Thomas A. DuBois

University of Wisconsin-Madison
 

As a folklorist, I am interested in all aspects of traditional life, including narrative, music, customs, and material culture. My research has focused primarily on Finnish and Sámi materials, particularly in a wider Nordic context. In my most recent folklloristic book, Lyric, Meaning and Audience, I have sought to examine folklore in a regional sense, going beyond national or temporal borders. I am currently working on a study of religious wood carving traditions that takes a similar approach, looking at devotional carving from the medieval period to the present throughout the Nordic-Baltic region.

Together with Jim Leary and other colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I edited the Journal of American Folklore for five years, running 2010-14.

 

 
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Folklore

Finnish Folk Poetry and the Kalevala. New York: Garland Publications, 1995.
co-authored with Leea Virtanen. Finnish Folklore. Studia Fennica Folkloristica 9. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society in association with the University of Washington Press, 2000.
Lyric, Meaning and Audience in the Oral Tradition of Northern Europe. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2006.
co-editor.The Nordic Storyteller: Essays in Honour of NIels Ingwersen. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009.

"Speaking with Wood: Eva Ryynänen Negotiates the Meaning of Wood in Finnish Church Art."

"Kaksikymmentä ja yksi Thirty Years Later: Paavo Haavikko's Kalevala Rewrite and the Epic Genre" in One and Twenty, Paavo Haavikko. Beaverton, ON: Aspasia Books, 2007.

"Rituals, Witnesses and Sagas" in Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspective: Origins, Changes and Interactions. Ed. Anders Andrén, Kristina Jennbert, and Catharina Raudvere. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2006. Pp. 74-78.

"The Little Song-Smith: A Printed Folksong Anthology and Its Reception among Ingrian Peasants, 1849-1900" in Folk Song: Tradition, Revival and Re-Creation. Ed. Ian Russell and David Atkinson. Aberdeen: The Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen, 2004. Pp. 41-52.

"A History Seen: The Uses of Illumination in Flateyjarbók" Journal of English and Germanic Philology 103(1)(2004): 1-52.

"With an End in Sight: Sympathetic Portrayals of 'Vanishing' Sámi Life in the Works of Karl Nickul and Andreas Alariesto" Scandinavian Studies 75/2 (2003): 181-200.

"Dynamics and Continuities of Tradition—What a Finnish Epic Song Can Teach Us About Two Old Norse Poems" In Dynamics of Tradition: Perspectives on Oral Poetry and Folk Belief. Ed. Lotte Tarkka. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2003. Pp. 233-247.

"Interpreting Meaning in Irish Tradition: Love and Death in the Shadow of Tralee" Oral Tradition 17(1) (2002): 87-107.

"Narrative Expectations and the Sampo Song" Scandinavian Studies 73(3) (2001): 457-474.

"Narrators in Two Epics: The Narrator's Voice in Kalevala and Kalevipoeg" Oral Tradition 15(1)(March 2000): 126-144.

"'That Strain Again!, or, Twelfth Night, a Folkloristic Approach" Arv 56(2000): 35-56.

"Folklore, Boundaries and Audience in The Pathfinder" in Sami Folkloristics. Ed. Juha Pentikäinen. Turku: NIF, 2000. Pp. 255-274.

"The Kalevala Received: From Printed Text to Oral Performance" Oral Tradition 11(2)(1996): 270-300.

"Lönnrot and Värttinä: (Re)presenting Oral Tradition to a Willing Audience" Journal of Finnish Studies 1(2)(1997): 27-36.

"Continuities Through Change: The Ritual Life of Finnish Women Before and After Christianity" Journal of Finnish Studies 1(1)(1997): 5-24.

"Seidr, Sagas and Saami: The Nature and Significance of Religious Exchange in the Viking Age" in Northern Peoples, Southern States: Maintaining Ethnicities in the Circumpolar World. Ed. Robert Wheelersburg. CERUM Northern Studies 1. Umeå: CERUM, 1996. Pp. 43-66.

"Native Hermeneutics: Traditional Means of Interpreting Lyric Songs in Northern Europe" Journal of American Folklore 109(433)(1996): 1-32.

"Insider and Outsider: An Inari Saami Case" Scandinavian Studies 67(1)(Winter 1995): 63-77.

"An Ethnopoetic Approach to Finnish Folk Poetry: Arhippa Perttunen's Nativity" in Songs Beyond the Kalevala: Transformations of Oral Poetry. Ed. Anna-Leena Siikala and Sinikka Vakimo. Studia Fennica Folkloristica 2. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1994. Pp. 138-179.

"From Maria to Marjatta: The Transformations of an Oral Poem in Elias Lönnrot's Kalevala" Oral Tradition 8(2)(1993): 247-288.