Möbius Media: Popular Culture, Folklore, and the Folkloresque

Möbius Media explores the interplay of popular and traditional cultures, reminding readers that expressive cultural forms are never mutually exclusive but exist in a state of creative tension and interconnection, merging and (re)defining one another. With this insightful volume, editors Jeffrey Tolbert and Michael Dylan Foster build on their earlier work, The Folkloresque, by considering how folklore is understood and mobilized within a variety of popular discourses and commercial marketplaces.

The collection challenges readers to consider the stakes of labeling something as folklore or folk. It demonstrates the rhetorical and political potency of ideas such as traditionality, heritage, and community in storytelling venues (including films, games, and even podcasts), in the construction and policing of genres, and in the selling of commodities. By interrogating popular media and expressions that make use of ideas such as folklore, tradition, authenticity, and heritage, Möbius Media further develops the theoretical applicability of the folkloresque concept and encourages productive interdisciplinary dialogue. Through the lens of the folkloresque, scholars can better see the hidden ideologies that inform the marketplace and influence contemporary modes of communication.

This interdisciplinary work will appeal to scholars and students of cultural studies, media studies, popular culture, literature, anthropology, and related areas.

Jeffrey A. Tolbert is assistant professor of American studies and folklore at Penn State Harrisburg. His research focuses on supernatural belief, folklore, and new media. His broader research interests include folklore and popular culture, especially video games, and supernatural traditions in new/digital media, such as the Slender Man internet phenomenon. He is coeditor of The Folkloresque.

Michael Dylan Foster is professor of East Asian languages and cultures at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of The Book of Yōkai and Pandemonium and Parade, which won the Chicago Folklore Prize in 2009, and coeditor of The Folkloresque. He has written numerous other works on Japanese folklore, cultural heritage, festival, and media.