Reading List for Folk Studies Graduate Students
Fall 2006
The purpose of the Master's reading list is to acquaint students with standard reference and research tools and important theories and methodologies in the discipline. Students will be held accountable on the Master's comprehensive examination for specific kinds of mastery described in the introduction to each of the reading list's sections. The comprehensive examination will call for a knowledge of all relevant materials covered in any course completed by the student and all other works listed on the reading list regardless of whether they were read in connection with a particular course.
This reading list remains in effect for two calendar years from the end of students' first semester of enrollment in the program. After that, any new or revised M.A. reading list supplants it, and students will be held responsible for the new list.
You may download a .doc copy here for your own use.
I. Periodicals and Serials
Students should be familiar with the general content, editorial policy and approach, as well as the historical significance of the following journals.
| American Anthropologist | Material Culture |
| American Quarterly | Pennsylvania Folklife |
| Journal of Ethnomusicology | Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture |
| Fabula | New Directions in Folklore (online journal) |
| Folk Life | Public Programs Bulletin |
| Folklore | Southern Folklore/Southern Folklore Quarterly |
| Folklore Forum | Western Folklore |
| Journal of American Folklore | Ulster Folklife |
| Journal of Folklore Research | Winterthur Portfolio |
| Journal of Popular Culture |
II. Websites and Electronic Resources
Students should be able to comment on the content, organization, general usefulness, and significance of these reference tools.
American Folklife Center website
American Folklore Society website
C.A.R.T.S. website: (website for folklore and education resources)
Digital Dissertations Online (accessed from Library)
III. Reference Works and Methodological Tools
Students should be able to comment on the content, organization, general usefulness, and significance of these reference tools.
Aarne, Antti and Stith Thompson. The Types of the Folktale. Helsinki: Folklore Fellows Communications, 1961.
Baughman, Ernest W. Type and Motif Index of the Folktales of England and North America. The Hague: Mouton and company, 1966.
Brunvand, Jan Harold, ed. American Folklore: An Encyclopedia. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1966.
Carter, Thomas and Elizabeth C. Cromley. 2005. Invitation to Vernacular Architecture. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Child, Francis J. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. 5 Vols. New York: Dover, [1882-1898] 1965.
Coffin, Tristram P. and Roger D. Renwick. The British Traditional Ballad in North America. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977.
de Caro, Francis. Women and Folklore: A Bibliographic Survey. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1983.
Floyd, Samuel A., Jr. The Power of Black Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Green, Rayna. Native American Women: A Contextual Bibliography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.
Hand, Wayland D. and Anna Casetta, Sondra B. Thiederman, eds. Popular Beliefs and Superstitions: A Compendium of American Folklore from the Ohio Collection of Newbell Niles Puckett. Boston, Massachusetts: G.K. Hall, 1981.
Jackson, Bruce. Fieldwork. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.
Jackson, Bruce, et al, eds. The Centennial Index: One Hundred Years of the Journal of American Folklore. Journal of American Folklore 101:402 (1988).
Jarmon, Laura. 2005. Wishbone: Reference and Interpretation in Black Folk Narrative. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Laws, G. Malcolm, Jr. Native American Balladry. Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1964.
Loomis, Ormond H. Cultural Conservation: The Protection of Cultural Heritage in the United States. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1983.
Mieder, Wolfgang. International Proverb Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing, 1982.
Taylor, Archer. The Proverb and An Index to the Proverb. Hatboro, Pennsylvania: Folklore Associates, 1962.
Thompson, Stith. Motif Index of Folk-Literature. 6 Vols. Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press, 1966.
Wilgus, D. K. Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship Since 1898. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1959.
Wilson, Charles R. and William Ferris, eds. Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
IV. Selected Textbooks
Students should be able to write critical essays concerning these textbooks.
Brunvand, Jan. The Study of American Folklore. 4th ed. New York: Norton, 1997.
Chiseri-Strater, Elizabeth and Bonnie S. Sunstein. 2001. FieldWorking: Reading and Writing Research. Second Edition. Boston and New York: Bedford/Saint Martin's.
Georges, Robert A., and Michael Owen Jones. Folkloristics: An Introduction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.
Oring, Elliot. Folk Groups and Folk Genres: An Introduction. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1986.
Sims, Martha C. and Martine Stephens. 2005. Living Folklore: An Introduction to the Study of People and Their Traditions. Logan: Utah State University Press.
Simons, Elizabeth Radin. Student Worlds, Student Words: Teaching Writing Through Folklore. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Boynton/Cook Heinemann, 1990.
Toelken, Barre. The Dynamics of Folklore. Rev. ed. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1996.
V. Special Issues of Journals and Anthologies
Students should read the introduction to these volumes and, without necessarily reading each article in its entirety, should be able to comment on the general content, organization, usefulness, and goals of these volumes.
Blincoe, Deborah, and John Forrest, eds. Prejudice and Pride: Lesbian and Gay Traditions in America. New York Folklore 19:1-2 (1993).
Brady, Erika, ed. Healing Logics: Culture and Medicine in Modern Health Belief Systems. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2001.
Briggs, Charles and Amy Shuman, eds: Theorizing Folklore: Toward New Perspectives on the Politics of Culture. Western Folklore, vol. 52 (1993), no. 2, 3, 4.
Danielson, Larry, ed. Family Folklore Studies 1994. Southern Folklore, vol. 51 (1994), no. 1.
Dundes, Alan. International Folkloristics. Lanhan, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing, 1999.
Feintuch, Burt, ed. Common Ground: Keywords for the Study of Expressive Culture. Journal of American Folklore, 108:429 (Fall 1995).
Hall, Michael D., and Eugene W. Metcalf, Jr., eds. The Artist Outsider: Creativity and the Boundaries of Culture. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994.
Hollis, Susan, Linda Pershing, and M. Jane Young, eds. Feminist Theory and the Study of Folklore. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
Hufford, Mary, ed. Conserving Culture: A New Discourse on Heritage. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994.
Jones, Michael Owen, ed. Putting Folklore to Use. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1994.
Long, Lucy, ed. 2004. Culinary Tourism. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
Lornell, Kip and Anne K. Rasmussen, eds. Musics of Multicultural America. London et al.: Prentice Hall International, 1997.
Radner, Joan N., ed. Feminist Messages: Coding in Women's Folk Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
Spitzer, Nick and Robert Baron, eds. Public Folklore. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.
Stern, Stephen and John Alan Cicala, eds. Creative Ethnicity. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1992.
Tuleja, Tad, ed. Usable Pasts: Traditions and Group Expressions in North America. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1997.
Vlach, John M. and Simon J. Bronner, eds. Folk Art and Art Worlds: Essays Drawn from the Washington Meeting on Folk Art. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1992.
Walker, Barbara, ed. Out of the Ordinary: Folklore and the Supernatural. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1995.
VI. Monographs & Articles
Students must be thoroughly familiar with the following studies.
Baron, Robert. 1999. "Theorizing Public Folklore Practice: Documentation, Genres of Representation, and Everyday Competencies." Journal of Folklore Research 36(2/3):
Ben-Amos, Dan. Toward a Definition of Folklore in Context. In Toward New Perspectives in Folklore, ed. Americo Paredes and Richard Bauman. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972.
Bendix, Regina. In Search of Authenticity. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.
Bohlman, Philip. The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.
Brady, Erika. A Spiral Way: How the Phonograph Changed Ethnography. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999.
Bunzel, Ruth L. The Pueblo Potter: A Study of Creative Imagination in Primitive Art. New York: AMS Press, 1969.
de Caro, Frank and Rosan Jordan. 2004. Re-Situating Folklore: Folk Contexts and Twentieth-Century Literature and Art. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Dorst, John D. The Written Suburb: An American Site, and Ethnographic Dilemma. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.
Glassie, Henry. Folk Housing in Middle Virginia: A Structural Analysis of Historic Artifacts. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1979.
Goldstein, Diane. 2004. Once Upon a Virus: AIDS Legends and Vernacular Risk Perception. Logan: Utah State University Press.
Hafstein, Valdimar. 2004. "The Politics of Origins: Collective Creation Revisited." Journal of American Folklore 117: 300-315.
Hufford, Mary T. Chaseworld: Foxhunting and Storytelling in New Jersey's Pine Barrens. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Mules and Men. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: J. B. Lippicott Company, 1935.
Hymes, Dell. Folklore's Nature and the Sun's Myth. Journal of American Folklore 88:350 (1975): 345-369.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. Destination Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Levine, Lawrence. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Lord, Albert B. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1960. [First half.]
Neustadt, Kathy. Clambake: A History and Celebration of an American Tradition. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992.
Noyes, Dorothy. 2003. Fire in the Placa: Catalan Festival Politics after Franco. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Payne, Jessica. 1998. "The Politicization of Culture in Applied Folklore," Journal of Folklore Research 35(3): 251-277.
Prosterman, Leslie. Ordinary Life, Festival Days: Aesthetics in the Midwestern County Fair. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995.
Schrager, Samuel A. 2000. The Trial Lawyer's Art. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Shuman, Amy. 2005. Other People's Stories: Entitlement Claims and the Critique of Empathy. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Toelken, Barre. 2003. The Anguish of Snails: Native American Folklore in the West. Logan: Utah State University Press.
Whisnant, David. E. All That is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983.
Wiggins, William H., Jr. O Freedom: Afro-American Emancipation Celebrations. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987.
Williams, Michael Ann. Homeplace: The Social Use and Meaning of the Folk Dwelling in Southwestern North Carolina. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991.
Yoder, Don. Folklife Studies in American Scholarship. In American Folklife, ed. Yoder. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976.
