In Unsettling Assumptions editors Pauline Greenhill and Diane Tye examine how tradition and gender come together to unsettle assumptions about culture and its study. Contributors explore the intersections of traditional expressive culture and sexgender systems to question investigate or upset concepts like family ethics and authenticity. Individual essays consider myriad topics such as Thanksgiving turkeys rockabilly and bar fights Chinese tales of female ghosts selkie stories a noisy Mennonite New Years celebration the Distaff Gospels Kentucky tobacco farmers international adoptions and more. In Unsettling Assumptions folkloric forms express but also counteract negative aspects of culture like misogyny homophobia and racism. But expressive culture also emerges as fundamental to our sense of belonging to a family an occupation or friendship group and most notably to identity performativity and the construction and negotiation of power.