ECU Student Guide for Fieldwork in American Folklore
Part 1: Selecting a topic, organizing, writing the prospectus

Part of learning about American folklore comes from planning for and writing a paper based on field research.  This guide gives detailed information for completing a well-designed, successful essay based on original field research.

What is field research?

Field research involves planning for and then documenting conversations or other encounters with people who tell you about or show you their traditions.

Field research is done any place where people will talk with you and show you the traditions they carry on as a part of their family or community, their occupational or religious traditions, or their social or hobby groups.

Folklorists do work in libraries and archives for some of their research, but, unless they are studying the graffiti in library carrels or the jokes told among the archive staff members, they are not doing field research.

What is field documentation?

Documentation refers to both the process and the products of recording the words and actions of your resource persons, as well as your own observations about traditions.  Field documentation can take many forms:  handwritten notes; audio tape recordings; video tape recordings; still photographs in slide or print forms; line drawings to scale; maps; genealogical charts; reproduction of artifacts, etc.  Any form of record making can be a part of field documentation.

What can I research, document, and write about?

Student folklore collectors at ECU have investigated an impressive variety of subjects over the years since 1968 when the first course in American Folklore was offered. The list below is just a short sample of paper topics.  (Those in pink are papers which won the North Carolina Folklore Society student essay contest. These were or will be published in The North Carolina Folklore Journal.)

• graffiti and customs associated with the vanishing hitchhiker at the Jamestown Bridge
• African American family tales of the Civil Rights movement
• humor in children's rhymes and jokes
• occupational tales of repossession agents
• "handles" and "road tales" of long-haul truckers
• ideas of relationship with the land in mountaineers' place legends
• persistence and change in versions of the play of one drinking game
• the social geography and process of a family hog butchering
• practice of folk medicine in four generations of a family
• performance analysis of what makes a "good" story for a teller
• themes in Mormon conversion tales
• the folk artistry of tattooing in a father and son tattoo shop
• oral history of the Polish immigration to Castle Hayne, NC
• the function of pre-natal and post-natal "infant tales" in a family
• functions of Pentecostal Holiness testimonies and memorates
• the practice and philosophy of one who "talks the fire out" of burns
• women's folklore of menstruation
• folk speech and costuming of female impersonators
• folk art techniques of a professional scientific glass-blower
• the folk artistry of amateur radio operators' QSL cards
• the windmills of Vollis Simpson, folk artist
• personal experience tales of growing up deaf in a hearing family
• Hatteras Island traditional cookery
• farming with mules
• folklore in the weight training gym
• personal experience tales of encounters at the Pactolus light
• women's traditions in a fishing family
• verbal artistry of a punster, poet, pediatrician
• grave decoration to symbolize and communicate beliefs
• marriage proposal narratives

Planning the Field Research

STEP ONE
Decide on a topic area

This might be:

• a genre of folklore (e.g. belief expressions, memorates, the production of something)
• a group (e.g. your family, members of your church, your roommates sports team)
• a single individual (e.g. your grandmother who is a fourth generation quilter)
• an aspect of material culture which you document and study entirely by observation, without talking with people (e.g. regional and individual types of decorated mailboxes; grave decorations; Hallowe'en and harvest yards. etc.)

STEP TWO
Narrow the topic area by asking a series of questions which will help you focus on specific aspects of the topic.

The following description of one student's experience gives a useful example of the topic selection and narrowing process

The young woman said she was interested in "something to do with African American folklore."  She wanted to work with her family and community at home, a place she regularly returned to on weekends.  What most interested her were tales of some sort ó storytelling which could give her a greater sense of connection with her past and her people.  She had heard a few mentions of her family members' experiences during the Civil Rights movement, and she also realized she didn't have a good background in that period of history from her formal schooling.

By asking a series of questions, she was able to focus her topic, decide with whom she would talk and what questions she would ask, determine which collecting equipment and methods would be best, and schedule the time she needed to accomplish the field research.  This student's narrowing process can be summarized as follows, moving from the most general statement of her topic to the most focused:

1. African American folklore
2. in my own family
3. tales of some sort
4. personal experience narratives
5. about the civil rights movement

STEP THREE
Decide with whom you could talk or what you could observe about aspects of tradition in the narrowed subject area.

You should think simultaneously about the time there is to work on this project (along with everything else you have to do in the semester), the number of people who might be documented in that time, the relative ease with which you could spend time with those persons, the amount of travel necessary.

The woman student decided to talk with her grandmother, mother, uncle, and perhaps a friend of the family whom she had heard tell of civil rights experiences on the weekend she went home for her birthday.

Note: Ordinarily, it is not a good idea to try to do field research during time dedicated to something else - e.g. during regular working hours, during the weekend the family helps grandmother move, during special family events whose activities would be interrupted by the demands of folklore collecting and documentation.

In this case, though, the family's attention would naturally be centered on the woman student during a weekend celebration of her birthday, and family members could be expected to cooperate with the student's request for help with her term paper.

STEP FOUR
Decide which documentation methods and equipment  will be suitable for your project, your informants, your abilities and resources.

Types of equipment you might need for documentation of your field research include:

• audio tape recorder and 60 or 90 minute standard size tape cassettes
• video camera/recorder and VHS format tape cassettes
• notebook or cards, pen, pencil
• sketch pad, tape measure
• 35 mm camera and slide or negative print film
• use of a photocopy machine for reproduction of valuable materials > > old photographs, newspaper clippings, an heirloom recipe book, etc.

Some topics demand certain kinds of equipment for best documentation.

Narratives, verbal descriptions of process, conversations concerning beliefs and practices -- all require use of an audio tape recorder and cassette tapes.  Document grandfather's tales of fishing exploits on audio or video tape.

Topics dealing with aspects of material culture require use of a camera and/or the production of line drawings.  Plan to use a camera and written or tape-recorded observation notes for a paper on harvest/Hallowe'en yard decorations.

STEP FIVE
Prepare a 1–2 page prospectus (600 words, minimum) describing the project. Identify the prospectus with your name, your field research topic/working title, date of submission, and word count.

Include in your prospectus:

• the narrowed subject area, the persons with whom you plan to talk, the field situation in which you expect to encounter resource persons, and your methods of documentation (including equipment).

• a brief explanation of what you already know about the subject area and/or the people with whom you will talk, and why you think your topic is a useful one for folklore study.

Submit the prospectus by the due date listed on the class schedule.  Submit an electronic copy via e-mail and print a copy to submit in class and to include with your final paper.

Note 1
If you need to make any major changes in your project plans, you may need to prepare a substitute prospectus. See Dr. Baldwin for advice on the effect of any changes in your field research plans.

Note 2
Only papers which have gone through the prospectus preparation and approval stages may be submitted for grading.  All others, however wonderful their contents, are ineligible for grading.