Mary Ellen Brown

Professor Emeritá of Folklore (http://www.indiana.edu/~folklore)
Adjunct Professor of English
Editor, Journal of Folklore Research, 1992-2004
Director, Institute for Advanced Study, 1998-2003
 

    Contact:

    Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology
    504 N. Fess
    Bloomington, IN 47405
    Email: brown2@indiana.edu
   
   Education:

   Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1968
   M.A., University of Pennsylvania, 1963
   B.A., Mary Baldwin College, 1960

   Recent Book Publications:

   William Motherwell's Cultural Politics.  The University Press of Kentucky, 2001.     

   The Bedesman and the Hodbearer: The Epistolary Friendship of Francis James Child and
       William Walker. Aberdeen University Press for the Elphinstone Institute, 2001.
  

Research Interests:

In recent years, my research interests have been largely historical, especially touching on the intellectual history of the study of materials designated “vernacular.”  I’ve spent the bulk of my academic career looking at l8th and l9th century Scottish materials, exploring the ways canonical authors like Robert Burns (Burns and Tradition, London:  Macmillan, l984) have used available cultural resources in their work, and latterly examining the habitus of William Motherwell, a collector/editor of ballads, poet, journalist, writer for the periodical press, and political spokesperson.

My present project - The Making of Child's Ballads - seeks to reveal how Francis James Child (The English and Scottish Popular Ballads 1882-1898) was able to produce that work-an edition of 305 different ballad stories, illustrated with all known versions, and prefaced with elaborate historical and comparative introduction - and to identify his research questions, his methodology, and the scholarly assumptions that  guided his work.  I rely primarily on the 33 manuscript volumes relating to the project arranged by George Lyman Kittredge, Child's literacy, executor, and housed at the Houghton Library, Harvard University. (see Partners in the Ballad Cause as example)

I sometimes call myself an historical ethnographer to emphasize my preoccupation with the past as well as my connection to general ethnographic endeavors.  I can’t observe or ask questions directly.  But of course I do ask questions and sift through the information available to find answers and draw conclusions. I suspect that what I glean is every bit as “objective” as face to face interrogation, maybe more so as any power differentials that might effect responses simply aren’t there in an obvious way; no one is trying to answer the question in a way which will please me.  However, I clearly “interpret” against my own personal experiences and theoretical biases.  I feel more comfortable thinking of ethnography as a humanistic endeavor rather than “scientific”; and yet my methodological approaches are social scientific, with stress on acquisition of data before generalizations/interpretations.