FOLK 100 Initiative Commemorates 100 Years of Graduate Training in Folklore and Ethnomusicology Studies at Indiana University

This is a guest post by Pravina Shukla, Chair of the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University.

This is the year of FOLK 100, marking a century of graduate training in Folklore and Ethnomusicology studies here at Indiana University (IU).

In 1926, six graduate students completed their MA theses under the supervision of IU Distinguished Professor of English and Folklore, Stith Thompson. Their topics included: Indiana ballads, African folktales, French Canadian tales, and Native American myths. Thompson’s expanded English translation of Antti Aarne’s The Types of the Folktale, first published in 1928, and his momentous Motif-Index of Folk Literature, first published in six volumes in the 1930s and revised by Thompson in the 1950s, continue to be used by folklorists around the world.

Stith Thompson — along with Distinguished Professor Richard Dorson — helped establish the Department of Folklore in 1965.

In 2000, we became the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology.

FOLK (all caps) is our IU-wide department code, and it represents our entire department (and not just the discipline of Folklore). The FOLK 100 events celebrate our excellent emeritus and current faculty, staff, alumni, and current graduate and undergraduate students.

To mark this year of celebration, we have been hosting a series of events that highlight the intellectual core of our department. We will host three colloquium talks, two in the Fall and one in the Spring.

On Friday, October 9, we will host a one-day symposium focusing on the foundations of our disciplines. Please click here for more information and updates.

We will have complimentary FOLK 100 conference badge ribbons and our FOLK 100 t-shirts for sale.

The department has launched a new FOLK 100 crowdsourcing campaign with the sole aim of supporting our exceptional graduate students with dissertation research fellowships, conference travel grants, and general support for professional development opportunities. Please click the link below to donate.

We have been here in beautiful Bloomington in the Hoosier state, researching, teaching, and publishing about folklore and ethnomusicology for one hundred years, and we intend to be here for one hundred more!