So lonely, the first post

Greetings:

I give you the preamble for the course, lovingly taken from the course outline.

‘Folklore’ is the study of informal culture: the behaviours, activities, texts, and customs that exist among the more formally structured and institutionalised modern living. It is a study of ‘traditions’ only inasmuch as (a) these items are often repeated and (b) a previous occurrence is given as a sufficient basis and rationale for this repetition. As such, a tradition may date back before recorded time or from the beginning of the semester. The locus of any item of folklore is the ‘group,’ which likewise can exist on a scale of scope and time-depth ranging from, on the macro-scale, an ancient globally-situated people (‘The Celts’; ‘First Nations’) to, on the micro-scale, recently formed ad hoc locally-situated small groups (‘three people from Sydney Mines I carpool with’; ‘Margaree Chamillionaire fans’).

As a consequence of studying living traditions, folklorists do much of their research ‘in the field,’ in addition to the research tools of the library and the archive. This course is an introduction to the basic techniques of field research, cumulating in a short essay which draws on both primary sources (the student’s own fieldwork) and secondary sources. By the end of the course, students will be able to apply these tools to any ethnographic project.

That's it. No one (presumably) will have read this without having been to the first class but you never know.