folkloristics

Folklore studies (also known as folkloristics and, in the United Kingdom, as tradition studies or folk life studies) is the interdisciplinary field within cultural anthropology that examines the creation, performance, and preservation of folklore. The term folkloristics entered academic discourse in nineteenth-century Europe and, along with its English-language counterparts, gained currency in the 1950s as scholars differentiated the study of traditional culture from the artifacts themselves. In contemporary scholarship, the word Folkloristics is favored by Alan Dundes, and used in the title of his publication. Simon Bronner uses the term folklore studies to describe the discipline's intellectual history. By the late twentieth century the field supported international and national instit...