Fishing for Tradition Field School

      Under the direction of Dr. Gerald L. Pocius, the Folklore 6020 field school will introduce beginning graduate students to ethnographic documentation methods related to landscape, buildings, narratives, and place. The school will focus on one small Newfoundland community: Keels, Bonavista Bay. Twenty years ago, a moratorium on cod fishing was imposed throughout the province, resulting in a massive upheaval of daily life in rural communities. Increasingly, outmigration, coupled with a gentrification of coastal communities such as Keels, has altered the traditional cultural landscape of the region. This course will document the last two inshore fishing families in Keels, focusing on the everyday spaces of these fishers: their homes, work buildings, boats, and shoreline work area. Beyond actual documentation techniques, students will construct a picture of how fishing has influenced community spaces over generations, and how this landscape is now coping with very different values and pressures.