There is more to folklore research than fieldwork. This is why in all of my other upper-division courses I require a term paper involving original research.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I've often been accused of making anthropology into literature, but anthropology is also field research. Writing is central to it.
Their term project consists of a fieldwork collection of folklore that they create by interviewing family members, friends, or anyone they can manage to persuade to serve as an informant.
In my introductory course, Anthropology 160, the Forms of Folklore, I try to show the students what the major and minor genres of folklore are, and how they can be analyzed.
I get a lot of inspiration from research in mythology and folklore. I find that, you know, stories people told each other thousands of years ago are still relevant now.
If a student takes the whole series of my folklore courses including the graduate seminars, he or she should learn something about fieldwork, something about bibliography, something about how to carry out library research, and something about how to publish that research.
I am a story-teller, and I look to academic research... for ways of augmenting story-telling.
Part of my problem is that I cannot dispel the myths that have somehow accumulated over the years. Somebody writes something, it's completely off the wall, but it gets filed and repeated until everyone believes it. For instance, I've read that I wear a football helmet in the car.
What people actually refer to as research nowadays is really just Googling.
I love studying folklore and legends. The stories that people passed down for a thousand years without any sort of marketing support are obviously saying something appealing about the basic human condition.
My academic identity is that of a folklorist, and for many years I have taught only folklore courses.