David J Puglia
David J. Puglia, Ph.D., is a Professor and Deputy Chairperson in the English Department at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York, where he teaches courses in folklore, popular culture, and writing.
He received his master's degree in Folk Studies from Western Kentucky University, under the supervision of Dr. Michael Ann Williams, and his Ph.D. in American Studies from Penn State Harrisburg, under the supervision of Dr. Simon J. Bronner.
He is the author of three books: South Central Pennsylvania Legends and Lore, Maryland Legends: Folklore from the Old Line State (with co-author Trevor J. Blank), and Tradition, Urban Identity, and the Baltimore "Hon": The Folk in the City. His essays have appeared in the Folklore Historian, New Directions in Folklore, Contemporary Legend, and the Children's Folklore Review.
He is the past editor of the scholarly journal New Directions in Folklore, the past president of the Middle Atlantic Folklife Association, and currently serves on the Executive Council of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research and the editorial boards of Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore, Supernatural Studies, and New Directions in Folklore.
He currently lives in New York with his wife, Mira, who is also a folklorist.
You can contact him at david.puglia@bcc.cuny.edu.
He received his master's degree in Folk Studies from Western Kentucky University, under the supervision of Dr. Michael Ann Williams, and his Ph.D. in American Studies from Penn State Harrisburg, under the supervision of Dr. Simon J. Bronner.
He is the author of three books: South Central Pennsylvania Legends and Lore, Maryland Legends: Folklore from the Old Line State (with co-author Trevor J. Blank), and Tradition, Urban Identity, and the Baltimore "Hon": The Folk in the City. His essays have appeared in the Folklore Historian, New Directions in Folklore, Contemporary Legend, and the Children's Folklore Review.
He is the past editor of the scholarly journal New Directions in Folklore, the past president of the Middle Atlantic Folklife Association, and currently serves on the Executive Council of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research and the editorial boards of Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore, Supernatural Studies, and New Directions in Folklore.
He currently lives in New York with his wife, Mira, who is also a folklorist.
You can contact him at david.puglia@bcc.cuny.edu.
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The Goatman of legend lives on the fringes of Prince George’s County, which is itself on the fringes of the metropolitan Washington, D.C. After an overview of the beginnings of the panic and the birth of the legend, I demonstrate how the Goatman legend arose as a symbolic projection that paralleled the perceived threats associated with Washington D.C. and its encroachment into a once bucolic setting. Living outside the boundaries of humanity both morally and geographically, the Goatman’s characteristics and deeds imitated the daily horrors that newspapers and rumormongers reported about Washington, D.C. An antisocial personality who kills, vandalizes property, abuses animals, and purposefully frightens people, the Goatman was the locus for the projection of the fears associated with the proximate metropolitan area.
In this presentation, we argue that the chocolate Easter egg is a distinctive South Central Pennsylvania tradition that serves an important role in the community. Through rigorous field research including interviews with every participating church in the Middletown, Pennsylvania area and extensive participant-observation, we elucidate the little-known chocolate Easter egg tradition in South Central Pennsylvania and examine the important function it plays in Pennsylvania life for one quarter of every year. In the paper, we attempt to trace the recipe back to its roots and survey the traditions geographic boundaries. We show how the chocolate egg has become a marker of Pennsylvania identity, especially through the Pennsylvania diaspora. We look closely at how the eggs are made, examining the clearly defined roles of mixers, rollers, dippers, trimmers, wrappers, and sellers. Looking towards the future, we examine the apprenticing taking place by younger church members as they plan to take over the roles of the originators, passing on the tradition to a new generation.
The chocolate Easter egg is easily lost in the folkloristic formula. A commercial basis, a recent tradition, analogs in the mass-produced world, and a quotidian product belie the traditionality undergirding the chocolate Easer egg. But on closer inspection, this is ritualistic community cooking that connects both buyers and sellers to Pennsylvania and to each other. The chocolate Easter egg has at least four important functions for Central Pennsylvanians. It offers an important source of funding that allows churches with shrinking congregations to maintain their independence; it provides a sense of communitas, brining a sense of unity and church community; it orients Pennsylvanians to the calendar, getting members out and about during the harshest time of year; and it serves as a friendly form of Christian outreach that is never fervently evangelical, but reaches out to the community nonetheless.
Students have usually had no exposure to the academic study of folklore for the majority of their lives. Nonetheless, they have been exposed to a plethora of folklore and a variety of ways the word "folklore" is used. In Eng 40 Folklore, students must quickly be able to come to an intuitive understanding of the term "folklore" and how it relates to their own lives, thus preparing them for the remainder of the course.
The foodways unit then transitions into a completely different, non-material folklore genre. By transitioning to a verbal or customary genre, students see how the same laws apply to all genres of folklore, regardless of form. From here, in addition to academic definitions, students begin to develop an intuitive feel for folklore.
Coined by folklorist Diane Goldstein and explored through a series of American Folklore Society panels ever since, the “stigmatized vernacular" refers to “those situations where not only are individuals stigmatized, but so are the vernaculars associated with them.” The conceptualization of the “stigmatized” vernacular dialectically leaves open the possibility of the “venerated vernacular,” or what I prefer to call the “esteemed vernacular.” In this paper, I focus on the shift in the urban from the stigmatized vernacular to the esteemed vernacular. During this period, the vernacular becomes associated less with social class and more with authentic local heritage, thus replacing the former stigma with a newfound esteem. Through my concept of vernacular stages, I will attempt to demonstrate how largely unnoticed local tradition transforms first to identify a socioeconomic class and the “stigmatized vernacular” and then goes on to become enshrined as parts of the “esteemed vernacular.” This esteem, however, remains contested, functioning as a symbolic battleground for local issues of race, class, and gender.
As vernacular culture transitions to an identity marker, not of social class, but rather of authenticity, locality, place, and roots, people can “perform local identity” in a way that both shows a yearning for an authentic sense of rootedness and shows an inclination for situating that authentic sense of rootedness in working class, vernacular forms. The hypothesis that the “esteemed vernacular” is a driving force behind modern urban American tradition will be at the heart of my paper. By continuing to bravely surmount the “triviality barrier,” folklorists have the opportunity to contribute to public discourse by unpacking how the construction, adaption, and perpetuation of local tradition maintains coded motives of sociopolitical importance to local people.
The goal of this panel at another joint meeting, we hope equally historic, of folklorists and American Studies scholars, is to interrogate the legacy of courtship between folklore and American Studies cited by Richard Dorson and the prediction by Simon Bronner of the union, or hybridization, of folkloristics and American Studies. Is the future of folklore in American Studies programs? What indicators have we seen of this in the past? How have our panelists fruitfully joined the two disciplines in their careers? What can American Studies offer to folklore? What can folklore offer to American Studies? How could the synergy between the two fundamentally change both disciplines for the better?
Marrying folklore and American studies is neither common nor unheard-of. A handful of universities over the past half century have wed folklore and American studies. Cooperstown, George Washington, the University of North Carolina, and Penn State Harrisburg have or had folklore programs embedded in an American Studies context. It seems notable for this conference that all of these programs are in or border the Middle Atlantic region.
We have brought together a diverse panel of scholars and practitioners who work in both American Studies and folklore. Some have degrees in folklore and American Studies. Some have a degree in American Studies, but are employed as folklorists. Others have a degree in folklore and work in American Studies programs. And still others have degrees in affiliated fields and work in American Studies and folklore. With answers to the questions above about the new children of “such union,” the panelists collectively will chart the likely, or desired, identities of offspring and the trajectories they will take.
Through close reading, oral history, and ethnography, I examine the concepts of identity, gentrification, and class difference in Hampden. In the 1970s, federal and city government sponsored the Baltimore Neighborhood Heritage Project. The project’s collaborators conducted hundreds of oral history interviews in ethnic and working class neighborhoods across Baltimore. Today these interviews are the best source for understanding the narratives working class Hampdenites told about themselves. Since most of the literature on Hampden has a middle class bias, I use a different methodology in reconstructing the narrative of Hampden as told by the new middle class. Based in the theories of Baudrillard, Barthes, and Jameson, I use postmodern ethnography in an attempt to find the heritage narratives the new Hampdenites tells both visitors and themselves.
I begin with an overview of Hampden, its longtime residents, its new residents, and the crisis it’s facing today. In an attempt to understand how each group constructs the history of Hampden, I summarize the work done by labor historians on Hampden life in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Following this, I perform a close reading on nearly forty oral history interviews from Hampden in an attempt to identify the themes that dominate working class memory of the Hampden neighborhood. After tracing the development and gentrification of Hampden in the second half of the twentieth century, I contrast the working class narrative of Hampden with the gentrified, middle class one. In an attempt to capture the middle class narrative, I focus on texts such as restaurant menus, John Waters films, and most importantly, HonFest. Held in Hampden, HonFest is Baltimore’s largest annual street festival and pseudo-beauty pageant, where race, gender, and class are parodied in buffoonish caricatures of working class Hampdenites. By comparing them, I attempt to assess the gap between the two visions of Hampden’s history and make an assessment of ways the wounds could be healed. In conclusion, I attempt to prove this one small neighborhood has significance for class and race relations in post-industrial urban environments across the United States.
The Goatman of legend lives on the fringes of Prince George’s County, which is itself on the fringes of the metropolitan Washington, D.C. After fleshing out the narrative, I will argue the legend has two basic meanings in the region. Living outside the boundaries of humanity both morally and geographically, the Goatman is not unlike a stock psychopath for some. An antisocial personality who kills, vandalizes property, abuses animals, and purposefully frightens people, the creature is the locus for the projection of all the fears associated with surrounding area. On the other hand, local teenagers seem to identify with the Goatman. Personal narratives from locals recount ostensive behavior including Friday evenings spent hunting the Goatman. Like sport hunters, teenagers seem not to hunt out of hatred but out of respect. Legend tripping is a way of rebelling against the norms of society by entering the Goatman’s land and joining his rebellion, if only for a brief time.