Folklore Dept. to close in July

To future generations, Penn's Folklore Department may be little more than, well, its own piece of folklore. The beleaguered Folklore and Folklife Department will close July 1 but will maintain its currently existing graduate group and will continue to offer a minor for undergraduates, according to a resolution passed Friday by the University Trustees. In addition, the School of Arts and Sciences will establish a Center for Folklore and Ethnography, SAS Dean Samuel Preston told the Trustees' Academic Policy Committee Friday. Although the department will no longer offer an undergraduate major, very few students or faculty members are likely to be directly affected. The department has long struggled to maintain a sizeable number of faculty members and student majors. Only 10 students between the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of General Studies have selected Folklore as their major and the number of standing faculty members -- only four -- is "not sufficient" for the maintenance of a successful academic department, Preston said. "Through retirement, deaths and attrition, the faculty size of the Department has declined in recent years, and the number of undergraduate majors has diminished dramatically," according to the resolution suggesting the department's termination. The department's four professors -- Chairperson Roger Abrahams, Regina Bendix, Robert St. George and Dan Ben-Amos -- will join the English, Anthropology, History and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies departments, respectively. And undergraduate Folklore courses will continue to be offered through cross-listings -- though a Freshman Seminar will be offered in lieu of the popular Folklore 101 course this fall. Those students who have already declared Folklore as their major will be able to fulfill their curriculum as planned. Preston claimed in March that the decision to close the department was largely motivated by undergraduates' traditional lack of interest in pursuing a Folklore degree. He expressed similar sentiments Friday, explaining to the members of the Academic Policy Committee that the department has "never really found much of a mission at an undergraduate level." Preston released a strategic plan for SAS in early April that called for increased investment in departments and programs that provide strong academics at both the undergraduate and graduate levels as well as offer ample research opportunity "I think it is the case that departments recognize that their welfare is in part a function of how effectively they are serving our undergraduate community," Preston said. But that's easier said than done for small departments like Folklore, Abrahams claims. "Small departments are having ever-greater problems in actually servicing the needs of majors vis-a-vis the kind of career counseling that ought to be offered at a major undergraduate institution," Abrahams said. Still, he stressed that the closing of the department brings with it the opening of even more Folklore research opportunities throughout the University. He cited the graduate program -- chaired by Bendix and offering master's and doctoral degrees -- and the Folklore Center, a research institute slated to operate out of Logan Hall this Fall, as examples of ways in which the University will continue to provide a Folklore education. In addition, the newly developed MidStates Regional Studies Center -- a venture jointly formed by SAS Associate Dean for Arts and Letters Rebecca Bushnell, English Department Chairperson and Humanities Forum Director Wendy Steiner and Richard Dunn, the director of the McNeil Center for Early American Study -- will "encourage work that we have been sponsoring as a department and graduate program for many years," Abrahams said. The MidStates Research Consortium, which will also host visiting scholars and work collaboratively with local humanities and arts organizations, will operate out of Preston's office and is currently in search of a permanent location.

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