Folklore Collections at Indiana University

Originally published as the Journal of the Folklore Institute in 1964 by the Folklore Institute, the Journal of Folklore Research was established in 1982 to incorporate more international and expansive coverage. The goal of the journal is to link similar social sciences such as anthropology, communication, history, linguistics, literature, oral history, psychology and sociology. The collection consists of administrative files, including various advertisements, correspondence, editorial board meeting papers, as well as accepted and rejected articles which were retained to document the selection and edit processes. There are also miscellaneous copies of JFR and some other printed materials.

The Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife was first held in 1967. This festival brings together craftspeople, musicians, dancers, and other folk artists from every region of the United States and from scores of American ethnic communities. The 1987 festival was attended and documented by students in the Indiana University Folklore Department. Students photographed and recorded (video and audio) the presentations at the 1987 festival.

The Hungarian-American project was an international undertaking of the Indiana University Folklore Institute between 1981 and 1984. Headed by IU folklorists Linda Dégh and Inta Carpenter, scholars from the United States and Hungary conducted ethnographic fieldwork to identify the uses of ethnicity among Hungarians in Hungary, Hungarian-Americans in the Calumet region of Indiana, and Hungarian-Americans in Chicago. The project led to the conference "Culture, Tradition, Ethnicity," hosted at Indiana University from March 26-28, 1984 and inspired a 1987 conference in Budapest. A special double issue of the Journal of Folklore Research printed many materials from the conference and was published later the same year. Collection consists of records relating to project personnel, fieldwork, and conferences.

The German American Conference was an international meeting of scholars facilitated by the Indiana University Folklore Institute from November 1-3, 1988. The conference, titled “Folklore and Social Transformation: A Dialogue of German and American Folklorists,” focused on the social circumstances that influence the ways that folklorists have studied folklore over time. Folklore Institute faculty and staff including Richard Bauman, Linda Dégh, and Inta Carpenter received funding to invite U.S. and German folklorists to present at the conference. It was held directly after the 1988 Annual Meeting of the American Folklore Society in Boston, for which some German folklorists had already arranged to be in the United States.

The Columbian project was a grant-funded, multi-sited, ethnographic research project organized by Indiana University’s Folklore Institute and undertaken between 1987 and 1990. Titled "Hispanic Folk Poetry in Performance," the project focused on the influence and persistence of Spanish forms of folklore in Latin America five centuries after the landing of Christopher Columbus and subsequent conquests. Folklore researchers from IU and elsewhere completed fieldwork for the project, which occurred in tandem with the quincentenary of the Columbian voyage.

The Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg Project was a documentary production undertaken by Indiana University's Folklore Institute and Radio and Television Services between 1981 and 1983. The grant-funded project allowed a team of folklorists and film crews to attend the Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg Festival, a long-running celebration of classic cars and automotive heritage in Auburn, Indiana, 23 miles north of Fort Wayne. The collection consists of materials that trace the evolution of the Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg Project from planning to debriefing and includes project participants' activities researching and filming the Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg festival.

The Ventriloquism Project was a planned collaboration of the Indiana University Folklore Institute and Radio & TV Services, who hoped to produce a documentary on the contemporary practice of ventriloquism in the United States. Ultimately, the project was not funded. This collection traces the history of the venture from its beginnings to its eventual shelving.

The Handbook of American Folklore is an edited volume assembled by the Indiana University Folklore Institute in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Published in 1983, it includes many short, explanatory essays on the forms, methods, and theories that are of interest to folklorists, as well as guidelines for the interpretation, archiving, and presentation of research to public and academic audiences. Handbook authors were invited to contribute by the volume's editors, which include Folklore Institute founder Richard M. Dorson. This was one of Dorson's last major projects before his death in 1981.

Joy Unspeakable is a 1981 documentary that was produced by Indiana University Folklore Institute researchers and film crews from IU’s Radio & Television Services. Examining the spiritual lives of Pentecostals living in Bloomington—especially women—the ethnographic film earned academic and public accolades. It also represented an early success in the research career of Elaine Lawless, an esteemed folklorist whose 1988 book God's Peculiar People: Women's Voice & Folk Tradition in a Pentecostal Church undertook a broader exploration of southern Indiana Pentecostalism based partly on the materials gathered in this project.

The Indiana Communities Folklore Project was a joint effort between the Folklore Institute and Oral History Research Project of Indiana University which spanned 1980-1982. The aim of the project was to expand beyond the University to meet the growing requests by the community for aid in works pertaining to oral and folkloric activities and history, such as surveys and directories, collections, and festivals. The collection consists of materials that trace the development of the project. These materials include the project proposal, a list of the various community residencies undertaken for the project, conference and evaluation papers, and drafts of a resource handbook.

The Women in Folklore (WIF) Oral History Project was a centennial initiative of the women’s section of the American Folklore Society. The project aimed to capture the experience of women folklorists across the country. Mary Ellen Brown, Professor of Folklore at IU, organized the project and donated the interviews in her possession to the IU Folklore Archives in 2000. The project was physically housed at the Oral History Research Center, now part of the Indiana University Center for Documentary Research and Practice, and coordinated by a graduate assistant in folklore. Interviewees include Edith Fowke, Eleanor Long, Helen Creighton, Linda Degh, Shirley Arora, Thelma Jones, Eleanor Long, and Frances Cattermole-Tally. The collection contains correspondence, project information, transcriptions, and audio recordings of interviews, primarily on cassette tapes.

The Indiana University Folklore Institute has a long history of collecting the oral literature and arts of Indiana. This collection consists of jokes collected by students of Indiana University, taking classes in the Folklore Department from 1968-1971. Joke subject matter includes ethnicity, politics, sexuality, gender, and religion.

Richard Reuss was an Indiana University alumnus and professor of folklore and also a distinguished scholar of folksong revival. Collection includes photographs, books, artwork, clippings, song books and sheets, correspondence, interview transcripts, notes, teaching materials, and publications.

Ronald Richard Smith was a member of the Folklore faculty at Indiana University from 1978-1997. His research centered around traditional music, festivals, movement and dance, and religion within the African Diaspora, with a focus on Caribbean peoples. In addition to his teaching responsibilities at IU, Smith also served as associate dean of the Office of Research and University Graduate School from 1988-1996, headed the IU Ethnomusicology Program, and spent one year as director of the Archives of Traditional Music. This collection consists of Smith’s papers and lectures, dissertations of some of his students, correspondence, committee files, and some classroom materials. Prominent in the papers are Smith's files on the Folklore Institute and department, such as teaching files, meeting minutes, and curriculum reviews.

Dr. Richard Dorson is often cited as the father of American folklore. Over his lifetime he published a large collection of books and articles dealing with how folklore and culture are tied together. Dorson founded the Indiana University Folklore Institute in 1963, and became the first director and Chairman of the Folklore Department in 1978. This collection consists of Dr. Dorson’s published articles, correspondence, and research connected to the Gary Project which resulted in the book Land of the Millrats.

In 1953, Warren Everett Roberts became the first person to earn a PhD in Folklore in the United States. He taught at Indiana University from 1949-1994 and was one of the founders of the study of American "folklife" and material culture. The collection represents Roberts’ research of vernacular architecture and regional survey of material culture and craftsmanship, particularly in southern Indiana. Collection consists of research files, teaching files, photographs, photographic negatives and slides, publications, and correspondence.

Richard Bauman taught in the Indiana University Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology from 1986 until his retirement in 2008. The Bauman papers consist of his teaching materials, awards, publications, conference contributions, research projects, fieldwork materials, correspondence, and student recommendations.

Wayne County, Indiana resident Pauline Montgomery spent most of her life as a Latin and English teacher. The Indiana University alumna was also a local historian and author of one book, Indiana Coverlet Weavers and Their Coverlets. This collection consists of Montgomery’s approximately sixteen-hundred photos and negatives of Indiana tombstones and the accompanying ledgers documenting their appearance, locations, and placement dates.

Felix Oinas, a world renowned scholar in the areas of Slavic linguistics, Finno-Ugric language, literature, and folklore, was a professor of Uralic and Altaic Studies and Slavic Languages and Literatures at Indiana University from 1950 until his retirement in 1981. The collection consists of Oinas' correspondence, publications, and research on Balto-Finnic and Slavic folklore, the relation of Balto-Finnic folklore as compared to Baltic (Lithuanian and Latvian) folklore, the Estonian epic Kalevipoeg, mythology (including the study of spirits, ghosts, devils, and vampires), and the study of Slavic and Finnish etymologies.

Collection consists of the papers of George List (1911-2008), Professor of Folklore, Director of the Inter-American Program in Ethnomusicology (1966-1976), and Director of the Archives of Traditional Music (1954-1976) at Indiana University. His primary research interests included folk music, the traditional music of the Hopi tribes of Northern Arizona, and the music of indigenous tribes in the Caribbean regions of Colombia and the Andes and Amazon regions of Ecuador. This collection includes personal and professional correspondence, publications, research, subject files, audiovisual content, and many of his musical compositions.

Henry Glassie was a professor at the Indiana University Folklore Institute from 1970-1976 and 1988-2008, and is a renowned scholar in the field of folklore with a particular focus upon material culture and vernacular architecture. The collection consists of drafts, proofs and correspondence relating to his numerous publication and lectures as well as a few biographical items of Glassie's including awards and recordings of his oral history.

Mary Ellen Brown is a Professor Emerita of Folklore whose research during the 1970s and 1980s focused primarily on the works of Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns. The collection consists of research notes and manuscripts related to Robert Burns.

Daniel J. Crowley was a folklorist with research and ethnographic interests in African and African diaspora communities. This collection consists of collected folktales Crowley had planned to use to create a tale-type index.

This collection contains over 300 indexed folktales from the Micronesian Islands that were documented by Roger Mitchell and others from 1963-1971. Mitchell was an anthropologist and folklorist and utilized the tales he collected for his many publications related to Micronesian folklore.

W. Edson Richmond was a professor in both English and Folklore, and Acting Director of the Folklore Institute (1981-1982) at Indiana University, Bloomington, from 1945 until 1986. This collection documents Richmond’s research and publishing in the area of Norwegian and Scandinavian language and culture as well as other academic activities, such as instruction and academic advising, service on departmental and professional committees, and participation in folklore conferences and professional societies. Types of material present in the collection include published and unpublished a

Frank de Caro and Rosan Jordan are both folklorists who worked at Louisiana State University. They co-authored several books together. This collection includes drafts and correspondence pertaining to published works, de Caro’s family history, as well as some of Jordan’s teaching materials and research on Day of the Dead. Included in the collection are an extensive amount of postcards that were collected from various travels.

Sandra Dolby is an alumni and faculty member of the department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. She taught Folklore courses at IU from 1979 to 2010, during which time she also taught American Studies at Norway as a Fulbright Traveling Scholar. The collection reflects her interests in pedagogy, American Studies, and the application of literary theory to the study of folklore and personal narrative. It contains syllabi and teaching materials, manuscripts and presentations about her research, and documents from her service in and out of the university, as well as biographical materials.

The Folklore Students’ Association (FSA) is a student run organization supported by the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology and Indiana University. The collection consists of correspondence, newsletters, meeting minutes and reports.

The Indiana University Folklore Institute has a long history with the collection of oral verbal literature and arts. This collection consists of legends, ranging from local historical legends to urban legends, collected by students taking courses in the Folklore Institute.

The Indiana University Folklore Institute has a long history of collecting oral verbal literature and arts. This collection consists of folk beliefs, ranging from superstitions, folk beliefs regarding sports and wedding ceremonies, collected by students taking courses in the Folklore Institute.

The Indiana University Folklore Institute is an active center of folklore scholarship and has a long history of collecting oral literature and arts. This collection consists of papers written on a variety of material culture topics by students taking courses in the Folklore Institute. These papers are dated roughly between 1960 through the early 1980s.

This collection consists mainly of journals that students created about their Halloween experiences and traditions for the month of October as part of Institute professor John McDowell's Folklore 101 in Fall 1982. These journals were the foundation for McDowell's 1985 article on costuming traditions among college students in Bloomington. The journals, which often included newspaper clippings and event fliers, covered topics include urban legends about Halloween candy tampering as well as the students' experiences with costume selection and preparation, folk and commercialized Halloween products, decorations, entertainment, and food.

The Indiana University Folklore Institute is an active center of folklore scholarship and has a long history of collecting oral literature and arts. This collection consists of papers written on a variety of topics by students taking courses in the Folklore Institute. These papers are dated roughly between 1967 through the early 2000s and cover topics such as music and performance, foodways, material culture, legends, rituals, superstitions, jokes, social and human dynamics. A large number of papers feature fieldwork and topics with a local focus on Indiana University, Bloomington, and the state of Indiana.
* Contact the IU Archives for recent born-digital accruals to this collections.

The IU Archives holds a vast photograph and negative collection that comprises approximately two-million images. The majority of these were shot by Indiana University’s Photographic Services Department, Athletic Department, and News Bureau. The remaining images were shot mostly by local professional photographers, alumni, and faculty. Only a portion have been digitized and are accessible through this site.

Media Collections Online houses audio and video collections at Indiana University. There are several folklore related films and more are added regularly.

The Pauline Montgomery Indiana Tombstone Photographs collection contains approximately 1,600 images of grave markers.