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IPL Pathfinder: American Folklife Resources

Pathfinder: American Folklife Resources

General Purpose

This guide is for students and teachers who want to find out more about American Folklife Studies. It will define what American Folklife is and then provide a pathway through print materials and network resources that together will give you basis from which you can prepare lesson plans, syllabi or research a specific topic.

What is Folklife?

The folklife concept is associated with Scandinavian and German speaking countries. It is a branch of anthropology called regional ethnology and concentrates on customs, beliefs, stories, crafts, foods, rituals, and types of architecture, and analyzes them as interrelated units within particular groups. European Folklife scholars document these traditions among their own people, unlike their counterparts, the anthropologists, who study exotics living elsewhere in the world.

Until recently folklife did not have many adherents in the United States. American scholars used the terms folklore to deal with oral traditions or material culture to focus on particular crafts, foods, types of architecture, and other material manifestations of traditional life. However, with the introduction of the European concept of folklife into university folklore programs, folklore and material culture are being  integrated into the folklife discipline. This process has not been acceptable to all. Numerous debates concerning definitions and much confusion concerning boundaries has arisen and this situation is something you should keep in mind when you read and go through electronic sources.

Printed Materials

If you want to orient yourself to the folklife idea, then I suggest that you first look at the American definitions of folklore written by folklore scholars in Collier's Encyclopedia; The Encyclopedia Americana; and The New Encyclopedia Britannica. Also keep by your side as a reference source the Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore Mythology and Legend (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1972). 

Next you should browse two folklife anthologies. One is Don Yoder's Discovering American Folklife: Studies in Ethnic, Religious, and Regional Culture (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1990). This work focuses on Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania German folk cultures. The other is Warren Roberts' Viewpoints on Folklife: Looking at the Overlooked (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988), an anthology that surveys the folk cultural forms of Southern Indiana. Yoder and Roberts write in a direct jargon free style that they are able to sustain in their theoretical essays, as well as in their field analyses.

A third useful source is Eliot Wigginton's editions of the Foxfire series. Wigginton, a rural Georgia high school teacher, got his students to interview family, neighbors, and friends about Appalachian folkways and had them write up their field experiences into articles that were published in the Foxfire magazine. Starting out, I would recommend Foxfire 8, a 500 page anthology, edited by Eliot Wigginton and Margie Bennett (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, c1983). It contains the same articles that were published in the first issue of the series plus additional material.

The advanced student interested in folklife theory would find the late Richard Dorson's anthology Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1972) a valuable reference tool. In his Introduction, Dorson reviews folklore and folklife scholarship in the United States and divides the twenty-six articles into four fields--oral folklore, social folk custom, material culture, and folk arts--and areas of folklife methodology that include fieldwork, archiving, mapping, museum organization, and cultural geographical analyses. Thirteen years later Simon Bronner edited American Material Culture and Folklife: A Prologue and Dialogue (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985). This monograph updates Dorson's work and includes participant dialogues to resolve the on-going definitional debate concerning folklore, folklife, and material culture. A recent work by Henry Glassie, geared for undergraduate students and teachers,  Material Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), integrates the traditional material culture genres-- folk art, vernacular architecture, crafts, food, narrative, and custom--with folklife theory and method. 

For the historically minded,  Thomas J. Schlereth compilation, Material Culture Studies in America (Nashville: The American Association for State and Local History, 1982), consists of thirty-nine essays that survey American material culture studies as practiced by historians, museum specialists, and folklife researchers.  Schlereth's opening survey essay,  "Material Culture Studies in America, 1876-1976," gives an detailed introduction to this marginal interdisciplinary field.  

Periodicals that contain folklife articles are the Journal of American Folklore, Western Folklore, Journal of Folklore Research (formerly the Journal of the Folklore Institute), Folklore Forum, Indiana Folklore, Pennsylvania Folklife, Kentucky Folklore Record, New York Folklore, Material Culture, American Culture, Journal of Popular Culture, American Quarterly, and the Winterthur Portfolio. The most readable are the state folklore journals. The others are geared to college and scholarly audiences. All have annual cumulative indexes. The Journal of American Folklore came out with The Centennial Index in 1988 (Vol. 101, No. 402) and an updated supplement in 1994 (Vol. 107, No. 426) that list every article, note, and review according to serial date and number, author, subject, and title.

The best print index for folklife books and articles is Volume 5 of the Modern Language Association International Bibliography of Books and Articles on the Modern Languages and Literatures. This index is divided into the topics of folklore, folk literature, ethnomusicology, folk belief systems, folk rituals, and material culture--categories the purist would say belong to Folklife. The citations are accurate, thorough, international, and include festschriften and the most obscure journals. Its electronic counterpart, the Modern Language Association Bibliography index (MLAB), works well because it can handle complex searches.  However, precision is often difficult due to the overlapping citations that occur when the user employs folklore, folklife, or material culture in the title, subject or keyword fields.

There are several folklife dissertation indexes. One is Don Yoder's Discovering American Folklife: 303-305, that includes Ph.D. dissertations conducted under Yoder's direction as University of Pennsylvania Folklife Professor from 1962 through 1989. This resource would be limited if it were not for the fact that Yoder was the first proponent of the field in this country and many of his students have gone on to become noted scholars. Alan Dundes's dated Folklore Theses and Dissertations in the United States (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976) covers M.A. theses and Ph.D. dissertations from 1860 through 1976. The work is arranged chronologically and is inconsistently indexed by subject, author, and institution. The most current and reliable source is the electronic Dissertation Abstracts International database that has author, title, subject, keyword, year, university, and advisor access points that allow the user to find a known item or browse Ph.D. dissertations that focus on folklife topics.

Specialized bibliographies are few. One is Robert A. Georges and Stephen Stern's American and Canadian Immigrant and Ethnic Folklore : An Annotated Bibliography (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1982), and the other is Simon J. Bronner's American Folk Art: A Guide to Sources (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1984). Both have adopted the interdisciplinary folklife approach to the study of ethnic groups and folk art and are still regarded as reliable resources.

The folklife organizations that the individual can join are local or national. All the journals mentioned above except for the Journal of Folklore Research are publications of their respective societies and you can receive these periodicals for the cost of organizational membership.

Many of the books, articles, dissertations, bibliographies, periodicals and festschriften listed in this pathfinder are so esoteric that they would only be found in large public or academic libraries. Smaller ones would not have them and you would have to resort to interlibrary loan to get them. Many folklife works can be purchased through major on-line bookstores such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders. For out of print books, try Abebooks or Alibris. Both sites give the price and condition of each multiple listed work and you can order directly or email a request to the bookseller. For the more difficult-to-find studies call Book Search at 800-776-4732 or email the service at hammonds@i1.net. Finally, if you know the author, title, date, or university of a folklife dissertation, place an order at University Microfilms International (UMI) Dissertation Services at 800-521-3042 or 800 521-0600, Ex. 3781 or go to the ProQuest web site, and click on the Dissertations Services link to search or purchase a copy

Network Resources

The printed materials will give you the background to understand and interpret folklife theory and data. Network resources have not yet reached this level of intellectual sophistication. However, they are helpful in making connections to folklife's public and applied faces.  These include the professional society, research directories,  state programs, university departments, teaching resources, online exhibits, artists, genres, electronic journals and papers, careers, and usenet groups and listservs.

The Professional Society

Research Directories

Regional and State Programs

The mission of  these programs is to collect, document, preserve, present, and interpret the traditional life of their particular regions or states and to educate the public through exhibits, festivals, and workshops offered in organizational settings, libraries, schools, and local historical, cultural, and arts societies.

University Departments

      Since Folklife is not an established discipline in America, most university programs do not have a curriculum leading to a degree in the subject.  However, many college and universities offer courses in folklife and its allied subjects--folklore, cultural studies, ethnic studies,  local history, public history, and other interdisciplinary programs.  A comprehensive directory of degree granting institutions that offer major and minor concentrations in Folklife studies is the Library of Congress's Higher Education Programs in Folklore and Folklife http: lcweb.loc.gov/Folklife/source/grad.html. Each entry includes the name, address, phone, and degree offered. 

     The best known schools that have B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. programs in Folklore and Folklife are listed below.  Visit these sites to get specific information concerning admission requirements, opening and closing dates, types of degree programs (not all have Folklore Departments), course listings, faculty, financial aid, and application forms : 

Teaching Resources

Online Exhibits

The Library of Congress and National Science Foundation Digital Libraries Initiative are sponsoring The American Memory Project http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ that consists of searchable collections of manuscripts, images, histories, audio and video clips, and socio-cultural data from projects conducted by the American Folklife Center and the Library of Congress and others solicited from universities, archives, libraries, and historical societies. Here are notable sites that contain relevant folklife materials:  

Other online exhibits focus on themes that would interest the folklife researcher are:

Folklife Artists

Folklife Genres

Electronic Journals and Papers

Careers

Comprehensive Search and Listservs

 To conduct a comprehensive search for folklore, folklife, and material culture using Internet sources go to Google Groups. The search engine offers four information formats: web, images, groups, and directory. After selecting one, enter the appropriate term and relevant sites will appear. For example, if you choose groups and type +"folklife" you will get 3,930 usenet group matches.  Clink on the group name and you get dates, subjects, and authors of a variety of messages that generally fit under the group theme. Each subject is linked to the postings. Select one and read the current message, see the previous ones, go to the start of the thread, post a reply, send an email, or sort the postings.

Folklife material appears on various listservs such as American Studies and Archives. However there are few discussion lists that have trained folklore or folklife specialists talking to each other (unless you go to Indiana or Penn and participate in the lively departmental email conversations). One that should be mentioned is the Archives of Folklore at Listserv.Tamu.Edu. It has a search engine with author, subject, date, and time boxes, and it archives messages by month. At the time of the writing the list begins with December 2001 and goes back to January 1990. Clink on the month and you will get a table of contents of messages, their arrangement in a classified format, and various sorting commands and other options. Clink on the title and you can read the message which includes the header along with various view and option commands. The search engine yields 50 matches at a time for the entered search terms.  The archive and the list itself is moderated by an academically trained folklorist. To gain membership click on Join or Leave the List  and follow the instructions.

Conclusion

Finding folklife resources on the Internet using any search engine requires that you employ the key subject words folklore, material culture, and folklife because of overlapping historic associations that have been carried over from the print world. However it is becoming clear that in the networked public and applied sectors, folklife is becoming the standard designation for studying the traditional ways of doing things within particular cultures. In the academy where the book and article still hold sway, the newer European derived folklife is taking hold, but at a much slower rate.

This pathfinder was created by John Cicala

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Last updated December 2, 2001