Once upon a time, a king told a girl to spin a roomful of straw into gold. She looked at him and said “Are you crazy? I’m a miller’s daughter, not a magician. You’ve got the wrong girl.”
In another kingdom, another girl looked up at the glass mountain before her and then down at the iron shoes on her feet. She wondered if she’d ever get to the top.
And over the sea, another girl stared at the thousands of lentils scattered across the dirt and knew she could never gather them up alone.
How do you complete an impossible task? How do you get into the palace, carry water in a sieve, or catch the moon?
How do you make magic when all you have is straw and despair?
You turn to folklore, stories, and art. You turn to each other.
You practice hope.
And then you make some goddamn magic.
You deserve to re-fill your well. You deserve sanity and kindness, confidence and joy. You deserve ways to feel stable and powerful, even when everything feels heavy. And, just as importantly, you deserve laughter and delight, which are criminally underrated but absolutely vital.
Stories have power. Folklore has power.
We have power.
Sometimes, it’s hard to remember this and even harder to really believe it. If you don’t see it already, HopeLore will help you remember.
The stories and questions we’ll explore together point to possibilities and strategies. They show us tricksters and boldness, heartbreak and wild imagination. Imagination that can help us recover, recharge, and take action, together. They show us how tiny steps are what hope is made of.
If you’ve been feeling burned out, overwhelmed, and like your spark is being doused with a firehose…
If you’re struggling to tend to your own needs…
If you want to feel resilient, creative, and powerful, all by unlocking the power of folklore, art, and community…
HopeLore is for you.
What Are We Covering?
HopeLore is structured a little differently from anything we’ve done before. (It’s just that kind of year.)
Each module will include a lecture AND a workshop component, and we estimate each meeting will last at least 1.5 - 2 hours.
Each meeting will be recorded and available to watch after it takes place.
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Our Modules:
“Start small, like oak trees”:
IDENTITY
Who are you really?
Through the lens of the incomparable Terry Pratchett, we’ll explore what happens when you inherit a vast responsibility before you’re ready and think about how to step into your power when you have no idea what you’re doing. We’ll follow an arc from grief to hope and strength. And, in the workshop, we’ll help you zero in on your most core vital values.
Text: The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
Live Discussion/Q&A on April 15th at 7PM ET,
will be recorded!
“Two sisters singing with one breath”:
GROUNDING
How do you find steadiness?
Amal El-Mohtar’s gorgeous book is all about sisterhood, music, and magic. In this module, we’ll think about your roots: the things that ground you and some of the strategies you can learn to steady you when you feel at your lowest. The workshop will draw from the strength of El-Mohtar’s protagonists by channeling collaboration, creativity, and the history of ballads and other folksongs.
Text: The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
Live Discussion/Q&A on April 22nd at 7PM ET,
will be recorded!
“The small evils in front of you”:
PURPOSE
What do you love?
You know what is total garbage? Toxic positivity. You know what’s really, really hard? Finding a balance between justified fury and mental sustainability. Using Atwater’s unflinching exploration of Regency England (and Fairyland!), we’ll tackle the ways that anger can be powerful, and, in the workshop, we’ll explore how acknowledging “small evils” can be key to finding your purpose.
Text: Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater
Live Discussion/Q&A on April 29th at 7PM ET,
will be recorded!
"A world that doesn’t follow orders":
ACTION
What can you change?
Vassa in the Night is about action in the face of chaos, just like all Baba Yaga stories. (Yes, this is a Baba Yaga story set in Brooklyn.) And when the world is chaotic, where do you even begin? How do you take action? According to Porter’s tale, you find backup, you take chances, and you make hope. In the workshop, we’ll borrow some tools from Internal Family Systems to find your first steps.
Text: Vassa in the Night by Sarah Porter
Live Discussion/Q&A on May 6th at 7PM ET,
will be recorded!
What Do You Get?
We have packed SO MUCH into this!!
- 4 Recorded Lectures + Workshops from us that you can watch any time you want! Our lectures and discussions are college-level… but definitely not snooze fests! During these talks, we'll dive deep into each week's theme and individual book. After that, we'll do a full workshop component - it's really like getting 4 full lectures and 4 full workshops, so 8 lessons total! Because of this, we do think the live events will be on the longer side... and if you've taken courses with us before, you probably already know we tend to pack a ton in!
- A PDF HopeLore Workbook, which we will build together as the course moves forward. The first week will contain introductory pages and all week one materials, including a lesson write up, an incantation/affirmation, discussion questions, and workshop information. After that, subsequent materials will be provided each week (including some bonus resources!) By the end of the course, you'll have a full workbook!
- BONUS access to our private Discord server just for HopeLore students - While participation in the course Discord server is optional, the magic when our students gather together really is one of the best parts of Carterhaugh. We have an amazing community of kind, creative, and very smart people, and the discussions that unfold in these space are always a delight and incredibly supportive. In fact, we learn new things from our students every time!
- A BONUS two-hour zine workshop from Derek Newman-Stille (more info below!)
- A BONUS HopeLore playlist, for your listening delight.
BONUS MATERIALS!
Bonus #1: “The Power of Hope: A Zine Workshop with Derek Newman-Stille”
In a special bonus 2-hour workshop, our dear friend and colleague Derek Newman-Stille will guide you through a ZINE making class on April 24th at 7PM ET!
Here's their write up -->
Zines have a history of challenging authority and advocating for change. They were a voice for early third wave feminists to express themselves. They were a mechanism of hope for a better future.
Zines are a way of sharing ideas, thoughts, and feelings about a topic of interest to you. Zines are an easy to create shareable item that you can put right in other people’s hands and give them something to take with them.
Join us in learning how to make zines if you are new to zine culture or if you are an established zinester come create some zines about hope with us!
Derek Newman-Stille (they/them) is a Queer, Nonbinary, Disabled, Fat, Femme settler Canadian (Turtle Island) author, poet, academic, editor, visual artist, and activist. They are the 9-time Aurora Award-winning creator of the digital humanities site Speculating Canada and the associated radio show. They frequently use fantasy and science fiction as a means of elucidating possibilities and potentials, reimagining the way that we situate identities and ideas. Derek has published poetry in fora such as Fat Studies In Canada: (Re)Mapping The Field, Whispers Between Fairies, and Polar Borealis. They have performed and published poetry for Artsweek Peterborough's SHIFT: Post-Code Tour, and performed poetry for Peterborough's Arts Ability: Taking the Stage.
Bonus #2: The HopeLore Zine
Want us to send you a zine all about cultivating hope through folklore IN THE MAIL?
How about a zine THAT YOU HELPED MAKE?
Derek is going to guide us through a whole zine-making workshop where you’ll learn all about this creative, disruptive art form and make one yourself. That’s bonus #1. Bonus #2 is that you can send us a page of your zine. Then we’ll compile all the pages we receive into one AWESOME zine, print it, and send it out to you in the mail!
Come make some subversive, delightful art with us!
(PLEASE NOTE: we can only offer free shipping to enrolled students in the US - we have made this mistake before, and it cost us $$$. International students, we still love you, and we will happily send you a hard copy of the zine. Just shoot us an email, and we will work out the cost of shipping depending on your location!)
<-- Some Possible Sample Pages!
While we can't know for sure exactly what the zine we make together will look like in the end, we're imagining something like this!
Bonus #2:
The Hopelore Playlist
The revolution will be musical.
Bonus #3:
Private Discord Server
The revolution will be chatty.
NOTE:
To fully participate in this course,
you will need to purchase or borrow the following books -
The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett, The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar, Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater, and Vassa in the Night by Sarah Porter
Who Are We?
Hi, we're Dr. Sara Cleto and Dr. Brittany Warman,
founders of The Carterhaugh School.
We earned our PhDs in folklore and literature in 2018,
and resilience is our superpower.
Seriously.
When Sara was in college, a bunch of scientists at UPenn wanted to scan her brain to see if they could figure out why she always scored so freakishly highly on lab studies about resilience and positive psychology. (You can’t make this stuff up.) But, truly, she will just keep going, just keep bouncing back, under truly trying circumstances. (See: getting through an entire semester when her jaw was locked shut and she couldn’t eat solid food but still thriving to a disturbing extent.)
Brittany has struggled with severe OCD since about the 4th grade, but only started getting real help for it when she was in college. One of her biggest breakdowns came right after she started graduate school, and a lot of people told her things like "it's okay to quit" - but she never did. She believed in her dreams, and her ability to achieve them, more than the lies her disorder was telling her.
We attribute a lot of this to our coping mechanisms: art and community.
And we want to bring them to you, the best way we know how.
Carterhaugh has always been about this, especially our live courses. But now we are turning up the dial as far as it will go. We want you to feel seen, inspired, rejuvenated, and empowered. We want to use stories and fellowship to make you feel so magical that you glow in the dark like a sparkler.
Folklore is the artistic fabric of everyday life. Fairy tales are stories of magic that reflect cultural and personal dreams. Hope is something that you do, that you make.
HopeLore is our quest to weave these things together and bring them to you so that you can feel equipped to handle overwhelm and embrace joy, even when things are really tough.
FAQ
"Um, what exactly IS Carterhaugh?" - The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic is an award-winning online school dedicated to classes on fairy tales, folklore, and all things fantastic. It was created by Sara and Brittany in 2016 as a place for those who dreamed of elven battles while studying economics, those who have always sworn they could see ghosts, and those who longed for a school of magic to send them an unexpected acceptance letter. We aim to use our knowledge and passion for these subjects to share their wonder, solidify their importance in society, and spread a bit of magic into the world. Want to know more? Check out our "About" page by clicking here!
"When will I hear from you/get access to the first lesson?" - You will hear from us each week on Saturday, for 4 weeks, starting April 12th, 2025 - we generally get things out by noon, but sometimes there are evil technology fairies! Rest assured that we'll keep you updated if that happens though. We will send an e-mail and post in the new private Discord server we're trying out for this course.
"What if I can’t look at any of the materials that day / can't come to the live lecture/workshop?" - It's always fun to attend the lectures/workshops live, but you do NOT have to watch anything on any specific date. Everything will be recorded and reposted as soon as possible after the live events air. This is one of the many reasons why online courses work so well – they can fit everyone’s schedule :). The lecture/workshop replay recordings will remain up throughout the course, so you can catch up whenever you'd like! We guarantee access for at least a year, but in practice we haven't taken anything down yet.
"Is this course only open to women?" - Nope! People of all genders are welcome at Carterhaugh and in this course! While our courses do tend to primarily attract women, men and non-binary people have joined and loved them too!
"When will I get the bonus materials?" - Derek's workshop will take place on April 24th, 2025 at 7PM ET, and a recording will be provided as soon as possible after it concludes. The other bonus materials will be available as soon as week one goes live on April 12th, 2025!
“I’m just a folklore fan. I don’t want to ruin my enjoyment with a bunch of academic stuff.” - We are the last people in the WORLD who would ruin your enjoyment of folklore and literature!! Believe us, we’re just as passionate about the beauty and wonder of these tales, and we know that part of that wonder lies in their mystery. We will never tell you what a tale “means." These tales are meant to be explored, meant to inspire personal meaning. We’ll give you folkloric history, and how the tales have been interpreted in the past, but we’ll never tell you what you “have to” believe about any folkloric story and we’re CERTAINLY not the kind of professors who are gleeful about “ruining” folklore for people!
“Guys, I love this, but money is SO tight right now….” - We understand, and know that money is tight for so many, especially this year. This is why we’ve made this 4 lecture/4 workshop course as affordable as possible AND packed in all the enchantment, hope, story, art, and community you crave right now. We're also offering three different payment plans (and an early bird deal!) to help you find an option that works. If you're in certain countries, you can also pay with services like Affirm, AfterPay, and Klarna. Our school is an investment, we know that, but it’s one that you deserve - we know our community and the magic we make together is worth it, and we would love for you to join us.
“How involved are you guys? Is this just a thing where I get access to a bunch of stuff and then good luck?” - NOPE! We are 100% involved in our courses from start to finish. We’ll be jumping in to answer questions and offer encouragement in our private Discord server, and we’ll also be available after lectures/workshops for live Q&A sessions to answer all your questions. If you can't make it to the Q&As live, you can email us in advance, we'll answer your question at live event, and then you can catch the recording when you have time!
“What happened to the private Facebook groups/Teachable community forums? Do I HAVE to participate in the Discord?” - Our private course community spaces are some of the most important parts of our courses, but we no longer feel like Facebook is the place to host them. We attempted to use the Teachable community forums for the past few courses we've done, but we found that they just didn't have the right features to facilitate the vibrant community discussions of courses past. With that in mind, we're trying Discord for Hopelore. Participation on the Discord chat is not required, but it really does add to your enjoyment of the course if you connect with your fellow students in spaces besides the chat going at the live lectures/workshops, so we encourage you to give it a try. If you miss old school chat rooms, you might even experience some welcome nostalgia!
"What I find that this just isn't for me?" - We stand behind our courses 100%, so if you are unsatisfied for any reason, please contact us with your refund request and answers to the discussion questions for week one by April 16th at midnight ET for a full refund. Please understand that we cannot grant refund requests after this date.
As always, if you have additional questions at any time, don't hesitate to get in touch with us at [email protected]
Looking for more testimonials?
Click here!
All the above makes you go “YEAH. BRING IT ON.”
Folklore and fairy tales light you up
You want to learn how to use them to vanquish the forces of despair
You’re looking specifically for a discussion of contemporary religious or spiritual practices
You don’t want to mix your academic studies or cultural criticism with a sense of humor
You’re expecting an instant, miraculous fix - we’re offering real, effective tools, not an instantaneous cure for existing in the 21st century
Okay, time for some real talk.
Our community - the students and friends and magic seekers that have found their way into our courses - have been the biggest surprise and the best part of Carterhaugh. It's not something we anticipated, but it's not an exaggeration to say that it's why we're still here, teaching courses online in a job that's better than anything we could have imagined. It's because of YOU.
If you want connection, if you want to hang out and learn in a low-key way with other wonderful people, this community is for you. If you love folklore, and you're looking for others who are enthusiastic, creative, imaginative, and kind, welcome home.
Carterhaugh grew from our love of fairy tales and our own friendship with each other. Carterhaugh is still here and thriving because of the what came after: our community.
Also?
We are feminists and disability scholars who support the LGBTQ+ community and believe that Black lives matter.
Period.
The gates of Carterhaugh are open...
NOTE:
To fully participate in this course,
you will need to purchase or borrow the following books -
The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett, The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar, Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater, and Vassa in the Night by Sarah Porter
If You've Read This Far...
If you've read this far, clearly something about our school resonates for you.
You can be the magical soul you want to be.
Art and stories can help you get there.
Invest in your magical life with us at Carterhaugh - you won't regret it.
