Jamshid (Jamie) Tehrani
Dr Jamshid Tehrani is a Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Durham University (UK) and member of the Durham Cultural Evolution Research Centre (DCERC). His research examines how culture evolves as it gets transmitted from person to person and from generation to generation, with a special focus on popular narratives, such as traditional folktales, urban legends and modern day conspiracy theories
Stories Without Borders: Following the tracks of international folktales
Some folktales are rooted in particular times and places, whereas others travel widely, spreading across regions, countries and even entire continents. These stories without borders are known as “international types of folktale” and include such tales as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Beauty and the Beast. In this lecture, Tehrani considers the ways in which these mainly orally-transmitted stories mutate as they get passed down and adapt to new habitats. He will show how methods from evolutionary biology can be used to analyse the plots of related stories. He will also reflect on the wider implications of this research for understanding the success and stability of the stories, what they tell us about the past, and the relationships between patterns of cultural, linguistic, and genetic inheritance