Daily Inspiration Quote by Alan Dundes

Dundes is quietly taking a swing at the romantic myth of folklore as pure collecting: the earnest graduate student with a tape recorder, chasing “authentic” voices in the field. He grants fieldwork its importance, then immediately demotes it from sacred rite to just one tool in a larger intellectual project. The first sentence is a corrective; the second is a policy weapon.

The intent is pedagogical but also disciplinary. By insisting on “original research” in upper-division courses, Dundes is training students to treat folklore not as a scrapbook of quaint artifacts but as evidence that can be argued with. Fieldwork produces material; research produces interpretation, comparison, and critique. The subtext: without analysis, fieldwork risks becoming tourism, a collection of charming fragments that flatter the collector more than they illuminate culture.

Context matters here. Dundes spent his career pushing folklore studies toward bolder theorizing and away from mere antiquarianism. His requirement reads like a boundary marker in a field that has long wrestled with legitimacy inside the academy. A term paper is not just an assignment; it’s a demand that students enter scholarly conversation, situate a text or practice in history, and make a claim someone else could dispute.

There’s also an ethical undertone. “More than fieldwork” hints at responsibility after collection: how you frame what people told you, what you omit, what you generalize, and what you think you’re entitled to say. Dundes’s classroom rule doubles as a reminder that the real work begins when you stop recording and start thinking.