Missouri Folklore Society Journal (Vols. 40-41)

<p><em>Emerging Folklorists</em> showcases outstanding work done by Missouri college students from 2010-19.</p><p>These projects came primarily from folklore courses and capstones; most were presented at Missouri</p><p>Folklore Society conferences.</p><p><br></p><p>These papers represent a range of topics and approaches from rigorously quantitative analyses to</p><p>humanistic studies that ask to be validated by the reader's recognition of sound insight and empathetic</p><p>understanding. They include oral history family history structural linguistics archival study and a great</p><p>deal of fieldwork. Though the disciplines here range widely we had in mind something comparable to</p><p><em>The Apprentice Historian</em> a model which the discipline of history provides to showcase</p><p>exceptional learners.</p><p><br></p><p>So <em>Emerging Folklorists</em> opens with a pre-med student contextualizing lore from her Girl Scout camp.</p><p>Next an avid video gamer analyzes gamer language. The volume's seventeen essays include a linguistics</p><p>student tackling the linguistic structures of Yo Momma jokes and a student of A.I. using computer</p><p>analysis to explore patterns of sounds and grammar in Knock Knock jokes. Another student uses brain-</p><p>imaging data to analyze the way subjects processed the humor of memes. An extraordinarily gifted gay</p><p>student collects categorizes and offers insight into coming out stories. Another researcher focuses on</p><p>1990s updates of the Bluebeard motif. A rural student (now a PhD in Literature) explores her county's</p><p>history including oral accounts of farms and a factory a Civil War skirmish the cultural artifacts of</p><p>enslaved people. Another from southern Missouri collects stories from people of her grandparents' generation about racial confrontations in her home town. Many of the essays include appendices--data collected transcriptions of interviews etc. valuable in their own right.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>Some of these inquiries are in spots na��ve in the sense art historians use the term--work that shows the</p><p>marks of the newcomer or that may not have the range of historical reference of more senior</p><p>practitioners but work which rides on a freshness and a freedom from the preconceptions which can mark</p><p>professionals. These researchers are people still learning how to imagine their audience - they do not</p><p>always know what needs to be explained and what does not. But in folklore they have found one of the</p><p>places where an undergraduate can make genuine contributions to knowledge.</p>