Mythology and Folklore 2020

    The river god Inachus' daughter, Io, returned from visiting her father's stream one day, completely unaware of the tragedy that was awaiting her. As she was walking away from the stream and towards the woods nearby, she heard a booming voice call out to her, inviting her to take shelter in the forest's shade, with "the protection of a god." She recognized the voice immediately as the voice of Jupiter, and she had heard awful stories about the women who fell into his grasp. Just as Io darted off, away from the direction of the voice, Jupiter pleaded, "Don't run from me!"     But Io ignored him, and continued to flee. Jupiter, in response, wrapped the world in a thick, gray fog, to better conceal his deeds, and captured the girl. Under the cover of his divine fog, Jupiter raped Io.     Up in Olympus, Juno looked down upon the Earth, keeping watch over her domain. When a thick fog swept over the land and obscured her view, Juno felt herself t...

The Story of Narcissus      So, the term "narcissist" is pretty commonly used today, and we usually use it to describe someone egotistical and self-centered. Reading Narcissus' story, that makes a lot of sense. Narcissus is apparently gorgeous, so much so that men and women all around him fall in love with him on sight, including our poor Echo, so named because she is essentially cursed to only be able to speak the last words that someone has said in her presence.      But Narcissus rejects everyone, and doesn't seem particularly interested in romance. Some of his scorned would-be lovers lament that they wish Narcissus could love himself, and so experience their frustration at being in love with someone completely unattainable. The goddess Nemesis hears them, and makes that a reality. Later, when Narcissus sees his own reflection in a fountain, he is completely enraptured. He stares at his own reflection, not seeming to realize that it's just an image ...

The Story of Io     Even before reading these stories, I knew a little about Juno (Hera, Saturnia) and her jealousy. She is the wife and sister of Jupiter (Zeus) - I know, but incest seems to be pretty common among the gods - and seems to be constantly pissed off by her husband/brother's (frequent) extramarital affairs. Personally, if I were her, I would've just played an Ariana Grande song and left him, but that's just me. A brief summary of this story:      Io is the daughter of the river god Inachus and a priestess in Juno's temple. Jupiter sees her one day returning from visiting her father and tells her to come find some shade in the woods "protected by a god." Io, reacting like I think any girl would when a random stranger tries to entrap them, runs off. Jupiter covers the world in fog, and hidden by that fog, proceeds to rape Io. Juno looks down on Argos (where Io and her father live) and sees the fog, and thinks something is up. As she's c...

    I think that in whatever career you're in, whatever your major is, feedback is an incredibly important thing. When I was in middle school and high school, I was very much into music. I was in the symphonic band, the marching band, and the jazz band at my school (I know, a lot, but I'm from one of America's oldest jazz centers and also my mom has super  high standards, but we'll get to that later), and I was often compelled to audition for both district and state bands with other kids my age. Just for reference, I played trombone, and at one point, piano.With music, as with many other things, there is no such thing as perfection. There is always some way, big or small, in which you can improve. But hearing yourself and being able to pick up on your own weaknesses or flaws is hard sometimes, so I had to rely on a lot of external sources for my feedback. Those sources came in the form of my band director, my private trombone instructor, and even my own cell phone. What...

Some possible topics for my final project: 1. Quetzalcoatl  - Quetzalcoatl is a pretty well-known figure in Mexican culture, though there are also related versions of him in other parts of Central America, like in the Quiché tradition of Guatemala. He was the mythical ruler of the Toltec civilization in what is now Tula, in the state of Hidalgo (a few hours northeast of Mexico City). The name Quetzalcoatl means "feathered serpent" in Nahuatl, the language of the Maya, and today there is actually a species of bird found in Mexico that is called the quetzal (meaning "feathered" in Nahuatl) for its bright green feathers. Versions of Quetzalcoatl in Mexican indigenous legend were associated both with wind and creation in general. There are a few different legends floating around about him, and it is even rumored that the indigenous peoples who witnessed the arrival of the Spanish in the 1500s thought that the infamous conquistador Hernan Cortes was the god returned....

    Pygmalion had seen the daughters of his neighbor Propoetus happily married, walking arm-in-arm with their husbands along the streets of their town, and longed for what they had.     A sculptor by trade, Pygmalion was more comfortable around marble and ivory than he was around other people, especially women. So while he waited to muster the courage to go out into the city and seek out the love his neighbors had found, he sculpted a woman from his mind. Her carved her out of rare amber marble, golden and warm like the sun. The figure was so lifelike that one almost expected it to start speaking. When the sunlight came through Pygmalion's studio window and hit the sculpture just right, the eyes sparkled with a brilliance that took his breath away. He found himself falling in love with his own creation, and it made his heart heavy to remember that it was not a real person, just cold, motionless stone.     While Pygmalion works on his other projects, he ta...

The Three Roses , from The Key of Gold , by Josef Baudis (1922) Synopsis:      A Czech variation on the well-known fairytale, Beauty and the Beast . A woman, who is planning a trip to the market in another town, asks her three daughters what they would like her to bring them. Two of her daughters give her a long list of items, and the third simply asks for three roses. The woman goes to the market, and on her way back, realizes she's forgotten the roses for her youngest daughter, Mary. She stumbles upon a palace in the woods, where she sees some beautiful roses in the garden outside. After she's taken the roses, a basilisk appears and demands the woman's daughter in exchange for the roses she's stolen. Terrified for her life, the mother agrees, and returns to her home to tell her daughter what has happened. Mary agrees to go, and once she is there the basilisk tells her that she must nurse him on her lap every single day (um, yeah...we'll get to this, don...

Choose from CLASSICAL and/or BIBLICAL units for Weeks 3 and 4. Week 3:  Ancient Rome -  Ovid's Metamorphoses Week 4: Later Legends - Women Saints Choose from MIDDLE EASTERN and/or INDIAN units for Weeks 5 and 6. Week 5: Folktales and Fairy Tales - Persian Week 6:  Buddhism and Hinduism - Life of the Buddha Choose from ASIAN and/or AFRICAN units for Weeks 7 and 9. [Week 8 is review week.] Week 7:  Asian Mythology - Japanese Mythology Week 9: Folktales - Tibet Choose from NATIVE AMERICAN units for Weeks 10 and 11. Week 10 : Regional Anthologies- Great Plains Week 11: Regional Anthologies - British North America Choose from BRITISH and/or CELTIC units for Weeks 12 and 13. Week 12:  Celtic Tales - Celtic Fairy Tales Week 13: Hero Tales - Beowulf Choose from EUROPEAN units for Weeks 14 and 15. Week 14: Literary Works - Inferno Week 15: Fairy Tales by Country - Italy Final Thoughts:     I was real...

    In this post, I'll be talking about some time management strategies and how they can be applied to this class and academic life in general. The articles I chose to read from the list Laura provided us are: 11 Ways Unsuccessful People Mismanage Their Time  -  Áine Cain The Myth of "Too Busy" - Tim Grahl     As someone who is very Type A, most of the concepts discussed in these articles weren't necessarily new, but were things I had already been doing. That being said, it was interesting to learn the reasoning behind the techniques I had already been practicing, and to even pick up a few new ones, as well. I'm a big fan of planners, and every couple of days I sit down and plan out the next few days, what assignments I should do when, my work hours, etc. I actually get a weird kind of peace from doing that (which might be some undiagnosed personality disorder or something, but it's been working well for me so far...). Having everything lined out an...

    First off I just want to thank Laura for outlining all of these tools for us in one place. That will be really helpful later on in the semester when we begin working on our projects. Most of the programs that she mentions, like Canva and Wix, I've used once or twice before, either for college classes or even in high school. And most of these programs are very user-friendly, so even if I am a little rusty with them, they should be pretty easy to navigate.     In May, I'll be departing for my service with the Peace Corps, and I've been thinking of using some digital platform to be able to write about my time there and share it easily with my loved ones. A blog or a website would be perfect for that, because then everyone could go to one place to keep up with me, and I could just share the link with those I want to keep in the loop. So being able to do both of those things this semester will be a great way to figure those programs out before I leave.   ...

As a social sciences major, I'm pretty used to reading being a large component of my classwork, so that aspect of the class assignments isn't new or unwelcome to me. Normally, though, I would be given academic articles and news pieces to read, so the idea of stories being the reading for this class is interesting. I personally love to read during my free time, as mentioned in my introductory post, so being able to do that for a class is great! The storytelling aspect of this class is a little new to me; most of what I write for my other classes are drier, non-fiction things: literature reviews, policy papers, etc. I don't have much experience in storytelling, but I'm excited to try it out this semester. The assignments that focus on interacting with my classmates' blogs is new, but I'm excited to see everyone elses' interpretations of the same stories that we will all be reading, and to learn more about everyone in general. An infographic from Now Novel ...

    I had not heard of Carol Dweck or the growth mindset, though I am a big fan of TED talks in general. This concept is really interesting to me personally, so thank you, Laura, for introducing it to me this semester! Up until I was ten, I attended a Montessori school in Kansas City (my father was a teacher there, so my sisters and I got discounted tuition),  at which point I switched to public schools, so I've gotten to experience two wildly different teaching methods. I don't know much about the technical foundations of the Montessori Method, but I remember my father explaining to me when I was older and had switched to private schools that it is centered around the idea of allowing children to "discover" concepts for themselves, as opposed to being taught through rules and lessons. I don't remember ever sitting down for a lesson at that school; we were mostly given a selection of toys and games that were meant to teach us things like multiplication, geography,...

Hi, I’m Cece! I’m currently in my last semester of the accelerated BA/MA program at the College of International and Area Studies, expecting to graduate in May (if my thesis doesn’t kill me first), so if any of you see me around campus looking dead inside, know that I probably am. As you might have guessed if you read my “favorite place” post, I’m a big fan of Mexico and Latin America in general; Latin American studies and energy policy are my two focus areas at CIS. I’m fluent in Spanish and currently am learning Jopará, which is a language spoken in Paraguay that is a combination of Spanish and the local indigenous language, Guaraní. I’m learning it because, as of last month, I have been invited to serve by the Peace Corps as Community Economic Development Promoter in Paraguay. I’m really excited to be offered the opportunity, as I’ve been obsessed with the Peace Corps’ mission since my freshman year here at OU. My boyfriend, JP, and I, New Year's Eve of 2018. When ...

Here are my top three favorite storybooks from past students: 1.  Storybook: Hawaiian Mythology This storybook is centered around the Hawaiian legend of "The Shark Man of Waipio." In the introduction, the author gives us a good geographical and cultural background on the Hawaiian islands. The next two sections give us then the origin of the Shark Man's arrival at Waipio Valley on Big Island, and then the actual legend itself.  Waipio Valley (Source:  Love Big Island ) I liked this storybook for a lot of reasons. One of the main reasons is because it's about Hawaiian mythology. I think in mainstream media, when we think of mythology and legends we tend to immediately go to Ancient Greece, Egypt, or Scandinavia in our minds. Up until Moana came out, we in general didn't seem to think much about myths or legends from this part of the world very much. So, I liked that the author chose a region that most of us don't know much about when it comes to myt...

My favorite place in the world currently is Guanajuato, Mexico. I lived there for a year, taking political science classes at the Universidad de Guanajuato, and even met my boyfriend of two years while I was studying there! My boyfriend and our dog, a Siberian Husky puppy named Juno, still live there, and I try to visit whenever I can. Just had to include a picture of Juno, sorry.                                                      Guanajuato is considered the cultural heartland of Mexico. The capital of the state, also called Guanajuato, was among the sites where Mexico experienced its first stirrings of its independence movement in the early 1800s. A few notable battles where the Mexican colonists fought the Spanish Empire's army took place in the state. The state is rich in both Spanish colonial and pre-Columbian history; the capital is the s...

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