Contemporary Legend

One of my research areas is contemporary legend, and I am the co-editor of Contemporary Legend, the journal of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research (ISCLR). [For those keeping track, yes, I had to type “contemporary legend” three times in that one sentence.]

Legend scholarship can focus on the text, of course, and a lot of what happens builds on finding narratives in active circulation (now, or historically, so by ‘contemporary’ we mean in relation to the time being considered), because stories are fun and legends, because they are weird or scary or funny or horrific or gross, are doubly so. But once you have identified the story you have to ask why: why it is in circulation and why it is ‘believed’ (insofar as they are believed). Because legends are credible enough they suggest something about the convictions and prejudices about the group telling them.

I have written about legend a few times in a more or less straightforward way, but legend as process—locating the story within the group’s sense of shared worldview—is what informs my stand-up scholarship.

articles on legend

“Contemporary Legend.” SAGE Research Methods Foundations, ed. Paul Anthony Atkinson, Sara Delamont, and Richard Williams. .

“‘Servants of the World, Unite!’: Narratives of Negotiating Domestic Staff Among Canadian Immigration Foreign Service Officers.” Contemporary Legend Series 3, 6 (2016): 73–90.

“Stand-up Comedy as a Genre of Intimacy.” Ethnologies 30.2 (2008): 153–180. 

“Einstein’s Pants and Dr. X’s Comps: Straddling the Line between Gossip and Legend.” Culture & Tradition 26 (2004): 11–25.

“The Insight Legend.” Contemporary Legend, New Series 6 (2003): 44–88.