Some of his more controversial work involved examining the New Testament and the Qur'an as folklore. He dealt frequently with folklore as an expression of unconscious desires and anxieties and was of the opinion that if people reacted strongly to what he had to say, he had probably hit a nerve and was probably on to something. Strongly opinionated, Dundes was not at all averse to the controversy that his theories often generated. These addresses were littered with jokes and stories which were a trademark of Dundes' lectures in his popular anthropology class and were a favorite of both in-coming students and the orientation staff alike. He frequently gave the opening address during summer orientation programs, whetting students' appetites about the type of instruction they might receive at the University. Dundes also taught undergraduate courses in American folklore, and psychoanalytic approaches to folklore (his favorite approach) in addition to graduate seminars on the history of folkloristics, from an international perspective, and the history and progression of folklore theory.ĭundes was also a great supporter of the New Student Orientation Program at UC Berkeley (CalSO). All of this material (about 500,000 items) is housed and cataloged in the Berkeley Folklore Archives. The final project for this course required that each student collect, identify, and analyze 40 items of folklore.
In this course, students were introduced to the many various forms of folklore, from myth, legend, and folktale to proverbs and riddles to jokes, games, and folkspeech ( slang), to folk belief and foodways. Teaching methodsĪlan Dundes was an engaging lecturer, his Introduction to Folklore course attracting many students. Dundes held this position for 42 years, until his death in 2005.
He completed his degree very quickly and went on to a teaching position at the University of Kansas where he stayed for only a year before being offered a position in the University of California, Berkeley anthropology department teaching folklore. He quickly established himself as a force to be reckoned with in the field of folkloristics. At Indiana, he studied under the father of American Folklore, Richard Dorson. Upon completion of his service, Dundes attended Indiana University to pursue a Ph.D in folklore. He then spent two years maintaining artillery guns on a ship in the Mediterranean. When it turned out that the ship he was to be posted to, stationed in the Bay of Naples, already had a communications officer, Dundes asked what else that ship might need, not wanting to give up such a choice assignment. Sure that he would be drafted upon completion of his studies, Dundes joined the ROTC and trained to become a naval communications officer. Dundes attended Yale University, where he studied English and met his wife Carolyn.
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