Writing in 1968 as head of the Folklore Institute
at Indiana University, Richard M. Dorson bemoaned the lack of
opportunities in higher education for studying the "home turf" in
America of many budding folklorists. He had been trained in the History
of American Civilization at Harvard and had been the first doctoral
candidate (and he claimed the last) to choose folklore as one of five
American fields. He considered folklore essential to an understanding of
American culture, especially with the folklorist's eye for discerning
theories regarding the function of tradition and methods of field work
and working with human and archival sources. He looked around at an
upsurge of interest among students scattered among a variety of
disciplinary silos investigating ethnic, occupational, regional, and
gendered cultures in the United States and predicted, "Among the new
generation of students are some comajors in folklore and American
Studies who will master comparative, historical, and critical thinking,
and they may produce the sound, perceptive treatments of folklore in
American literature or American history that are yet to be written." He
may have been thinking of literature and history because of his
orientation derived from his Harvard days (he was an undergraduate major
in "history and literature"), but he probably did not fully anticipate
the "cultural turn" that embraced American traditions as a
specialization with the added tools of ethnography and sociological and
psychological analysis and the applications of public folklore, cultural
resource management, new media, heritage and museum studies.
Shortly after Dorson's complaint was aired, a dramatic shift occurred
in the view of folklore as a living tradition close to home that
enabled American folklore to expand as a field of study. Before 1975,
Dorson could cite surveys of folklore coursework in the United States
and Canada that showed world folklore and the ballad dominating the
American collegiate curriculum. By the 1980s, however, American folklore
rose to the top of the list of the most common courses in folklore
offered in American universities. One entire major program begun in 1966
in Cooperstown connected to the State University of New York offered a
stand-alone M.A. degree in "American Folk Culture" that stood apart from
other programs operating at the time at the University of Pennsylvania,
Indiana University, University of Texas, and UCLA in its emphasis on
material culture, folklife and ethnology, and museum studies in the
United States. In the next decade, students could declare "folklife" as a
specialization on the way to receiving a Ph.D. in American Studies at
George Washington University. At Dorson's home institution of Indiana
University, the American Studies Program allowed students to hold a
double major in folklore and American Studies. Beginning as an
interdepartmental "curriculum," the Folklore Program at University of
North Carolina moved into the Department of American Studies by
century's end with a commitment to regional folklife, particularly in
the South. Although Cooperstown shut down its folklore program in favor
of a concentration in history museum studies, a new program at Penn
State Harrisburg compensated for the loss by offering a folk culture
subfield with their American Studies Ph.D.
These developments raise questions about the preparation for
scholarship and careers in the twenty-first century that focus on the
American context for folk traditions, particularly in the educational
incubator of the Middle Atlantic Region that had long been viewed as a
microcosm of America with its plural ethnic identity, location as source
of American cultural movements, and regional "middleness." The
conventional routes into folk cultural study in the twentieth century
primarily had been through literature (often in departments of English
and languages) and anthropology. The kinds of folklore studied often
varied, and were limited, according to the disciplinary focus.
Understandably, an emphasis on literature and speech in language
departments influenced the consideration of folklore as narrative.
Anthropology courses on folk culture primarily presented material on
custom and narrative, primarily in non-Western societies. It certainly
became possible to take folklore as a major at a few universities,
including Dorson's beloved Harvard, but American material often was a
minor segment of the curriculum, in favor of a global, comparative
perspective. I recall when I taught at Harvard in 1996-1997, my course
offerings in American folklore to my surprise broke new ground, even
though they attracted the notice of the Harvard Crimson for
being "must-have" electives in an otherwise esoteric curriculum. UCLA
couched folklore courses under a World Arts and Culture department and
an American folklife course at Indiana University, long a mainstay of
the curriculum, disappeared along with Dorson's own famed course in
"Folklore in American Civilization."
A first question to ask is whether the American focus is too limiting
for a boundary-crossing phenomenon like folklore. The answer
necessarily takes in the vastness and diversity of the American social
and physical landscape. Further the spatialization of folklore with
"America" forces analysis of the connection of folklore to national,
regional, and local contexts that are often political as well as
cultural. Perhaps this tendency is why American Studies has been
especially attractive to considerations of public engagement, heritage,
and application. That is not to say that transnational connections and
global diffusion are excluded. Americanists, well aware of the migrant
nature of their subject, also take as a given the necessity of seeking
sources and precedents outside the continent for American cultural
phenomena. That orientation leads to a twin concern for synchronic and
diachronic analysis, that is, using ethnography to document the present
and historical chronology and context for precedents. The explanatory
goal of American Studies often led to an additional step beyond
identification common in folkloristic essays: psychological or cognitive
sources of traditions. For its evidence, American Studies is not
limited by a discipline to a type or genre. Therefore, material culture,
folk arts, beliefs, and bodylore that went overlooked in English,
history, and anthropology were avidly picked up to address the issues of
an American environment.
A second question is where folklore fits into an intellectual
organization by geographic area. The answer to this one is that a
natural fit of folklore with American Studies occurs because of the
special concern for interpreting the patterns and ideas evident in
American culture. Americanists therefore called for looking at
interrelations of folk, popular, and elite culture rather than
delimiting or excluding material for study. Dorson offered a visual
representation of a conventional disciplinary view of culture with
bounded boxes piled on top of one another. Folk rested on the bottom and
elite sat at the top of the heap. In an Americanist orientation,
culture is presented as a series of relationships with folk interacting
with popular, mass, and elite. This orientation is one of the reasons, I
believe, that the social interactional approach emphasizing the
situations and scenes of American everyday life has been an especially
important contribution of folklore to American Studies (Bauman and
Abrahams 1976: 375-76). Folklore provides expressive evidence of
America's pluralism at the grassroots. As such, area studies have
inspired a number of interdisciplinary spinoffs that have the potential
to complement cultural area and national work and emphasize folkloristic
perspectives: ethnic studies, regional studies, gender studies,
cultural studies, religious studies, and cultural sustainability, among
others. Perhaps because of the weak regional identity of the Middle
Atlantic and ethnic pluralism compared to the South, West, and New
England, however, much of the interdisciplinary effort in the Middle
Atlantic States has been in American Studies as an umbrella for local
and ethnic studies.
If American Studies is so broadly conceived, however, one might worry
that folklore would get swallowed up or relegated to the margins of
study. A mitigating factor from the intellectual heritage of
folkloristics is that a body of scholarship exists covering many groups
and genres that have been overlooked by the big disciplines. In the
search for cultural coverage in American Studies, folkloristics often
gets noticed more than in other disciplinary homes. Additionally,
folklorists more than anthropologists have been willing to examine one's
own backyard, so to speak, as a research field to query issues of
identity, function, and symbolism. Familiarity with one's culture did
not exclude researchers from taking an objective stance; in fact,
"dealing with one's own" was encouraged. It also often led to an applied
aspect where the results of research could lead to social action
including education, cultural programming (e.g., preservation projects,
exhibitions, festivals), and public policy advocacy.
Although journals abound with calls for linking the evidence of
folklore with American Studies, material on devising a curriculum
oriented toward folkloristics hardly exists. An intriguing exception is
Tremaine McDowell's description of the efforts by the American Studies
program at the University of Minnesota to emphasize folklore "as sources
of information concerning America" (McDowell 1948: 44). The alteration
he proposed to disciplinary approaches in history and literature to
folklore is to emphasize the relationship of folklore to American life
rather than letters or events. Formal instruction did exist within the
department of history (by Philip Jordan and at least once by Richard
Dorson). McDowell was quick to point out that "the student's work in
folklore is done within the frame of reference not of history alone but
the much wider frame of American culture as a whole" (1948: 46). The
radical statement for its time, however, was that "This broad overview
is organized and systematized for seniors in a final proseminar in
American Studies" (1948: 46). In other words, folklore is the
foundation as well as capstone of students' American cultural education.
Minnesota did not sustain this orientation that just may have been
ahead of its time, although folklorists taught there through the end of
the twentieth century. I daresay, however, that Penn State Harrisburg
with its new doctoral program (established in 2009) building upon its
legacy of undergraduate and graduate education
since 1972 is actively working to reframe "American culture as a
whole." Instead of a solitary course on folklore, several exist with
different concentrations. Undergraduates can begin with "Introduction to
American Folklore" and "Popular Culture and Folklife" at the 100-level
and advance to "American Folklore" at the 300 level and "Folktale in
American Literature" at the 400 level. Folklore is evident as it was at
Minnesota in the capstone experience of "American Themes, American Eras"
(491W). Additionally, students have access to a number of applied
courses oriented toward public heritage careers such as "Museum
Studies," "Public Heritage," "Historic Preservation," "Archives and
Records Management," and "Oral History." A Center for Pennsylvania
Culture supports much of the regional public heritage work and provides
research projects. With the passage of time and new areas of inquiry
from the foundations of American Studies, new coursework involving
folklore is available such as "Americans at Work," "American
Masculinities," "Ethnicity and the American Experience," "Ethnography of
the United States," and "American Expressive Forms." These courses are
tied together by an overarching goal "to advance the documentation and
interpretation of the American experience, past and present, through
research with a variety of evidence, including objects, still and moving
images, practices and performances, and oral and written texts."
The master's program features coursework, internships, and
independent studies in folklore and folklife, including "Topics in
Folklore" and "Material Culture and Folklife." Regularly offered courses
in "Ethnography and Society," "Local and Regional Studies," "Seminar in
Public Heritage," "Topics in Popular Culture," and "Field Experience in
Americans Studies" conspicuously complement the strong folkloric
component of the program. Special topic graduate courses taught by
folklorists have included "Foodways," "Public Folklore," "Folk Art,"
"Folk Medicine," "Folk Music," and "Festival." The culminating
experience is a thesis or project
(including exhibitions, documentaries, catalogues, and creative
productions) that allows for alternative forms of scholarship. Many of
these projects have been on folklore including published versions on
legend trips, Pennsylvania German folklife, folk crafts, vernacular
architecture, folklore in education, and children's.
Many teachers and public heritage professionals may "stumble" upon
folklore and then embrace it in their graduate coursework as part of a
general plan of study. At the doctoral level, students tend to declare
folk culture as a specialization. Other fields that complement it at
Penn State Harrisburg are defined as course sequences
in "Public Heritage and Museum Studies," "Interdisciplinary History and
Politics," "Society and Ethnography," and "Regional, Urban, and
Environmental Studies. Doctoral students declare two of these subfields
and most budding folklorists claim "Society and Ethnography" or "Public
Heritage and Museum Studies" along with folk and popular culture. Even
if they do not identify themselves as folklorists, they get a strong
dose of folkloristics in their American Studies preparation that serves
them for projects that have included food, media, and art studies.
Indeed, the first dissertation to come out of the program was on a
folkloristic topic of folkloric responses to disaster on the Internet
followed by projects on Jewish dress, backpacking narratives, and food
recipe transmission. The program is also home to the Middle Atlantic
American Studies Association which sponsors research conferences
involving students and professionals, such as the upcoming "Heritage and
the State" conference co-sponsored with the Middle Atlantic Folklife
Association at the State Capitol. Faculty also encourage students with
editorial and research projects such as the Jewish Cultural Studies
Series, Encyclopedia of American Folklife, Susquehanna Heritage,
McCormick Family Papers, International Journal of the History of Sport,
and Pennsylvania-German Research Guide.
My prediction for the twenty-first century, maybe even bolder than
Dorson's uttered for the twentieth century, is that the new generation
of students in the United States desiring to work in folklore will find a
home in American Studies and its interdisciplinary spinoffs rather than
in the "conventional" disciplines of English, anthropology, and
history--and even folklore. And in the process, the face of folklore will
contain more folklife, material culture, and public heritage concerns
than in years past. The theoretical orientations may also shift, too,
with attention to cultural history, everyday life, media and
contemporary practices, and folk-popular culture relations. The
institutions of the Middle Atlantic can lead the way.
References
Baker, Ronald L. 1971. "Folklore Courses and Programs in American Colleges and Universities." Journal of American Folklore 84: 221-29.
________. 1986. "Folklore and Folklife Studies in American and Canadian Colleges and Universities." Journal of American Folklore 99: 50-74.
Bauman, Richard, and Roger D. Abrahams. 1976. "American Folklore and American Studies." American Quarterly 28: 360-77.
Bronner, Simon J. 1996. "American Studies and Folklore." In American Folklore: An Encyclopedia, ed. Jan Harold Brunvand, 24-27. New York: Garland.
Cohen, Hennig. 1959. "American Folklore and American Studies: A Final Comment." Journal of American Folklore 72: 241-42.
Dolby, Sandra K. 1996. "Essential Contributions of a Folkloric Perspective to American Studies." Journal of Folklore Research 33: 58-64.
Dorson, Richard M. 1950. "The Growth of Folklore Courses." Journal of American Folklore 63: 345-59.
Dorson, Richard M. 1971. "Folklore in Relation to American Studies." In American Folklore and the Historian by Richard M. Dorson, 78-93. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
McDowell, Tremaine. 1948. "Folklore and American Studies." American Heritage 2 (old series): 44-47.
Recent Comments