Join us in welcoming our folklore designated emphasis PhD student Jon as he delivers a Folklore Roundtable Lecture.

Date: March 5th 2020

Time: 5PM

Location: Gifford Room

Abstract: Where does folklore end and literature begin? Translingual author José Francisco Agüera Oliver has long stood at the forefront of the (im)migration debate in Germany—from his early political poems to current activism and outreach facilitating the circulation of poetry between refugee communities and mainstream society. Yet his works of fiction also highlight the functions of ritual in facilitating belonging in an increasingly mobile Germany, even as his poetic language negotiates the fluid borders of literary Spanish, High German, Alemannic, and the Andalusian dialect. This paper examines the intersection of migration and the folkloric—Oliver’s localized, translingual performances and the invigoration of Southern German Carnival in his literary works—to problematize concepts of ritual participation in rural communities from a position of radical diversity. It asks how the nexus of folklore and literary production might transform our understanding of both materials, expanding fraught discursive spaces for the folkloric in the German present day.

Jon Cho-Polizzi is a doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley’s Department of German, the concurrent Ph.D. Program in Medieval Studies, and the Designated Emphasis in Folklore. Jon’s literary translations have been published by Spiegel Online, Versopolis Poetry, and in various anthologies; a new cycle of his poetry translations is forthcoming in the Spring 2020 volume of Jewish Currents.