Books in the Folklore Studies in a Multicultural World series

Few people understand what it is like to work in corrections. Claire Schmidt, whose extended family includes three generations of Wisconsin prison workers, introduces readers to penitentiary officers and staff as they share stories, debate the role of corrections in American racial politics and social justice, and talk about the important function of humor in their jobs.

Karl May wrote novels about a fictionalized American Wild West that count among the most popular books of German literature. His stories left an imprint on German culture, resulting in a variety of Wild West festivals. This book, based on years of fieldwork, addresses a timely issue: cultural transfer and appropriations.

Reveals the daily lives and religious practice of ordinary Muslim men in Tajikistan as they aspire to become Sufi mystics. Benjamin Gatling describes in vivid detail the range of expressive forms - memories, stories, poetry, artifacts, rituals, and other embodied practices - employed as they try to construct a Sufi life in twenty-first-century Central Asia.