Alan Dundes (September 8, 1934 – March 30, 2005)
was an American
folklorist
Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...
. He spent much of his career as a professional academic at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
and published his ideas in a wide range of books and articles.
He has been hailed as "the most renowned Folklorist of his time".
Career
Dundes attended
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
, where he studied English.
Sure that he would be drafted upon completion of his studies, Dundes joined the
ROTC
The Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC ( or )) is a group of college- and university-based officer-training programs for training commissioned officers of the United States Armed Forces.
Overview
While ROTC graduate officers serve in all ...
and trained to become a naval communications officer. When it turned out that the ship he was to be posted to, stationed in the
Bay of Naples
A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a gulf, sea, sound, or bight. A cove is a small, circular bay with a narr ...
, already had a communications officer, Dundes asked what else that ship might need, not wanting to give up such a choice assignment. He then spent two years maintaining artillery on a ship in the Mediterranean. Upon completion of his service, Dundes attended
Indiana University
Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana.
Campuses
Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI.
*Indiana Universit ...
to pursue a Ph.D in
folklore
Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging ...
. At Indiana, he studied under the folklorist,
Richard Dorson
Richard Mercer Dorson (March 12, 1916 – September 11, 1981) was an American folklorist, professor, and director of the Folklore Institute at Indiana University. Dorson has been called the "father of American folklore"Nichols, Amber M.Richard M. ...
. He completed his degree very quickly and went on to a teaching position at the
University of Kansas
The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, and several satellite campuses, research and educational centers, medical centers, and classes across the state of Kansas. Tw ...
where he stayed for only a year before being offered a position in the
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
department of the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
in 1963.
He quickly established himself as a prominent name within
folkloristics
Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...
. Dundes held this position for 42 years, until his death in 2005.
His presidential speech at the
American Folklore Society
The American Folklore Society (AFS) is the US-based professional association for folklorists, with members from the US, Canada, and around the world, which aims to encourage research, aid in disseminating that research, promote the responsible ...
conference in 1980 argued that there was an anal-erotic fixation in the German national character; this generated significant controversy.
He introduced the concept "allomotif" (coined in an analogy with "
allomorph
In linguistics, an allomorph is a variant phonetic form of a morpheme, or, a unit of meaning that varies in sound and spelling without changing the meaning. The term ''allomorph'' describes the realization of phonological variations for a specif ...
", to complement the concept of "
motifeme" (cf. "
morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology.
In English, morphemes are ...
") introduced by
Kenneth L. Pike
Kenneth Lee Pike (June 9, 1912 – December 31, 2000) was an American linguist and anthropologist. He was the originator of the theory of tagmemics, the coiner of the terms "emic" and "etic" and the developer of the constructed language ...
) to be used in the analysis of the structures of folktales in terms of motifs identified in them.
He has been described as "widely credited with helping to shape modern folklore scholarship",
and as "one of the most admired and influential folklorists in the world"
He wrote 12 books, both academic and popular, and edited or co-wrote two dozen more
and is credited with authoring over 250 articles.
One of his most notable articles was called "Seeing is Believing" in which he indicated that Americans value the sense of sight more than the other senses.
Teaching methods
Known unofficially as the "Jokes Professor"
at UC Berkeley, his classes were very popular, combining learning with "an irresistible wit and style".
In this introductory course, students were introduced to the many various forms of folklore, from
myth
Myth is a folklore genre consisting of Narrative, narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or Origin myth, origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not Objectivity (philosophy), ...
,
legend
A legend is a Folklore genre, genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived, both by teller and listeners, to have taken place in human history. Narratives in this genre may demonstrate human valu ...
, and
folktale
A folktale or folk tale is a folklore genre that typically consists of a story passed down from generation to generation orally.
Folktale may also refer to:
Categories of stories
* Folkloric tale from oral tradition
* Fable (written form of the a ...
to
proverb
A proverb (from la, proverbium) is a simple and insightful, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Proverbs are often metaphorical and use formulaic speech, formulaic language. A proverbial phra ...
s and
riddles
A riddle is a statement, question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: ''enigmas'', which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that requir ...
to
jokes
A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with dialogue, ...
,
game
A game is a structured form of play (activity), play, usually undertaken for enjoyment, entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator s ...
s, and folkspeech (
slang
Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-gro ...
), to
folk belief
In folkloristics, folk belief or folk-belief is a broad genre of folklore that is often expressed in narratives, customs, rituals, foodways, proverbs, and rhymes. It also includes a wide variety of behaviors, expressions, and beliefs. Examples of c ...
and
foodways
In social science, foodways are the cultural, social, and economic practices relating to the production and consumption of food. ''Foodways'' often refers to the intersection of food in culture, traditions, and history.
Definition and historical ...
. The final project for this course required that each student collect, identify, and analyze 40 items of folklore. All of this material (about 500,000 items) is housed and cataloged in the Berkeley Folklore Archives. Dundes also taught undergraduate courses in American folklore, and
psychoanalytic
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might be ...
approaches to folklore (his favorite approach) in addition to graduate seminars on the history of folkloristics, from an international perspective, and the history and progression of folklore theory.
Dundes frequently gave the opening address for the New Student Orientation Program at UC Berkeley (CalSO) during summer orientation programs, including jokes and stories.
Controversy
Strongly opinionated, Dundes was not at all averse to the controversy that his theories often generated. He dealt frequently with folklore as an expression of unconscious desires and anxieties and was of the opinion that if people reacted strongly to what he had to say, he had probably hit a nerve and was probably on to something. Some of his more controversial work involved examining the
New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...
and the
Qur'an
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , sing. ...
as folklore.
However, of all his articles, the one that earned him death threats was "Into the Endzone for a Touchdown", an exploration via
psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
of what he contended was the homoerotic subtext inherent in the terminology and rituals surrounding American football.
In 1980, Dundes was invited to give the presidential address at the
American Folklore Society
The American Folklore Society (AFS) is the US-based professional association for folklorists, with members from the US, Canada, and around the world, which aims to encourage research, aid in disseminating that research, promote the responsible ...
annual meeting. His presentation, later published as a monograph titled ''Life is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder'', uses folkspeech, customs, material culture, and so forth seeking to demonstrate an anal-erotic fixation in German national character.
Reaction to this paper was incredibly strong.
Dundes did not participate in the American Folklore Society annual conference for many years. When he finally participated again, in 2004, he again gave a plenary address, this time taking his fellow folklorists to task for being weak on theory. In his opinion, the presentation of data, no matter how thorough, is useless without the development and application of theory to that data. It is not enough to simply collect, one must do something with what one has collected. In 2012, linguist Anatol Stefanowitsch credited Dundes with having given rise to a still prevalent "stereotype about Germany as a culture enamored with excretion", but called ''Life is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder,'' "unstructured, poorly argued and flimsily sourced" and "methodologically flawed because he only looked for evidence supporting his theory, and not – as even a folklorist should – for evidence against his theory".
Endowment of a professorship
Dundes fiercely defended the importance of the discipline of folkloristics throughout his career. Towards the end of his life, he received an envelope containing a check from a former student, which he asked his wife to open. She read the figure out as $1,000. In fact, the check was for $1,000,000. This money allowed Dundes to endow the university with a Distinguished Professorship in Folkloristics, thereby ensuring that upon his retirement folklore would not be abandoned in the department.
The former student and benefactor wished to remain anonymous. Apparently he or she called the university prior to the donation to find out if Dundes was still teaching, or as Dundes told it, "to see if I was still alive." The student mentioned that he or she intended to send a check, but Dundes said he was not sure the student would follow through.
The check was made out to the university, Dundes said, but with instructions that he could use it in any manner he saw fit.
"I could just take all my students to Fiji and have one hell of a party," he said.
The professor instead decided to invest it in the study of folklore. The money funds a Distinguished Professorship of Folkloristics and helps fund the university's folklore archives and provides grants for folklore students.
Interview by Flemming
Shortly before his death, Dundes was interviewed by filmmaker
Brian Flemming
Brian Flemming is an American film director, playwright and activist. His films include '' Hang Your Dog in the Wind'', '' Nothing So Strange'', and '' The God Who Wasn't There''. His musicals include '' Bat Boy: The Musical'', which won the LA ...
for his documentary, ''
The God Who Wasn't There
''The God Who Wasn't There'' is a 2005 independent documentary written and directed by Brian Flemming. The documentary questions the existence of Jesus, examining evidence that supports the Christ myth theory against the existence of a historical ...
''. He prominently recounted
Lord Raglan's 22-point scale from his 1936 book ''The Hero'', in which he ranks figures possessing similar divine attributions. An extended interview is on the
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
version of the documentary.
Influence
Before the term ''folkloristics'' can be fully understood, it is necessary to understand that the terms ''folk'' and ''lore'' are defined in many different ways. While some use the word ''folk'' to mean only peasants or remote cultures, Alan Dundes of the
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...
at Berkeley calls this definition a “misguided and narrow concept of the folk as the illiterate in a literate society” (
Devolutionary Premise', 13).
Dundes is often credited with the promotion of ''folkloristics'' as a term denoting a specific field of academic study and applies instead what he calls a “modern” flexible social definition for ''folk'': two or more persons who have any trait in common and express their shared identity through traditions. Dundes explains this point best in his essay,
The Devolutionary Premise in Folklore Theory' (1969):
:“A folk or peasant society is but one example of a ‘folk’ in the folkloristic sense. Any group of people sharing a common linking factor, e.g., an ''urban'' group such as a labor union, can and does have folklore. ‘Folk’ is a flexible concept which can refer to a nation as in American folklore or to a single family. The critical issue in defining ‘folk’ is: what groups in fact have traditions?” (emphasis in the original, se
footnote 34 13)
With this expanded social definition of ''folk'', a wider view of the material considered to be folklore also emerged that includes, as William Wilson points out, “things people make with words (verbal lore), things they make with their hands (material lore), and things they make with their actions (customary lore)” (2006, 85).
Another implication of this broader defining of the term ''folk'', according to Dundes, is that folkloristic work is interpretative and scientific rather than descriptive or devoted solely to folklore preservation. In the 1978 collection of his academic work, ''Essays in Folkloristics'', Dundes declares in his preface, “Folkloristics is the scientific study of folklore just as linguistics is the scientific study of language.
. .It implies a rigorous intellectual discipline with some attempt to apply theory and method to the materials of folklore” (vii). In other words, Dundes advocates the use of ''folkloristics'' as the preferred term for the academic discipline devoted to the study of folklore.
According to Dundes, folkloristic work will probably continue to be important in the future. Dundes writes, “folklore is a universal: there has always been folklore and in all likelihood there will always be folklore. As long as humans interact and in the course of so doing employ traditional forms of communication, folklorists will continue to have golden opportunities to study folklore” (
Devolutionary Premise', 19). According to folklorist William A. Wilson, “the study of folklore, therefore, is not just a pleasant pastime useful primarily for whiling away idle moments. Rather, it is centrally and crucially important in our attempts to understand our own behavior and that of our fellow human beings" (2006, 203).
Honors
In 1966 Dundes was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
and in 1972 was named a senior fellow of the
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...
.
In 1980 Dundes served as President of the
American Folklore Society
The American Folklore Society (AFS) is the US-based professional association for folklorists, with members from the US, Canada, and around the world, which aims to encourage research, aid in disseminating that research, promote the responsible ...
and in 1993 he was awarded the
Pitrè Prize, an international lifetime achievement award in folklore.
Dundes was elected a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
in 2001 - the first Folklorist to be recognized in this way.
The range and influence of Dundes's scholarship was recognised in the publication of three different
festschrift
In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...
collections - one by proverb scholars, one by psychoanalysts and one from his former students.
Personal life
Dundes was born in New York City, the son of a lawyer and a musician. His parents were not religious, and Dundes considered himself a secular
Jew
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...
.
[Jweekly, The Jewish News of Northern California, obituary](_blank)
/ref>
He met his wife Carolyn while attending Yale University. They were married for 48 years, and had a son (David) two daughters (Lauren and Alison) and six grandchildren."
On March 30, 2005, Dundes collapsed from an apparent heart attack while giving a graduate seminar at Berkeley, and died on the way to the hospital. He was 70.
Selected works
* Carl R. Pagter (Co-author). ''Never Try to Teach a Pig to Sing''.
* (1964)."The Morphology of North American Indian Folktales".
* (Ed.) (1965). ''The Study of Folklore''.
* (1968). "The Number Three in American Culture." In Alan Dundes (ed.), ''Every Man His Way: Readings in Cultural Anthropology.'' Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
* (1969). "Thinking Ahead: A Folkloristic Reflection of the Future Orientation in American Worldview".
*(1971). "A Study of Ethnic Slurs".
*(1972). "Folk Ideas as Units of Worldview".
*(1975). "Slurs International: Folk Comparisons of Ethnicity and National Character".
*(1980). ''Interpreting Folklore''. Indiana University Press
Indiana University Press, also known as IU Press, is an academic publisher founded in 1950 at Indiana University that specializes in the humanities and social sciences. Its headquarters are located in Bloomington, Indiana. IU Press publishes 140 ...
.
*(1984). ''Life is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder: A Portrait of German Culture Through Folklore''.
*(Ed.) (1984). ''Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth''. University of California Press
The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by faculty ...
.
* Alessandro Falassi, Falassi, Alessandro (Co-author) (1984). ''La terra in Piazza: An interpretation of the Palio in Siena''. University of California Press.
*(with C. Banc) (1986) "First Prize: Fifteen Years. An Annotated Collection of Political Jokes"
*(1987). ''Cracking Jokes: Studies of Sick Humor Cycles & Stereotypes''. Ten Speed Press.
*Carl R. Pagter (Co-author) (1987). ''When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators...: More Urban Folklore from the Paperwork Empire''. Wayne State University Press
Wayne State University Press (or WSU Press) is a university press that is part of Wayne State University. It publishes under its own name and also the imprints Painted Turtle and Great Lakes Books Series.
History
The Press has strong subjec ...
.
*(Ed.) (1989). ''Little Red Riding Hood: A Casebook''. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press
The University of Wisconsin Press (sometimes abbreviated as UW Press) is a non-profit university press publishing peer-reviewed books and journals. It publishes work by scholars from the global academic community; works of fiction, memoir and po ...
.
*(Ed.) (1990). ''In Quest of the Hero''. Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large.
The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial su ...
.
*(Ed.) (1991). ''Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel: Readings in the Interpretation of Afro-American Folklore''. University Press of Mississippi.
*(1991) ''The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore''. University of Wisconsin Press
*(Ed.) (1992). ''The Evil Eye: A Casebook''. University of Wisconsin Press.
*Carl R. Pagter (Co-author). (1992) ''Work Hard and You Shall Be Rewarded: Urban Folklore From the Paperwork Empire''.
*(1993). ''Folklore Matters''. University of Tennessee Press
The University of Tennessee Press is a university press associated with the University of Tennessee.
UT Press was established in 1940 by the University of Tennessee Board of Trustees.
The University of Tennessee Press issues about 35 books each ...
.
*(Ed.) (1994). ''The Cockfight: A Casebook''. University of Wisconsin Press.
*Edmunds, Lowell (Co-editor.) (1995). ''Oedipus: A Folklore Casebook''. University of Wisconsin Press.
*Carl R. Pagter(Co-Author) (1996). ''Sometimes the Dragon Wins: Yet More Urban Folklore from the Paperwork Empire''. Syracuse University Press
Syracuse University Press, founded in 1943, is a university press that is part of Syracuse University. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses.
History
SUP was formed in August 1943 when president William P. Tolley prom ...
.
*(Ed.) (1996). ''The Walled-Up Wife: A Casebook''. University of Wisconsin Press.
*(1997). ''From Game to War and Other Psychoanalytic Essays on Folklore''. University of Kentucky Press.
*(1997). ''Two Tales of Crow and Sparrow: A Freudian Folkloristic Essay on Caste and Untouchability''. Rowman & Littlefield.
*(Ed.) (1998). ''The Vampire: A Casebook''. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.
*Carl R. Pagter (Co-author) (2000). ''Why Don't Sheep Shrink When It Rains?: A Further Collection of Photocopier Folklore''. Syracuse University Press.
*(1999). ''Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore''. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
*(2002). ''Bloody Mary in the Mirror: Essays in Psychoanalytic Folkloristics''. University Press of Mississippi
The University Press of Mississippi, founded in 1970, is a publisher that is sponsored by the eight state universities in Mississippi.
Universities
* Alcorn State University
*Delta State University
*Jackson State University
*Mississippi State U ...
.
*(2003). ''The Shabbat Elevator and Other Sabbath Subterfuges''. Rowman & Littlefield.
*(2003). ''Fables of the Ancients?: Folklore in the Qur'an''. Rowman & Littlefield.
*(2003). ''Parsing Through Customs: Essays by a Freudian Folklorist''. The University of Wisconsin Press.
*(2004). "As the Crow Flies: A Straightforward Study of Lineal Worldview in American Folk Speech".
*(Ed.) (2005). ''Recollecting Freud''. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.
References
External links
* Alan Dundes
"International Folkloristics in the Twenty First Century"
Recording of Dundes's Presidential Address, American Folklore Society 2004 Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah.
*
*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dundes, Alan
1934 births
2005 deaths
20th-century American Jews
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American non-fiction writers
20th-century American anthropologists
21st-century American Jews
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American anthropologists
American folklorists
Indiana University alumni
Jewish anthropologists
Proverb scholars
United States Navy officers
University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty
University of Kansas faculty
Writers from New York City
Yale College alumni
Presidents of the American Folklore Society