Culture in Everyday Life

University of Aberdeen
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Culture in Everyday Life

This series features lectures from the Elphinstone Institute Archives delivered by scholars working in the fields of Ethnology, Ethnomusicology, and Folklore. Rooted in the study of vernacular culture, they explore an incredible variety of topics from community building, legends, rituals, traditional music and dance, to language, memorialisation, digital culture, customs, and much more.

Episodes

  1. 20/04/2023

    'A Blond Wig for Maid Marion': Aberdeen and Scotland's Folk Dramas by Donald Smith

    From Mystery Plays to the Robin Hood revels at May Day, Aberdeen played a full role in Scotland’s popular dramas. Donald Smith explores some older forms of live entertainment, and their present day revival. Should we still go ‘A-Maying’? What does Robin Hood have to do with the Granite City? And does climate change mean we should move theatre back outdoors?  In 2019, Donald Smith, the then Director of Traditional Arts and Culture Scotland, gave a public talk as part of the Elphinstone Institute’s Public Lecture Series entitled 'A Blond Wig for Maid Marion': Aberdeen and Scotland's Folk Dramas.

    56 min

  2. 03/11/2022

    Singing Time and Singing Place

    This presentation, which was recorded at the Elphinstone Institute’s 2017 symposium dedicated to memory of Bill Nicolaisen, by Elphinstone Institute Director, Dr Thomas A McKean, looks at performed and sung ballad texts in the light of Bill Nicolaisen’s ideas of time – performance, narrative, and historical – and place, beyond the beyond. Ballads and their performance express and encapsulate, ignore and elide time and place in dynamic, sometimes illogical ways, pulling and stretching realities to maximise impact. Using North-East ballads, Dr McKean explores some of the ways singers and composers use and are affected by these concepts. For more information about Dr McKean’s work, please visit: (abdn.ac.uk)https://www.abdn.ac.uk/people/t.a.mckean/

    49 min

  3. 30/09/2022

    Building Community Self-Esteem: Advocating for Culture

    Hear about a folklorist’s journey from scholar to activist to facilitator of change, and back again. Through narratives of migration, motherhood, courage, and food, Skillman uses the transformative power of story to create agency and resilience among refugee and immigrant women in the USA. These stories and more illustrate our responsibility as cultural advocates to help build and foster community self-esteem and well-being.

    43 min

  4. 20/01/2022

    Words for Tunes: Robert Burns as a Lyric-Writer by Adam McNaughtan

    Adam McNaughtan delivers an illustrated talk with Gordeanna McCulloch entitled ‘Words for Tunes: Robert Burns as a Lyric-Writer’ at the Cullerie Singing Weekend in 2009.

    1h 5m

  5. 07/12/2021

    Music and the Memory Spectrum by Michael Pickering

    In this episode, Emeritus Professor Michael Pickering maps out the major ways in which music figures in registering and referencing the past, both in autobiographical memory and in vernacular memory.

    1h 2m

  6. 07/10/2021

    Leonard Primiano on Catholic Kitsch

    The late Leonard Primiano discusses his research on Catholic kitsch in this guest lecture given at the Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen.

    45 min
  7. Copyrighting Tradition in the Internet Age: Creativity, Authorship and Folklore

    01/06/2021

    Copyrighting Tradition in the Internet Age: Creativity, Authorship and Folklore

    Through discussion of Icelandic folk tunes, internet mashups and remixes, folktales, and more, this lecture explores the entanglements between creativity, authorship, digital culture, and copyright law.

    1h 25m
  8. Recycled Stories: Health Legends, Epidemics and the Politics of Risk

    29/03/2021

    Recycled Stories: Health Legends, Epidemics and the Politics of Risk

    As part of community discourse about the nature of disease, legends provide powerful information about cultural understandings of disease and illness. Though fascinating, intriguing, and often frightening, health legends do more than merely entertain. They warn and inform, articulate notions of risk, provide political commentary on public health actions, and offer insight into the relationship between cultural and health truths.

    1h 15m
  • 8 Episodes

About

This series features lectures from the Elphinstone Institute Archives delivered by scholars working in the fields of Ethnology, Ethnomusicology, and Folklore. Rooted in the study of vernacular culture, they explore an incredible variety of topics from community building, legends, rituals, traditional music and dance, to language, memorialisation, digital culture, customs, and much more.

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