Article on Folklore and Mythology Perpetuated Untrue stereotypes

After a promising beginning to your article about the Folklore and Mythology department, I was hoping that perhaps The crimson would help dispel some of the common legends surrounding my concentration ("Folk and Myth: Beyond Witches & Ouijas," news story, May 23,1994). Unfortunately, the article only succeeded in perpetuating them further.

Although you titled the article "Beyond Witches & Ouijas," you didn't get beyond these topics yourselves. For starters, numerous references were made to classes on witchcraft, UFOs, etc., which are only two of the 15 courses offered by the committee. After a passing reference to the class on Mexican corridos (which, by the way, are ballads, not stories, as you stated), such as African oral traditions, Ice-landic sagas, Celtic heroes and folklore theory were basically ignored.

Your jump headline and other comments made it appear that the occult makes up the majority of study in our department, when in fact this is a very small minority of what we do. The fact of the matter is that I probably will never take a class on alchemy or satanic cults, and no one I know is writing a thesis in this area, either.

In addition, the inclusion of the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association (HRSFA) was totally gratuitous. Currently, four of more than 80 HRSFA members are folklore majors. While it is true that individual students have had a part in defining events such as HRSFA's Wyld Hunt and the Coming of the Hour, these are not connected with the Folklore department. Most participants in these events are not folklore students. Not only that, but most folklore students have nothing to do with them either!

In an article about an academic discipline, it seems inappropriate and misleading to devote an entire section to an unrelated extracurricular in which only a few of the students in question participate. This only serves to trivialize the seriousness of our academic pursuit.

It seems that The Crimson, like many others, cannot accept the fact that there are many people who study folklore without "practicing" it. Under the weight of this bias, your article degenerated into there sensationalism focusing on the "weird" in order to make your article more "interesting."

Most people (and, I suspect, The Crimson) have little concept of what folklore entails. while The Crimson had the opportunity to educate the public about the study of folklore, it did not even attempt to define the field or explain what it is that keeps our committee together.

Although The Crimson may have written this article with the best of intentions, the end result did nothing to inform the public, but rather perpetuated existing stereotypes of folklore students and their department. Perhaps articles like this will provide an enterprising Folk and Myth student 50 years from now with a fascinating thesis topic: "Perceptions of the Harvard Folklore and Mythology Department." Clare A. Sammells '95   Folklore and Mythology concentrator