Folklore is the study of informal culture. Folklorists are interested in how beliefs, narratives, music, skills, crafts, rituals, customs, and ideologies are transmitted not through structured institutions but through intimate, direct, and interpersonal communication. Folklorists study traditions of all kinds that help shape an individual, group, or community identity. All groups participate in activities that inform their identity, from customs and rituals (weddings, frosh week, or retirement parties) to costume (kilts, cowboy hats, or low-rise jeans), from dancing (polkas, step-dancing, or moshing) to storytelling (tall tales, jokes, legends such as The Vanishing Hitchhiker, or folktales such as Cinderella), from vernacular language ("skooshing" [jumping on ice clampers] or "LOL" [laughing out loud]) to vernacular architecture (houses, barns, or sheds), and the list goes on. Folklorists study verbal, customary, and material culture; it is the study of how people adopt and adapt the wealth of culture available to them – whether local, regional, national, or international, whether passed through face-to-face communication, through mass media, or through institutions – and make it their own.
Cape Breton University is the only Maritime university to offer a programme in folklore, and one of only a few Canadian universities to do so. The Tier One Canada Research Chair in Intangible Culture, Dr. Richard MacKinnon, heads the programme. The Beaton Institute, a community and university archive that specialises in the social, economic, cultural, religious, political, labour, industrial, environmental, and rural history of Cape Breton Island, enriches the CBU folklore programme. When conducting research, students can access the Beaton Institute's thousands of personal and public documents.
Students majoring in folklore take preparatory courses in the discipline, introducing students to fundamental concepts, issues, and methods in the discipline of folklore. Students have opportunities to conduct their own fieldwork projects, engaging with ethical issues while developing skills in interviewing, observation, archival and library research, analysis, and synthesis in writing. Our program specialises in folklore of the Atlantic provinces, offering courses such as Cultural Heritage of Cape Breton and Folklore of Atlantic Canada, while providing a broader perspective and ample opportunity for cross-cultural comparison in courses such as Folklife Studies: Regional Ethnology; Oral Literature: Storytelling and Other Verbal Genres; Urban Legend; Vernacular Architecture; Food and Culture; and Gender in Traditional and Informal Culture. Upper-level seminar and thesis courses provide an opportunity for the student to do in-depth directed research. Taking a minor in folklore at CBU is a unique opportunity for students to complement their studies in a ‘mainstream' discipline with a fresh perspective gleaned from the study of informality.
Cape Breton Island is an ideal location in which to study folklore because of the myriad cultural groups to be found there, including English Loyalists, Irish, Acadian French, Ukrainian, Italian, Polish, Czechoslovakian, African-American, and Jewish communities, amongst others. The island is additionally home to five Aboriginal First Nation communities. Cape Breton was also settled by more than twenty-five thousand Gaelic-speaking Scots in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and, to this day, remains the only place outside of Scotland where Scots Gaelic is still spoken. To varying degrees, these groups have maintained their distinctive languages, customs, and oral and creative traditions. In addition, the Island has drawn these cultural groups to its industries, from farming and fishing to steel and coal and now to government and information technology: cultural groups encountering each other through occupations generate new traditions. Cape Breton's multicultural context provides ample opportunity for students to observe and study folklore directly, and to see how folk groups relate to and affect one another.
CBU is also pleased to provide the opportunity for students to take a minor in ethnomusicology, or to take ethnomusicology courses as part of their folklore degree. We currently offer ethnomusicology courses in: Music and Culture; Musics of the World; Celtic Music; Canadian Celtic Music; Performance Analysis of Celtic Arts; and Popular Music and Culture.
Because of folklore's interdisciplinary nature, sharing concerns, methods, and insights with, amongst others, literature, anthropology, art, music, history, linguistics, philosophy, and mythology, folklore students acquire skills and knowledge that are applicable to a wide range of careers. They develop skills in researching, interviewing, and fieldwork, working with the public, and writing and communicating their findings to others. In addition to preparing students for graduate studies and an academic career, a degree in folklore may lead to careers in the arts and arts administration (e.g., festival coordinators, practicing artists); museums, libraries and archives (e.g., exhibit designers, researchers, programme developers); education (e.g., teachers, producers of educational materials); print and broadcast media (e.g., journalists, reporters, film and theatre consultants); public history (e.g., historical interpreters; producers of historical documentaries); and government (e.g., working in departments of culture and tourism; developers of cultural policy).
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