Folklore

The word “folklore” names an enormous and deeply significant dimension of culture, including the arts, stories, local knowledges, and practices of a people. Folklore truly is the wisdom of the ages—that is, the aspects of culture that ordinary people find important and useful enough to preserve in their daily lives.

Studying folk culture means examining how traditions are created, shared, and adapted in communities and how traditions manifest and change in the modern world in local and global contexts. As such, folklore studies is rooted in both the past and present and covers a wide range of topics, from older expressions such as quilts, foodways, and fairy tales to more contemporary expressions such as legends, internet memes, conspiracy theories, fake news, and the supernatural. Our faculty teach and publish on a wide range of topics, including fairy tales and legends, digital folklore, landscape, festival, folklore and medicine, and vernacular religious practices.

Students who study folklore gain documentary practice, cultural competence, archiving experience, and community-based literacy skills—preparing them for careers in museums and archives, nonprofit work, education, cultural policy, and community organizing.