In the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, the US saw a growing awareness of representational politics following the civil rights, women's, gay and lesbian, anti-war, and environmental justice movements, and, like most fields, folklore became increasingly cognizant of these cultural and political shifts. The Soul of a Folklorist chronicles the growing pains folklorists felt as the field engaged in these new and different ways of thinking about expressive culture, inequality, and political representation. Grounded in primary sources including archival documents and interviews with members of the field, authors Ann K. Ferrell and Diane E. Goldstein examine the discussions that arose during this period among folklore scholars. Some folklorists explored progressive social change initiatives as part of their professional work, while others questioned the scholarly appropriateness of applied or political engagement, at times challenging this professional engagement in contemporary political issues. In a series of case studies from the 1970s and '80s, Ferrell and Goldstein explore how folklorists navigated questions about inequities that existed within the field and the potential adverse effects of those inequities on what and whom they studied, the push and pull of scholarly and public folklore work, the location of the line between research and advocacy as well as the wisdom of crossing that line, and the nature of our responsibility, as individual folklorists and as a field, to those we study and the communities in which we live and work. The Soul of a Folklorist examines how, as folklorists moved toward a perspective that increasingly explored the responsibility of presentation and representation of gender, race, class, and other areas of inequities, the discipline gradually came to understand both the power of its own subject and structures of subordination within the field.
Ann K. Ferrell is Associate Professor of Folk Studies at Western Kentucky University. She is author of Burley: Kentucky Tobacco in a New Century and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of American Folklore (2016-2020). Diane E. Goldstein is Professor Emerita in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. She is author of Once Upon a Virus: AIDS Legends and Vernacular Risk Perception and (with Sylvia Ann Grider and Jeannie Banks Thomas) of Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore. She is editor (with Amy Shuman) of The Stigmatized Vernacular: Where Reflexivity Meets Untellability and (with Ben Bridges and Ross Brillhart) of Behind the Mask: Vernacular Culture in the Time of COVID.
Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: The Soul of a Folklorist: "There are years that ask questions and years that answer" 2. "Some of My Best Friends Are Applied Folklorists": Disciplinary Identity and the Point Park Debates 3. "Who Are We?": Feminist Folklorists and the Study of Women's Cultures 4. "Righteous Morality": The Rise and Fall of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Folklife Project 5. "Corporate Culture" versus "The Shop Floor": The Organizational and Occupational Folklore "Controversy" in Retrospect 6. One Step Back and Two Steps Forward: The Controversy Over the Bills to Designate the Square Dance the American National Folk Dance 7. Codas, Complexities, and Ongoing Conversations: The Continuing Weight of Social Responsibility Works Cited Index
"The Soul of A Folklorist is a badly needed book on the development of public folklore, an extremely important part of the recent history of American folklore studies. While there has been an increasing number of writings about aspects of applied folklore, none provide an overview for understanding the subject. Discussions of this or that conflict among folklorists have not been absent from the field, but here the authors seek to build a larger understanding by examining over time the various contested issues."-Jerrold Hirsch, author of Portrait of America: A Cultural History of the Federal Writers' Project "The case studies and the interviews in The Soul of a Folklorist provide an important examination of a field which is often misunderstood, strives to be taken seriously in academia, and at the same time, has impacted hundreds if not thousands of communities and individuals in the United States through recognition, respect, and in many cases, with financial support which has helped to provide sustainability and recognition of vital traditions, customs, and cultures and the people who carry them."-Susan K. Eleuterio, author of Irish American Material Culture
