Unsettling Assumptions: Tradition, Gender, Drag ed. by Pauline Greenhill and Diane Tye (review)

Unsettling Assumptions: Tradition, Gender, Drag. Ed. Pauline Greenhill and Diane Tye. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2014. Pp. 308, thematic clusters, acknowledgments, introduction, bibliography, filmography, about the authors, index, 22 black-and- white illustrations, 1 map.)Unsettling Assumptions is, first and foremost, a compelling and readable book. Each chapter examines a folkloric or popular exploring the intersections of tradition, gender, and/or drag. Editors Pauline Greenhill and Diane Tye follow JeffTodd Titon's notion that a text is any object of interpretation, and accordingly these texts range across a variety of media and cultural practices (p. 4). This broad generic and topical span includes dress, family folklore, folktale, food, heritage, humor/legend, mumming/ custom, personal experience narrative, music, and occupational folklore (p. 3). While this incredible variety might at first seem chaotic, the richness and diversity of the materials actually underscore the importance of recognizing and evaluating gender performativity in traditional materials and suggest multiple directions for further researchThe topics of the chapters, as well as the accompanying analyses, are often interdisciplinary, but folklore provides a grounding and unifying thread for the collection. In their introduction, Greenhill and Tye explicitly situate the book within the discipline of folklore. Concepts such as group, art, text, genre, performance, context, tradition, and identity serve as touchstones throughout the book, though chapters are not formally associated with particular terms. Indeed, the chapters are deliberately not grouped or organized thematically-rather, they are listed alphabetically by the authors' surnames-in order to promote discussion across texts and categories and reinforce the editors' resistance to hierarchies and rigid categorization.This book adds to the growing body of work investigating the intersections between folklore and queer studies. While much folkloristic scholarship has addressed issues of gender, the heteronormative, cisgendered perspective has been privileged, and comparatively little work has been done from a queer or trans perspective. Unsettling Assumptions is an important contribution to this area of interdisciplinary folkloristics, particularly because it is relevant both to the teaching and study of folklore. The entire collection is clearly and accessibly written, and individual essays would be appropriate for undergraduate or graduate classes in folklore, gender studies, queer theory, or cultural studies.As the title suggests, the book is, quite literally, unsettling to read at times. The chapters address identities and representations often shaped by patriarchal and colonial forces, and these influences can be reinforced or mimicked in cultural practices. For this reason, the content itself can be unsettling, and the authors actively work to bring these discrepancies and uncomfortable issues to light. This is perhaps most pronounced in chapter 1, Three Dark-Brown Maidens and the Brommtopp: (De)Constructing Masculinities in Southern Manitoba Mennonite Mumming, by Marcie Fehr and Pauline Greenhill. This essay examines gender and drag in the Southern Manitoba Mennonite Brommtopp mumming tradition. In this holiday performance, male mummers cross-dress in female garb, reinforcing female stereotypes in their actions but maintaining enough masculine markers to avoid inadvertently passing. Some Brommtopp mummers also appropriate an ethnic identity through ethnic drag, dressing in order to mimic or evoke Chinese, Jewish, or First Nations identities. …

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