Evan is a doctoral fellow in the interdisciplinary Folklore Program of The Ohio State University’s English Department. His research interests cover the legendry genre, digital narrative, and the intersection between folklore and Web 2.0 era vernacular spaces and modes. Shurouq Ibrahim, CSR’S Graduate Research Associate, sat down with Evan to see what the CSR’s Iles Award means for his research!

Shurouq: Can you tell me about your research as a graduate student at OSU?

Evan: I am a Ph.D student of the English department but, also, as a person with their focus in folklore, half my research is also involved in Comparative Studies which is how the folklore program works. My research, as a folklorist, focuses primarily on the legend genre, which is an interesting term. Legend. It has a particular meaning to folklorists and one that I’ll talk about a little bit; it has a kind of all-over-the-place meaning. But it also has a more exoteric definition in the broader — we can say, the Anglophone world — particularly North America. And I have looked at legend from a lot of different angles for a lot of my research career as a grad student…But for my dissertation, I wanted to take a look at what I have decided to call “hoax-lore”— manufactured legend — legend we wouldn’t, by a conventional, sort of traditional, definition of legend…recognize as necessarily belonging in that genre because of their authorial provenance. The full title of the dissertation, which is kind of a mouthful, is “Hoax-Lore: The Aestheticization of Truth through Fabricated Legend,” which is a lot, but [it] gives you the components of what’s going on…The big two things that stick in addition to legends being localized are these two other factors that really oscillate a lot: truth and belief in the way that — throughout the twentieth century — trying to define legend has a lot to do with what different scholars have to say about truth and belief…Going into mid-century folkloristics and beyond, we have this idea that when we use the term “legend” out and about and in our daily lives, I think what we tend to mean is: it’s fiction, that’s just a legend; it’s just made up, it’s not real, it’s not true. Folklorists have been using a — not identical — but in many ways similar definition for legend especially  as a way to delineate or delimit, or even demarcate, the genre from its sister genres of something like tale, or fairy tale, and then myth, on the other hand. The way legend has been variously defined then floats around these two factors: truth and belief.

Shurouq: Right. And this brings me to my second question: How does your research intersect at all with the study of religion?

Evan: Sure. Certainly, nominally, I am not studying religion at all, but what I am definitely studying is belief, which certainly has quite a lot to do with religion. There’s been a lot of talk in folkloristics about the rhetoric of believability, and I think to some extent my research really embraces this. It says: What are we learning about what it takes to believe something? Another way of phrasing that question would be: What does it take to understand something as true, as potentially believed, or as truly believed? And to that end, I think what looking at hoax-lore and the way it moves (and legend in general) has taught me is that truth has a lot less to do…with a platonic sense of truth than it might with…believability…This really interesting idea of truth as collectively and culturally instantiated via repetition and consensus, and then the sort of simulation of that process is very interesting to me at least in the way it’s been expressed in…hoax-legends. Now I don’t know how much you might be able to move this into the world of the study of religion, but I certainly think there is application especially just via the ritualization of a lot of these factors — the traditionality of them as well.

Shurouq: Nice! And what did the Iles Award mean for your research? How did it advance your research in any way?

Evan: Well, I think building on what I just said, that was the idea that my research could have some cachet, some legs, in a field nominally other than folkloristics was really inspiring to me. A group of people who were working for the Center for the Study of Religion and participating in all these other different disciplines could still look at it and say, “I think there’s something here worth talking about” — outside the primary context of folkloristics — was definitely [important]. Other than just the monetary aid of the award…maybe there is some utility to what I am looking at here….That’s a really nice way for a graduate student to be inspired to keep working. Maybe what I’ve considered as a very esoteric little niche [interest] isn’t so squirreled away after all. And then over the summer, I took my project to an interdisciplinary conference in Serbia, of all places, which was primarily an international relations conference and got some political scientists to comment on it. And it turns out there may be applications there too. When you take a concept like the “fake,” the “hoax”…and you give yourself permission to not think about it that way…you get a lot of mileage out of it. And I think that the Iles Award, for me, was sort of like a permission to start examining this from other perspectives. That there was a hospitality to this kind of thinking in disciplines other than my own sub-sub-sub field, which was really encouraging. And then, of course, just being able to have some money as a graduate student has been extremely helpful.

Shurouq: Wonderful! Thank you for this, Evan!

Ishmael Konney is an OSU alumnus who earned his M.A degree in International Studies from Ohio University and his MFA degree in Dance from Ohio State University. Shurouq Ibrahim, CSR’s Graduate Research Associate, interviewed Ishmael to ask what the Iles Award meant to him!

Shurouq: Could you tell me about your research as a graduate student/alumnus of OSU?

Ishmael: Thank you for this opportunity. My larger research interest focuses on the promotion of the Ghanaian cultural identity and every project I embark on is under the auspices of this  research. My immediate research explores the intersectionality between Ghanaian cultural practices and contemporary dance.Looking at ways that I can share my Ghanaian values in the work I make on and off stage. Currently the cultural practice I work with is traditional Ghanaian storytelling. Ghanaian storytelling encompasses music, dance, theatre, other visual arts and dissolves any division between the performers and the audience, creating a participatory environment in which every person involved is important. With my training in music, theatre and dance, storytelling becomes a conglomerate and a medium for me to share my artistic expertise while fostering a communal experience for the audience and performers. So, you can think of my research as a pyramid scheme, where the main idea at the top births multiple interests but every new interest is tethered to the main idea at the top.

Shurouq: How does your research intersect with the study of myth and religion, if at all? Why do you think the study of religion is important?

Ishmael: The research that got me the [Iles] award “W)gb3j3k3” was investigating the migration of the Ga people. History has it that the Ga people migrated from Israel to their present location. Most of the Ghanaian stories are embedded in our oral traditions and these stories are passed on from generation to generation through folktales, legends, and myths. My culture is preserved through myths and folktales so my history cannot be accessed without talking about and honoring  these oral traditions. According to Paschal Younge in his book I Am a Ghanaian Cultural Ambassador: A Manual for Traditional Drumming and Dance Groups of Ghana, “there were no tangible or reliable documentary sources on Ga history before the 1600’s. Most of the history can be found in folktales, songs, legends, myths, poems, and other traditional oral sources” (2016, 135). The study of religion aids in understanding the people that are being studied, their beliefs and their way of life. This becomes a bedrock to understand how these histories exist and are embedded in the culture of the people. It is essential to examine the religion of a group of people while studying their history.

Shurouq: How did you hear about the Iles Award offered through the Center for the Study of Religion?

Ishmael: Faculty in the dance department at OSU always share funding resources to the grad students. Similarly, an email was shared about this funding opportunity, and I did not hesitate to apply because my research project was a perfect fit.

Shurouq: And how did the Iles Award contribute to the advancement of your research?

Ishmael: Firstly, it was and is still expensive to travel to Ghana from the US and this award defrayed majority of the travel cost. I was able to have conversations around the traditions of the La people and that developed into a documentary which was not part of my initial plans. The initial goal was to record the conversation about the migration so I could generate movements and build the concept for my final piece. The conversations were educative, and I wanted to share the information with other people and the world so I scheduled with the religious leader to have another interview that developed into a documentary about the history of the La people.

Shurouq: Where are you currently? And what are your current projects? 

Ishmael: I am currently an Assistant Teaching Professor of Dance in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Ball State University, located in Muncie, Indiana. I also serve as a dance faculty at Kentucky Governors School for the Arts Summer program. My recent project was a collaborative piece choreographed by myself and  Jenn Meckley (dance faculty at Ball State) titled “Fusion”. It was a piece that celebrated community through various cultures, identities, movement, and music, and emphasized the dynamic interweaving of traditional West African forms, American house dance, Afro-house dance, dancehall, Afrobeats, and Hip-hop.

Shurouq Ibrahim: Thank you!

To watch Ishmael’s documentary, click here.

Zahra Abedinezhad is a Ph.D candidate in Comparative Studies and Folklore at OSU. Having backgrounds in Law (TMU, Iran) and in Folk Studies (Western Kentucky University), she is interested in exploring intersections between religious practices and social regulations/codes. She is currently working on mourning performances of Iranian women. Shurouq Ibrahim, CSR’S Graduate Research Associate, sat down with Zahra to see what the CSR’s Iles Award means for her research!

Shurouq: Hi, Zahra. Thanks for doing this interview with the Center for the Study of Religion. Would you just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your research?

Zahra: Sure. I’m Zahra Abedinezhad. I’m a Ph.D candidate in Comparative Studies with a GIS in folklore. It’s my fourth year of the Ph.D, and my research is called “Resisting Mourning: Vernacular Ta’ziyeh in Iran.” The focal point of my research is a myth that [is] called the “Karbala” event. Some people [call it] an event; some people say it [is] a story…but it’s a sacred story, and based on our definition in folklore and religious studies, we call this a myth. So, I am trying to understand how this myth is interpreted and used by people and how this [clashes] with an understanding of religious authorities in power. At different times, throughout history, this myth becomes a source for people to perform a vernacular religious theatre that is called Ta’ziyeh, and I have that in the title [of my dissertation]. As I said, Ta’ziyeh literally means mourning. So, people reenact that story via Ta’ziyeh. Throughout history, sometimes [Ta’ziyeh] was complicated; it was forbidden, [but] sometimes it was a national symbol of the country [Iran] —  we have a Karbala vernacular folkloristic theatre…

But I, as a folklore researcher/researcher who is interested in religious studies, (because this is a ritual, this a sacred story that ritual is based on that), I am trying to understand at this current time in Iran specifically because of different critical, social, cultural circumstances, how different groups, different communities interpret this story to perform their resistance. There is a sub-group that I discovered so far, that I identified, that [says] the way that [the Karbala myth] is performed or should be performed is really trying to challenge [those in] power. But, this is the way that [only one] group of Iranians claim it. But the way that the state treats this performance is very complicated. Sometimes they say, this is good and we accept this because it helps the proliferation of [the] Shia movement (because the majority of the Iranians are Shia and they stake claims to the Islamic Republic). But for those groups [that mentioned before], they say, “We are religious; we like to perform religion but the way that this performance should be performed is really challenging whoever is [in] power.” Shiism was supposed to be a band of rebels against tyranny and now because tyranny is happening and is implement[ed] by the Islamic authorities and power in Iran, they are saying: “What if we interpret this Ta’ziyeh, this performance, as a performance of resistance and just try to learn some lessons from this performance. It is not enough to just perform it; it is a resource for learning ethical and religious principles and one is: resisting tyranny — resistance mandatory rules. I am more interested in these kinds of interpretations, and I want to know how Ta’ziyeh and the Karbala myth is used as a means of resistance in current times in Iran.