Observing the Outports. Webb., 1950-1980 : Describing Newfoundland Culture, 1950-1980

In __Observing the Outports__, Jeff A. Webb illustrates how interdisciplinary collaborations created the field of “Newfoundland studies.”

The years after Newfoundland’s confederation with Canada were ones of rapid social and economic change, as provincial resettlement and industrialization initiatives attempted to transform the lives of rural Newfoundlanders. At Memorial University in St. John’s, a new generation of faculty saw the province’s transformation as a critical moment. Some hoped to solve the challenges of modernization through their rural research. Others hoped to document the island’s “traditional” culture before it disappeared. Between them they created the field of “Newfoundland studies.”

In Observing the Outports, Jeff A. Webb illustrates how interdisciplinary collaborations among scholars of lexicography, history, folklore, anthropology, sociology, and geography laid the foundation of our understanding of Newfoundland society in an era of modernization. His extensive archival research and oral history interviews illuminate how scholars at Memorial University created an intellectual movement that paralleled the province’s cultural revival.

Contents 5 Acknowledgments 7 Introduction 11 Chapter One. Viewing the Universe through Newfoundland Eyes: The Dictionary of Newfoundland English 36 Chapter Two. Writing History 94 Chapter Three. Herbert Halpert and Christmas Mumming in Newfoundland 155 Chapter Four. Cat Harbour: Anthropologists in Outports 209 Chapter Five. The Peopling of Newfoundland: Mapping Cultural Transfer and Settlement 254 Chapter Six. Communities in Decline: The Study of Resettlement 288 Conclusion 327 Notes 361 Bibliography 403 Index 423