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Alan Dundes [1935-2005] American
Rank: 105
Educator


Alan Dundes was a folklorist at the University of California, Berkeley. His work was said to have been central to establishing the study of folklore as an academic discipline. 

Environmental, Future, Graduation, Respect

QuoteTagsRank
If a student takes the whole series of my folklore courses including the graduate seminars, he or she should learn something about fieldwork, something about bibliography, something about how to carry out library research, and something about how to publish that research. Graduation
101
Life, it seems, is nothing if not a series of initiations, transitions, and incorporations.
102
Future orientation is combined with a notion and expectation of progress, and nothing is impossible. Future
103
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
104
Ancestor worship, or filial piety so characteristic of Asian cultures, for example, does not really resonate with Americans who favor children, not grandparents.
105
I mentioned that one of the tripartite formulas in American worldview involves time: past, present, and future.
106
Cities all over the world are getting bigger as more and more people move from rural to urban sites, but that has created enormous problems with respect to environmental pollution and the general quality of life. Environmental, Respect
107
Polls are frequently taken to try to tease out or determine likely directions and trends, but once taken, they belong to the past, requiring that new polls be taken.
108
They do not merely collect texts; they must also gather data about the context and the informant and, above all, write an analysis of the items based upon the course readings and lecture material on folklore theory and method.
109
The class has become over the years fairly large, running to three hundred or more, but I always insist upon reading all the student folklore collections myself. Although this is a tall order, I look forward to it because I learn so much from it.
110
My academic identity is that of a folklorist, and for many years I have taught only folklore courses.
111
In my introductory course, Anthropology 160, the Forms of Folklore, I try to show the students what the major and minor genres of folklore are, and how they can be analyzed.
112
Their term project consists of a fieldwork collection of folklore that they create by interviewing family members, friends, or anyone they can manage to persuade to serve as an informant.
113
There is more to folklore research than fieldwork. This is why in all of my other upper-division courses I require a term paper involving original research.
114
Americans have a penchant for the future and tend to disregard the past.
115
Americans often have trouble enjoying the present moment.
116
Americans do believe in progress and there is almost certainly a kernel of truth in the joke.
117
I have a great advantage over many of my colleagues inasmuch as my students bring with them to class their own personal knowledge of national, regional, religious, ethnic, occupational, and family folklore traditions.
118
In the light of our culture, these are not unreasonable questions and tactics, but if once again, we try to see the lens through which we look, we can see that there is far too great an emphasis placed on the future.
119

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