Top of page

Notice
Monday, February 16, 2026: For the President's Day holiday, The Library will open under normal operating hours.

Film, Video Conversation with Lisa Gabbert

Transcript: TEXT

About this Item

Title

  • Conversation with Lisa Gabbert

Summary

  • This entry in the Benjamin Botkin Folklife Lecture Series offers an overview of the occupational folklore that exists among physicians in the United States today. Much of this folklore is humorous, but it can also be earthy and quite dark.

    Lisa Gabbert is a Professor of Folklore Studies in the Department of English and Director of the Folklore Program at Utah State University. Her research interests include folklore and landscape, festivity and play, and occupational folklore in medical contexts. She is the author of “Winter Carnival in a Western Town: Identity, Change, and the Good of the Community” (2011, Utah State University Press); with Keiko Wells, “An Introduction to Vernacular Culture in America: Society, Region, and Tradition” (2017 Maruzen Press, Tokyo); and “The Medical Carnivalesque: Folklore among Physicians” (Indiana University Press 2024). Gabbert focuses on folklore that emerges in physician-to-physician communication, arguing that the content and themes are strikingly parallel to the ones identified by Russian intellectual Mikhail Bakhtin in his concept of the carnivalesque, which is drawn from his analysis of medieval and early modern European culture, particularly pre-Lenten Carnival and the marketplace. In this conversation, Gabbert suggested that, as an occupation, medicine is permeated by the suffering of both patients and physicians, which forms the basis for the medical carnivalesque. Examples and materials are drawn from interviews she conducted with physicians for her 2019 Archie Green Occupational Folklife Project, as well as published, archival and online sources, and personal observations.

Event Date

  • Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Running Time

  • 25 minutes, 18 seconds

Online Format

  • image
  • online text
  • video

Rights & Access

While the Library of Congress created most of the videos in this collection, they include copyrighted materials that the Library has permission from rightsholders to present.  Rights assessment is your responsibility.  The written permission of the copyright owners in materials not in the public domain is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use or other statutory exemptions. There may also be content that is protected under the copyright or neighboring-rights laws of other nations.  Permissions may additionally be required from holders of other rights (such as publicity and/or privacy rights). Whenever possible, we provide information that we have about copyright owners and related matters in the catalog records, finding aids and other texts that accompany collections. However, the information we have may not be accurate or complete.

More about Copyright and other Restrictions

For guidance about compiling full citations consult Citing Primary Sources.

Credit Line: Library of Congress

Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Conversation with Lisa Gabbert. 2025. Video. https://www.loc.gov/item/video-10786/.

APA citation style:

(2025) Conversation with Lisa Gabbert. [Video] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/video-10786/.

MLA citation style:

Conversation with Lisa Gabbert. 2025. Video. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/video-10786/>.