FTTV Takes Western States Folklore Society: 2018 Edition

The second week of April this year found the FTTV team in sunny Los Angeles, at the Otis College of Art and Design. Western States Folklore Society was having its 77th Annual Meeting, and we had been working on our panel for months. We applied as a complete panel, “Fantastic Realities of Fairy-Tale TV,” which gave us the opportunity to synthesize a panel that gave a diverse look at many different research approaches to studying fairy tale television. We had …

FTTV Visits Digital Humanities Utah

Two weeks ago, the FTTV team had the opportunity to attend DHU3, the Digital Humanities Utah conference. A quick trip up to Logan (even through the snow storm) was worth it to get to the conference generously hosted by Utah State University on February 23-24. It served as a great chance to meet people working in digital humanities, hear about their projects and ideas, and share about our own project. Our presentation format as a roundtable enabled all the members …

Unbirthday Tea Party: “We’re All Mad Here” Event Recap

Our 4th annual Unbirthday Tea Party brought in a wide variety of Alice fans and fairy tale fans alike. Everyone knows that our research team is mad about fairy tales, and we wanted to share that passion by discussing the portrayal of madness in Alice in Wonderland adaptations across time. As the audience enjoyed tea and cookies, Erica and Lauren tag-teamed their way through a discussion of the original novel and early film adaptations, then followed up with an overview …

Henry Mills, Child in Distress

Written by Erica Smith, one of our new team members! The traditional fairy tales which Once Upon A Time adapts often cast women in the role of damsel-in-distress. Since Once Upon A Time is structured around empowering the adult woman, Henry, a male child, steps in whenever the story calls for a “damsel” character. Targeted at older viewers, the show’s core cast is built mostly of adults in their thirties. Snow White and Belle (Beauty), vaguely youthful in storybooks and …

Follow the White Rabbit

The following is a guest post written by Erica Smith, who was enrolled in Dr. Rudy’s 394R class Winter Semester. This was a final writing assignment for Applied English Visualizing Wonder: Fairy Tales and Television. We hope you enjoy!   When Lewis Carroll’s novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was published in 1865, it was received as a delightfully absurd children’s story. Disney’s 1951 Alice adaptation  features lighthearted, fanciful musical numbers. In “A World of My Own”, Alice’s envisions her ideal mad world, …