Disciplining Folkloristics

Author(s): Charles L. Briggs

Source: Journal of Folklore Research , Jan. - Apr., 2008, Vol. 45, No. 1, Grand Theory
(Jan. - Apr., 2008), pp. 91-105
Published by: Indiana University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40206968

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 Charles L. Briggs

Disciplining Folkloristics

Abstract: I explore two "ideological styles" associated with twentieth-

century constructions of folkloristics, particularly in the United States.
One consists of "boundary-work," in science-studies scholar Thomas
Gieryn's terms; quintessentially embodied in the work of Richard Dor-
son, boundary-work constructs an autonomous discipline that must be
defended against amateurs and scholars from other disciplines. A second
style, associated with ethnography-of-speaking-folklore and performance
approaches, stresses theory in linking folklorists with anthropologists,
linguists, and literary scholars and developing new analytic frames. I sug-
gest that theorizing should be construed not as a threat to disciplinary
autonomy nor a locus of racial and academic authority but as a means of
challenging the Eurocentric underpinnings of folkloristics and develop-
ing more creative alternatives through a radical democratic politics of
theory that links theorizing the vernacular with vernacular theorizing.

But when one draws a boundary it may be for various kinds of reason. If
I surround an area with a fence or a line or otherwise, the purpose may
be to prevent someone from getting in or out; but it may also be part of
a game and the players be supposed, say, to jump over the boundary.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §499 (1953:138-39)

I must admit that my excitement in contributing to a debate regard-

ing the place of theory in folkloristics is tempered by lingering frustra-
Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 45, No. 1, 2008
Copyright © 2008 Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University

91

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92 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 45, No. 1

tion. Forging more prominent spaces for theoretical work in f

has been one of my central goals for two decades. A deca
ago, Amy Shuman and I published a set of papers on theor
Folklore (Briggs and Shuman 1993). But here's the rub: Sh
attempted to turn these articles into a collection for classr
we were repeatedly told by publishers that there is no mar
on folkloristic theory. Seeking to disprove this assessmen
Richard Bauman and I published a book exploring how th
folklore has informed canonical epistemologies and politi
of the modern world for three centuries. I wish I could sa
of Modernity stimulated broad rethinkings of the politics
of the discipline and sparked new attempts to insert folklo
centrally in interdisciplinary theoretical debates.
I thus could not have been more pleased to see my
in the directorship of the University of California, Berke
Program, Alan Dundes, deliver a spirited call for theoret
to a packed ballroom at the 2004 AFS meeting. I applau
Lee Haring,yRF editor Moira Smith, and the other contr
responding to Dundes' challenge. Starting with Mills'
questioning of the category of theory, the authors insigh
the theory/folklore relationship, examining how the con
these categories overdetermines their interrelations. I wo
further explore this reluctance to embrace theory.
I draw on science studies, especially Thomas Gieryn's ( 1
of "boundary-work." In the mid-twentieth-century United Sta
Dorson and other folklorists developed a largely a-theore
boundary-work that successfully delimited an autonomous
and expanded its resource base and academic authority. S
the ethnography-of-speaking and performance-centered
in folklore fostered an opposing rhetorical style that used
engaged analysis to promote creative exchanges across
boundaries. Pointing out why these rhetorics seem less v
twenty-first century as discipline-building strategies, I sug
native approach that fosters innovation by collaborating o
issues with non-academics who reflect deeply on the poetic
of vernacular culture - people we used to call "the folk."
Science-studies critiques have become markers o
importance, even for disciplines that also situate themse
humanities. But my goal is not just to put folkloristics on

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Charles L. Briggs Disciplining Folklorists 93

studies map but to reflect on folklorists' discipline-bu

and their viability within contemporary academic and
contexts - and to imagine alternatives.

Boundary-Work as Disciplinary Strategy

Acknowledging Dorson's role in consolidating U.S. folk
Bronner (1986) sagely shows that his influence eme
new theoretical visions than tireless efforts to promo
particularly by creating academic controversies. Scien
bring Dorson's contribution clearly into focus. As Gie
in his classic article, boundary-work is a rhetorical styl
social boundaries, demarcating intellectual activitie
prestige of science from non-science or pseudo-scie
work is most commonly used "to enlarge the material
resources of scientists or to defend professional auton
It builds individual reputations and expands disciplinar
by claiming authority and resources from other profe
In The British Folklorists, Dorson tells the story of John
covery of a preexisting object - folklore: "With the sur
tradition-hunter, he recognized the rupture in society
inventions and new political forms, and the damaging effe
novations on the old peasant culture" ( 1968:5) . Discover
object required a distinct set of methods, collecting "at fir
his own immediate world" (1968:8). The precarious, ev
of folklore required boundary-work - distinguishing the t
superficially similar forms. As Latour (1987) suggests,
scientific work is the generation of textual-cum-social net
collecting, classifying, and comparing empirical objects and
them into texts thus created social/ textual networks o
first antiquarian and later folkloristic. Dorson traces c
Aubrey's foundational instincts to their institutionaliza
of folklore, professional societies, a specialized literatu
ingly explicit, standardized methods adopted by schol
that seemed to grow continuously through space and
work is hard-wired into Dorson's origin story of folklorist
required by the nature of folklore and the folk. In the
describes "the brilliant history of folklore science in Engla
for folklorists in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the United Stat

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94 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 45, No. 1

dissemination of folkloristics reproduced boundary-work global

When he turned to the United States, Dorson similarly labo
consolidate folkloristics as a discipline and demarcate its boun
His attacks on amateurs, popularizers, the mass media, and aca
interlopers helped to professionalize the discipline, defining fo
through the ability to recognize a distinctive object, develop dis
methods, and form professional networks of folklorists. Secon
son argued that "the study of American folklore was being inv
commercializers and could not as yet be protected by scholars
specialists in American folklore had not yet been trained"
The production of legitimate knowledge about American f
thus required departments of folklore and professorial position
scholars who gained entrance into this network through prof
training could defend folklore's boundaries. Just as scholarly au
over "folklore" marked the disciplinary boundary from withi
son's explicitly polemical concept of "fakelore" drew it from w
demonizing commercialization, the mass media, "frivolous" fo
investigations, and scholars from other disciplines who "dabbl
folklore" (p. 7) as possessors of mere fakelore.
The contributors to this issue present a rich array of reasons tha
ory has played a limited role in North American folkloristics. Th
of boundary-work in mid-twentieth-century folkloristics brings th
into focus. The fate of folkloristics depended, Dorson claimed, o
exclusive claim to distinct objects, methods, professional societie
and departments - not theories. The papers in which Dorson c
theoretical ground, "A Theory for American Folklore" (first publish
1959) and "A Theory for American Folklore Reviewed" (first pu
in 1969), are exceptions that prove the rule. They were spe
intended to provide "common theoretical ground" for Americ
lorists (p. 47). In the 1960s, anthropology, linguistics, sociology,
studies, and other disciplines were redefining themselves in th
terms. Dorson explicitly distinguished himself from "a modish cult
of symbolic structuralism, or sociopsychodynamics, or linguistic fo
or computerized mythology" (p. 51 ) . Echoing American excepti
Dorson rejected foreign theories in favor of a construction of theor
starts with examples of American folklore, proposes "definiti
necessary precursor to any theory" (p. 50), and ends up by con
ing to "a cooperative inquiry" that will "illuminate the American
(p. 48). Even this self-proclaimed turn to theory extended Dorson 's

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Charles L. Briggs Disciplining Folklorists 95

boundary-work by adopting a narrowly inductive, not to

alist, understanding of theory that was explicitly defin
to the definitions of theory that were galvanizing and
disciplines. U.S. folklorists could not simply become pa
expansion of British folkloristics. Building a discipline fro
USA folklore created a boundary vis-a-vis European fo
theory was to remain on the other side of the Atlantic.1
Departing somewhat from the other contributors h
that the question is not just whether folklorists produ
but its marginality to discipline-building. Placing boun
core of discipline-building strategies produced a stron
mitment and esprit de corps; nevertheless, as Fine po
plays a crucial role in providing intellectual cohesion
Uniting around objects, methods, and a zealous comm
tect the discipline against usurpers is less successful in
participation in intellectual debates.
Here I note a contradiction in Dundes' role in the fie
the article that sparked this special issue. Dundes bec
successor to his teacher in continuing Dorson's role a
primary boundary-worker.2 Most folklorists attribut
ity to promote theory to having bet on the wrong th
Nevertheless, the tremendous importance of psychoan
literature, feminist studies, and other fields in recen
suggest that the case is not so simple. Indeed, bringing
tions of Freud, Jacques Lacan (1977 [1966] ) , and other
into folkloristics could have created theoretical dialog
ciplines. I would rather argue that Dundes' difficultie
more interest in theory emerges from his persistent
boundary-work as the sine qua non for discipline-build
ingly, discipline-preservation - strategies for folkloristics
central reliance on boundary-work produces, in Noyes
cial intellectuals, defined through their (self-) exclusion
characterize as metropolitan sites of high theory pro
During the Cold War expansion of scientific ide
sources in the mid-twentieth century, the boundary-w
undertaken by Dorson and some of his students expa
autonomy, scholarly authority, academic department
grants, and public recognition. The unstable "poetics o
(Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998a) that defined a continu

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96 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 45, No. 1

object helped create and naturalize new forms of modernity (

and Briggs 2003). In a post-Cold War, postmodern, fragmenti
rapidly-shifting world, the market for modernities collapsed and t
structured. The juxtaposition of closely-guarded boundaries and
to scholarly authority with the erosion of resources and prestige s
a proliferation of declensionist disciplinary narratives - folklor
functional tales of woe. Following up on a point by Bauman, com
tive technologies were often used as means of demarcating the b
of folklore - through their placement on the other side. Accor
practitioners could not claim shifting and productive relation
new technologies as scholarly sites - even as Hermann Bausinge
was convincing European folklorists of their productivity.3
Drawing on science studies, rhetorical, genealogical, Marxist, fem
postcolonial, and other critical modes, the disciplines of anthro
American Studies, and geography gained new ground by transf
foundational concepts from neutral, objective tools for inquiry
jects ofcritical inquiry. These approaches have reimagined inte
disciplines as practices that often overlap with lay, technical, an
rate pursuits and with one another. While some folklorists have fo
suit (Bendix 1997; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998b; Shuman 2005;
1994) , the field has largely clung tightly to folklore as an actually
object that can be located, collected, classified and analyzed. In
institutions increasingly embracing neoliberalism, folklorists' a
of entitlement to former positions and resources have lost gr
fields making stronger claims on broader intellectual and social
landscapes. At the turn of the millennium, inhabiting shifting
ies and generating new, cross-disciplinary strategies have beco
successful than holding onto fixed boundaries and static conc
folkloristics created by boundary-work has become unsustaina

Theoretical Boundary-Crossing as Disciplinary Strateg

The experience of the 1960s and 1970s suggests, however, that
istics can generate substantial academic authority creating an
models that generate dialogic zones with adjacent disciplines -
in theoretically-inspired boundary-erassmg: Dell Hymes (1974
folklore and folkloristics at the center of the "ethnography of spe
infusing a new analytic perspective that galvanized research in anth
ogy, communication, linguistics, and folkloristics with such centra

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Charles L. Briggs Disciplining Folklorists 97

as genre, repertoire, community, and transmission.4 Hymes

Bauman (1977) then used the notion of performance in rede
reinterpreting folklorists' objects of study.
Two features are crucial here. First, whether or not one w
call these frameworks "theory," they generated broad textu
through shared analytic principles. Second, rather than
boundaries, folklorists drew on concepts and modes of ana
anthropology, literary studies, linguistics, and history, and they
other scholars that folkloristics was valuable for their own fields
The crossrdisciplinary dialogue that took place in the 1980s in th
of American Folklore, the cross-disciplinary popularity of folkl
the demand for folklorists in other departments, and the em
symposia and special issues on performance in adjacent fiel
the success of this opposing mode of discipline building. Th
oriented folklorists seemed to have been clearly aware during th
that theory is, as Fine suggests, productive of social-textual net
Nonetheless, my goal, to brutalize Shakespeare, is not
Bauman and Hymes and bury Dorson. Indeed, more theoret
analytically-based strategies have their drawbacks, too, an
tied to the epistemological and social underpinnings of the
of theory. As Mary Poovey (1998) shows, the theory/fact o
a quintessentially modern artifact, reflecting an Enlighten
viction that facts can exist apart from interests, opinions,
mological positions and that general propositions occupy a
sphere that is not contingent on history or politics. What g
as "theory" is what can best dress itself up as rational, gen
terested, abstract, and universal - that is, as quintessential
and "Western." As Mills observes, theory is markedly inte
explicitly tied to other academic texts; it is also metadiscur
ing, limiting, and regulating what counts as scholarly disco
a particular field. What is perhaps most crucial for folklori
the social location of the author helps decide what gets cla
"theoretical": the words of white, male senior professors fr
U.S. or European universities are much more likely to be du
retical (I write self-reflexively) than those of women of col
in institutions that lack graduate programs, or non-academ
Notions of "high," "middle," and "low" presuppose this p
of seemingly decontextualized, abstract discourse, project sp
relations in epistemological terms, and reproduce the sc

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98 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 45, No. 1

claims of theory - the idea that it can enable us to jump from

salities to particularities and back without losing our balance.
locate the politics of theory less in theories as epistemological objec
in theorizing, in discursive practices that both produce certain
formulations and frame them as theory. Theoretical discourse
potentially exclusionary, expelling merely empirical, classifica
or methodological work and creating hierarchically-ordered te
networks - with the generators of theories on top, their author
terpreters next, those charged with "applying" them to data jus
and researchers seemingly ignorant of or incapable of citing th
bottom. Hierarchies of prestige in academic institutions, within
and between them, get naturalized in the process.
Roberts' article indicates how closely theorizing reproduces
inequalities. The continuing force of three centuries of identify
speech of white, elite, Euro-American males with rationality, abstra
and the unmarked subject and of identifying the speech of wom
working classes, and people of color with concreteness, "the loc
marked subjects (Bauman and Briggs 2003; Shapin 1994) is pain
captured by the marginalization of work on African-American f
and the fate of Americo Paredes' With His Pistol in His Hand (19
a century ago, Paredes reconceptualized folklore as politically-
expressive forms that define the shifting borders of conflict, diffe
and oppression. Some of Paredes' colleagues and students incor
these insights (see Bauman 1971; Bauman and Abrahams 1981;
1994), but most folklorists continued to embrace a consensus
built around a reified, depoliticized notion of folklore. If folk
had followed Paredes' lead, I suspect that the field would be en
a much stronger position in the contemporary academic la
which, as Roberts (1999; this volume) suggests, is centrally con
with cultural pluralism. Rather, as Jose limon notes, Paredes h
expunged from genealogies of folkloristics (2007).
Theory-based modes of disciplining folkloristics can thus be a
sionary as boundary-work-centered strategies. Although one or the
tends to predominate at particular times and within specific textua
networks, they intersect and overlap in complex ways, reproducing
and epistemological hierarchies and obstructing creativity. Acco
boundary-making perspectives, only professional folklorists can
a ready-made object and then collect, classify, entextualize, anal
compare it. From the theory-centered perspective, analytic pr

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Charles L. Briges Disciplining Folklorists 99

are generated in academic settings and used in deter

phenomena are "theoretically relevant." These strategie
generating scholarly narratives that cast non-academic
folklore and academics as producers of folkloristic kno
Missing here are some the key sources of theoretical
creativity in the field. I have worked on the folklore of
ing areas of New Mexico and a region in Venezuela
(an indigenous language) is spoken. In both, I could
comprehend the vast amount of knowledge that shaped
after I apprenticed myself to intellectuals, individuals
reflecting actively and creatively on social life and its d
sentation. George and Silvianita Lopez in New Mexic
and Maria Rivera in Venezuela had contemplated fo
aesthetic features and social/political impact of the dis
they performed.5 In researching proverbs, legends, cu
ments, and other forms, I spent years with them, partic
life, recording and transcribing performances, and col
interpretive work. The Lopezes had attended elementar
the only formal education open to the Riveras (brother
the English classes that I provided. With all four I enter
sions of quite abstract and complexly interdiscursive fo
explicitly served metadiscursive functions, seeking to de
and regulate everyday discourse. Trying to understand
proverb performances, for example, involved a radically
of defining proverbs and tracing their rhetorical effect
I did not find discursive objects - they told me what I s
am not suggesting that my analyses flowed directly from
tives; my interpretations rather emerged by bringing t
dialogue with philosophy, history, folkloristics, anthr
and racial studies, ethnomusicology, and other fields.
Both boundary-work and the folklorist-as-theoris
teach us to approach "informants" as purveyors of fol
the ability to consciously analyze forms - and who are
sitioned outside folkloristics' boundary. Scholars wh
ideologies commonly draw on their collaborators' analy
but fail to acknowledge their role in the work of theor
so, they reproduce racial, national, class, and professio
and commit serious lapses of professional ethics by fail
edge intellectual debts. Noyes may indeed be correct in

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100 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 45, No. 1

folklorists suffer from an "inferiority complex" vis-a-vis other

but both Dorson's attacks on "amateurs" and "popularizer
general failure to acknowledge "folk" collaborators would su
follow the psychoanalytic logic) a form of compensation th
in a superiority complex in relation to non-academic theore
Both boundary-work and theory-driven approaches also f
by failing to grasp how "the object" often contains "the theo
man and I have drawn on Bakhtin (1981, 1986) in sugges
performances are not snapshots of a particular moment in
complex cartographies of the movement of discourses, subje
and politics between contexts, genres, and texts (Bauman an
1990; Briggs and Bauman 1992) . Texts themselves are thus bo
discursive and metadiscursive, attempting to shape how par
will "read" prior discourse and how they will project what i
written into the future. In many cases, these inter- and meta
cartographies achieve a high level of abstraction and gen
short, "the theory" can be right there in "the data." Folkloris
Hymes (1975, 1981) reminds us, are taught to look closely at
just as aesthetic or ethnographic objects but also as sources o
into social life and ways of interpreting it (see also Abraham

Beyond Boundary-Work and Theory-Based Hierarch

Folkloristics: A Proposal
I would like to provocatively lay out some proposals:
1 . Theory is dead! Long live theory! Insofar as "theory" is defined
enment terms and is tied to means of generating and natu
practices of exclusion and subordination, folklorists shoul
reject "grand theory" and its less pretentious equivalents
stand with Haring in echoing literary theorists who reject the
theory as a means of regulating scholarly writing axiomati
2. Nevertheless, I am not arguing against theorizing. Withou
inter- and metadiscursive principles we must rely on boundar
to generate debates that renew disciplinary objects and m
Nor do I wish to rule out discipline-building practices alt
strategies for refashioning folkloristics and efforts to s
sources and authority. I think rather that we should dev
disciplinary practices that depend neither on boundary-w
standard theory-building modes.

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Charles L. Briggs Disciplining Folklorists 101

3. One way that folklorists can take the lead in redefining an

tioning the category of theory is to document practices of ver
theorizing, metadiscourses that are excluded from the com
that are created, as Fine (this volume) suggests, by academic
ing; here we can follow up on Abrahams' (2005) and Bauman
volume) attention to vernacular understandings of cultural for
must tread carefully here, because reified understandings of t
opposite, whether defined as "local," "lived world," or "vern
are just as much products of modernity as are "theory"; em
them uncritically thus involves presupposing and privileging t
cal concepts. Vernacular is defined in opposition to someth
vernacular versus cosmopolitan distinctions reproduce loc
global, concrete versus abstract dichotomies that have susta
opposition between modernity and traditionality for three
(Bauman and Briggs 2003) . In order to keep from reproduci
and epistemological hierarchies, we will need to extract th
vernacularfrom its opposition to cosmopolitan and the entailed
of generality, abstractness, and explanatory capacity to vernac
and its conferral on cosmopolitanism (Briggs 2005).
4. The question remains as to the relationship between v
theorizingand theorizing the vernacular, which is what we are
this volume. Rather than viewing their differences and sim
in relativist or comparative terms, I suggest tracing the
tions and exchanges that take place between them. If we
folkloristics, performance, and vernacular theorizing as p
for producing, circulating, and receiving knowledge, we ca
ine how they differentiate themselves as well as how they
and interact. Once we bring other disciplinary (academ
institutionally-based knowledge-making practices (as deve
public folklorists and others) into the debate, we will have
new ways of articulating what folklore and folkloristics c
other disciplines and institutions - which is crucial for th
of the profession. Fostering juxtapositions between know
making practices across the lines of discipline, class, race
and professional status will generate novel approaches.
If "theory" is identified by its social location and its ability to
itself as abstract, rational, and general, then Noyes is probably ri
folklorists will find it difficult to compete with psychology or s
Nevertheless, if, as Haring argues, the Chartists and 1960s folklor

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102 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 45, No. 1

to democratize the notion of creativity, perhaps it is our major callin

to democratize the notion of theory, to acknowledge the crucial theo
cal insights that we gain from vernacular intellectuals. Mills interest
asks who gets credit for generating interdisciplinary ideas; I would l
extend this question to interlocutors classified as non-academics.
I have not offered "a new theory" of folkloristics here. My go
more modest, at the same time that they are not simply "methodolo
I hope to have identified the major impediment to theory-building in
discipline - too great a reliance on boundary-work - and suggest
this practice is partially responsible for disciplinary setbacks, especia
the United States. I pointed to the centrality of folklorists' participa
in interdisciplinary theory-building in giving rise to junctures durin
twentieth-century in which folkloristics enjoyed academic visibil
institutional strength. Suggesting that conventional understandi
"theory" and who gets recognized for doing it can also be exclus
and hierarchicalizing, I urged the creation of a broader commu
of theorists. Such a community would include practitioners in
disciplines and thinkers heretofore barred from academic netw
argue that links should be created through detailed attention t
different theoretical communities produce knowledge, how disc
and practices move between them, and the differences of powe
political economy that shape who gets credit for theorizing and
claim their formulations as intellectual property.
Here we can fruitfully bring Wittgenstein into our network. Kno
down all boundaries - folding folkloristics into anthropology, cu
studies, performance studies, or cross-disciplinary programs -
undermine its intellectual locus as a unique crossroads between
nacular theorists and theorists of the vernacular. We need new th
and making and debating them will require new spaces for theor
for creatively rethinking the concepts, practices, rhetorics, and
of folkloristics and imagining how they can inform and be inf
by the profound transformations of culture and capital, bodies
labor taking place in the contemporary world. This project will
institutional recognition and support, from foundations state, ag
and non-governmental and international organizations, as well as
universities, which, in turn, will require boundaries: there need
a there there for researchers to be taken seriously. Rather than c
boundaries based on discrete, fixed objects and methods and sp
our time defending them, trying to keep folklorists in and intruder

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Charles L. Briggs Disciplining Folklorists 103

we might take a clue from Wittgenstein's epigraph and focus on m

ing a flexible, playful relationship to boundaries, jumping ove
such a way as to link and enrich the games being played on b

University of California
Berkeley

I would like to thank Richard Bauman, Regina Bendix, and Lee Having for
helpful comments on a previous draft. Elizabeth Kelley brought the Wittgen-
stein quote to my attention.

Notes

1. Here Dorson replays Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's textual nationalism (Bauman

and Briggs 2003, ch. 7).
2. See Dow's anecdote in which Dundes repeatedly asks German scholars
"'Where's the folklore?'" Dundes' boundary-work often took the form of a state-
ment: "That's not folklore!" He begins his essay with a declensionist story in which
the erosion of clear disciplinary boundaries has resulted in a "sad situation" in
which "there is no longer a purely separate, independent doctoral program in
folklore per se anywhere in the United States" (2005:385).
3. Dundes (1980:17) provides an important exception here.
4. Hymes' ability to cross disciplinary boundaries and reconfigure work within them
is signaled by his election to the presidencies of the American Folklore Society, the
American Anthropological Association, and the Linguistic Society of America.
5. Doctors, epidemiologists, lawyers, and politicians have also been my collabora-
tors in theorizing cultural forms over the years.

References Cited

Abrahams, Roger D.
2005 Everyday Life: A Poetics of Vernacular Practices. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press.
Bakhtin, M. M.
1981 The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael
Holquist, ed. Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.
1986 "The Problem of Speech Genres." In Speech Genres and Other Late Essays.
Ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, 60-102. Austin: University of
Texas Press.

Bauman, Richard
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104 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 45, No. 1

Bauman, Richard, and Charles L. Briggs

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Charles L. Briggs Disciplining Folklorists 105

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Charles L. Briggs is the Alan Dundes Distinguished Professor of

Folklore in the Department of Anthropology of the University of Cali-
fornia, Berkeley. His recent books include Stories in the Time of Cholera:
Racial Profiling during a Medical Nightmare (with Clara Mantini-Briggs,
Winner of the J. I. Staley Prize) and Voices of Modernity: Language Ideolo-
gies and the Politics of Inequality (with Richard Bauman, winner of the
Edward Sapir Award). He is currently completing a book on narrative
and violence, (clbriggs@calmail.berkeley.edu)

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