Elves, Fairies, and UFOs: Dangerous Encounters with Otherworldly Beings in Folklore

FOLKMYTH 141 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

This course introduces folk traditions involving dangerous encounters between humans and otherworldly beings. Our primary areas of focus will include medieval through modern European elf and fairy lore, as well as twentieth- through twenty-first-century accounts of UFO abduction. The course will examine the historical conditions in which these traditions emerged, and in which they have developed. It will also explore the premise that while the contents of otherworldly abduction/intrusion narratives often show remarkable similarities between one cultural context and another, storytellers from different times and places have deployed these traditions in substantially different ways. We will investigate possible reasons both for these similarities and for these differences, drawing especially from relevant scholarship in folklore studies, anthropology, and the comparative study of religion.