THIS TOPIC