I believe that I have mentioned
Lingua Franca's dooming article about
folklore's demise a number of times on this blog. Even though it came out a dozen years ago, on many message boards devoted to
folkloristics it still gets some people's panties in a
bindle.
The article came out the same Fall that I started my graduate studies in folklore, and I was only an intermittent reader of the magazine at the time. I was well aware of my future job potential as a Ph.D. in Folkloristics (the sub-field of Slavic folkloristics, at that) were somewhat limited. But I was not aware of the direness of the situation. I believe that I am the last person from my university with a degree in my field, and that degree which was conferred five years ago was probably the last one to be granted. If only I had the foresight to apply to law school instead. . . .
The article identifies what has for many been a long-standing open secret of the field: folklorists aren't sure where they belong - in the introduction to my dissertation I call them the red-headed bastard child of literary studies and anthropology, which is not too far off the mark. John Dorfman offers the following anecdote:
When exiled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti came to speak at UCLA in 1992, Donald Cosentino, chairman of the folklore and mythology department, was asked to make the introduction. Before the event, the university's vice-chancellor told him, "We have a head of state hear. Under no circumstances will I introduce you as the chair of folklore and mythology. I will introduce you as from the English department. Let's not embarrass ourselves."
Ouch. I am never embarrassed to tell someone I am a folklorist. And, usually, I am not embarrassed by the inevitable question of 'what's that mean?"
Lurking the message boards, I find out that most people who contribute are not working as folklorists: they are librarians, sci-fi writers, editors, ancillary staff. A few hold faculty positions in American Studies or English departments. Some are scraping by. My favorite journal, New Directions in Folklore, is now offline and struggling to find a sponsor and an editor. Are we in a better place today then we were twelve years ago when Dorfman wrote this article?
As can be expected, the article drew a f
ew critical letters. A group of eighty graduate students at Indiana University wrote in why folklore is so great:
A good place to start might be by asking why graduate students continue to devote their professional careers to a field so poorly understood, and hence so easily maligned. Surely we could instead be attenting Ph.D. programs in anthropology, literary studies, dance, sociology, linguistics, musicology, psychology, history, art and architecture, semiotics, popular culture, or cultural studies. However, we understand that the value of folklore is precisely that it incorporates the wisdom of all these and other disciplines - wisdom folklorists enrich with their unique focus on human traditions. Folklore explores cultural and artistic continuity across time and place, an enterprise for which other branches of the humanities and social sciences have historically demonstrated little interest or imagination.
I don't know about this. The problem with doing a little of everything is that you never get to do anything that well. I am reminded of an episode of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares where he visits a restaurant in New York City with an Indian, an Italian and an American menu. Of course, with this lack of focus they produced lazy and nasty dishes in all cuisines. Who wants to eat in a restaurant that can't decide what kind of restaurant it wants to be.
I was inititally drawn to folklore by a bunch of great teachers while I was taking a class on Fairy Tales as a whim. I liked the scientific approach to everyday subjects, I liked the focus on humor and I liked how folklore takes the words off the paper.
When my daughters go to college in the ensuing decades (11 more years - time to start saving!) will they be able to take folklore? I would dissuade them, but I doubt the possibility will even be there.
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