The Soul of a Folklorist: Historical Moments, Political Representation, and the Weight of Social Responsibility(Activist Encounters in Folklore and Ethnomusicology)

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.

Table of Contents:
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

About the Author :
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 editor (with Martha C. Sims) of Narrative Knows No Boundaries. She 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 Talking AIDS, The Stigmatized Vernacular: Where Reflexivity Meets Untellability, and (with Ben Bridges and Ross Brillhart) Behind the Mask: Vernacular Culture in the Time of COVID.

Review :
"The Soul of A Folklorist is a badly needed book on the development of folklore, an extremely important part of the recent history of American folklore studies."—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 "Drawing upon extensive research and interviews, The Soul of A Folklorist examines the changing values, practices and scholarly assumptions of the field in the latter half of the 20th century through a series of nuanced and provocative case studies. An essential read for anyone engaged in public folklore or interested in the history of American folklore studies."—Elizabeth Peterson, former Director of the American Folklife Center "The Soul Of a Folklorist admirably narrates the complexities of advocacy that US folklorists have engaged with in the last 50 years. Full of thorough detail and contextual insight, it is a definitive and much-needed work."—Timothy Lloyd, former Exeuctive Director of the American Folklore Society "Carefully researched and compellingly written, The Soul of a Folklorist offers a prescient clarion call not just for how we can face the social and political challenges of the day, but how we must."—Tom Mould, Professor of Anthropology and Folklore, Rollins College