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Folklore and fairy tales are topic of WMU discussion

Feb. 25, 2011

KALAMAZOO--Fairy-tale economics will be the topic of a free, public lecture Thursday, March 17, on the campus of Western Michigan University.

Photo of Dr. Dorothy Noyes.Dr. Dorothy Noyes, folklorist and professor of English, comparative studies and anthropology at Ohio State University, will speak on "Fairy-tale Economics: Scarcity, Risk and Choice" at 7 p.m. in Room 3025 of Brown Hall. She will discuss how the Western fairy tale, which was initially formed in a world of scarcity, persists in industrial and capitalist societies, largely because it stages the still uncertain fortunes of the individual.

A specialist in the history of folk voice, particularly in the Romance-speaking Mediterranean, Noyes is director of the Center for Folklore Studies and research associate at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, both at OSU. She has contributed articles to numerous prestigious journals and been an executive board member for both the American Folklore Society and Société Internationale d'Ethnologie et de Folklore. Her "Fire in the Plaça: Catalan Festival Politics After Franco" won the 2005 Book Prize of the Fellows of the American Folklore Society.

Noyes' visit is sponsored by the WMU Department of English, as part of its Scholarly Speaker Series. It is cosponsored by WMU's Haenicke Institute for Global Education, Africana Studies Program, Department of Anthropology and Lee Honors College.

For more information, contact Dr. Anthony Ellis, Department of English, at anthony.ellis@wmich.edu or (269) 387-2606.

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Media contact: Tonya Durlach, (269) 387-8400, tonya.durlach@wmich.edu

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