SKINWALKERS AND GENDER ROLES

Presenter(s)

Marius Vold

Abstract or Description

Legends of shapeshifters exist in different forms all over the world. The Skinwalker, or Yenaldlooshi, is an evil shape-shifting sorcerer, traditionally most often associated with the Indigenous North American Navaho tribes. To fully understand the Skinwalker stories and what they communicate to their audience, it is imperative to understand the gender portrayal of this monster and how this portrayal shapes the Skinwalker stories. I have gone through a little over one hundred modern Skinwalker stories and selected three stories that I used to perform a comparative analysis of the Skinwalkers’ gender portrayals to traditional gender representations of villains in folklore within this paper. As the Skinwalker changes its gender portrayal, so does its behavior and function change within the story, often marking turning points in the progression of the story. We can see a clear distinction in the Skinwalker’s behavior and function, emphasized and dependent upon the gender it is portraying, as they fall within expected gender-stereotypical behaviors. This becomes especially emphasized by the Skinwalker’s androgyny, its ability to play on both different gender stereotypes as well as fears of sexual confusion, the undefinable, and the chaotic.

This presentation will be an oral presentation in Undergraduate Oral Session 1.

Mentor

Rhonda Dass