English, history and folklore
Utah State University’s professor enjoys spending his time and energy diving into a world of unknown culture: folklore.
“Everybody has customs and jokes. I get paid to talk about my favorite subject [folklore],” said Barre Toelken, director of Utah State University’s graduate program in folklore.
Toelken has taught folklore, the study of culture and vernacular since 1964, he said.
“We studied applications of folklore for the real world. We learned about things like how Barbie was created and how it reflects the cultural motifs,” said Heather Reynolds, a senior folklore student.
Reynolds said folklore allows you to study every facet of culture – religion, language, art, history, material culture and ideals, Reynolds said. Toelken has taught folklore at the University of Utah, University of Oregon, USU and the University of Innsbruck, Austria, on sabbatical.
Toelken is the former president of the American Folklore Society, the Oregon Folklore Society, the California Folklore Society, and the Utah Folklore Society.
For several years, he was chair of the Folk Arts Panel for the National Endowment of Arts. For 20 years, he was director of the Folklore and Ethnic Studies Program at the University of Oregon.
He was elected to membership in the Folklore Fellows of the American Folklore Society, and a member of the National Faculty. In 1995, he was elected to membership in the International Folklore Fellows Society, which was sponsored by the Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters.
Currently, he is an English and history professor at USU.
“Though I didn’t know it at the time, I was growing up in it [folklore],” Toelken said. “I grew up in a rural town in New England. Once I got to college, an English teacher said something about the ballads [I knew] in our community.”
He said he quit school for a while and lived with a Navajo family. He came back to school and told some of the Navajo stories to his teacher. His English teacher said something to him about writing them down and that is what led him to folklore.
Toelken does a bit of consulting with his expertise in folklore, but he said his love is in teaching.
He received his bachelor’s of sciences from USU, his master’s from Washington State University, and his doctorate. in Medieval Literature at the University of Oregon.
He started teaching Chaucer, but once he realized his knowledge for folklore he’s been teaching that ever since.
Toelken said folklore is a record of what’s happened to people, their stories and customs and why they do the everyday things they do or why they eat the things they eat.
He said he specializes in Navajo stories, ballads and folk songs, and occupational, ethnic current folklore. Folklore also teaches about cultural misunderstandings and how to deal with them.
This information can be used by consultants for international companies to make sure they don’t commit any social or cultural “faux paus,” Toelken said.
For example, Toelken said Japan doesn’t package anything in fours. He said the reason for this is because the Kanji or Chinese character for four looks or sounds like death and it is too easy to mistake.
“USU the world’s largest collection of cowboy poetry,” Toelken said.
“Folklore isn’t a big field,” but USU’s master’s program [in Folklore] is nationally known,” he said.