19’ sailboat "Little Folly," built by Ralph W. Stanley of Southwest Harbor, Maine. Stanley has received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Photograph by Peggy McKenna, courtesy of the Folk and Traditional Arts Program, National Endowment for the Arts. From the Masters of Traditional Arts DVD-ROM, produced by Alan Govenar and published by ABC-CLIO.

What Do Folklorists Do?

Folklorists—members of the American Folklore Society—live and work throughout the world. They include students, teachers, scholars, consultants, community organizers, educators, and public agency professionals. Folklorists’ interests range from local family traditions to transnational issues of ethnic conflict, from publications to public programming, from the performing to the visual arts, from everyday life to communities’ most special occasions, and from research to public policy.

Society members publish scholarly articles, in-depth books, and engaging exhibition catalogues. They produce award-winning documentary films and recordings, as well as nationally recognized radio programs. Our members also develop interpretive programs for all ages: exhibitions, festivals, lectures, and concerts. They organize communities to identify and conserve their folklore and cultural heritage, and they work to establish public policy that honors and respects cultural diversity.

Whatever their particular interests or work, Society members recognize the value of experience-based knowledge and the importance of understanding the intersections of artfulness and everyday life. The artistic, cultural, educational, historical, and political questions our members raise place the field of folklore at the leading edge of contemporary cultural issues, and establish folklore as a primary field of the humanities.

In 1987 the American Folklore Society commissioned folklorist Charles Camp to create a publication on the current and possible future state of the field of folklore. That publication, Time and Temperature (1989), included "The Folklorist As…", a series of short essays by folklorists about the challenges and opportunities of their work. We have reprinted those essays here as a way of answering the question "What do folklorists do?".

The Essays:

What Do Folklorists Do? (PDF) 124K download