American Folklore Scholarship

"American Folklore Scholarship is rich reading, outlining the intellectual genealogy of American folklore and delivering many interesting historical tidbits. Folklore teachers will want to use this book in their introductory theory classes, while doctoral students will want to memorize the book before their qualifying exams."

--Folklore Forum

"... a welcome overview of the discipline in North America and the practitioners who established it."

--American Anthropologist

In this classic text, Zumwalt examines the split between literary folklorists and anthropological folklorists. The former looked at literary forms for folklore; the latter looked at the life and unwritten culture of the people. This struggle shaped the study of folklore in the U.S.

ROSEMARY LÉVY ZUMWALT is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Davidson College.

Foreword by Alan Dundes

Preface

1. Discipline and Identity

2. American Folklore Studies: Field and Scope

3. The Schism in Folklore

4. Literary Folklorists

5. The Anthropological Folklorists

6. Approaches to Folklore: The Literary and the Anthropological

7. Remnants of the past in the present: Conflict in Contemporary Folklore Theory

Notes

Archival Sources

Abbreviations

Bibliography

Index