Is Harvard the only school that has folklore and mythology as a major?

[Thundercrashbolt]

That sounds like the COOLEST thing in the world to study, but I’d rather not apply to Harvard. Are there any other ways I could possibly get the experience of that major without going to Harvard?

[Dustyfeathers]

You could probably major in that at Hampshire. I know someone who spent a lot of time studying that at Hampshire an d found it valuable. Hampshire is a college where you develop your own line of study and they do have a professor who specializes in this. In addition, Hampshire was created as a fifth college in the Pioneer Valley where the students can attend classes at any of the other colleges, UMass Amherst, Amherst, Smith and Mt. H. If you decide to attend Hampshire you would work with yoru professors to find appropriate mix of classes among all of the five schools.

Here is a search engine that will help you find out the courses offered at the five colleges. There’s a free bus system that takes you from college to college –

https://www.fivecolleges.edu/academics/courses

[Rivers4]

The University of Kentucky has a Folklore & Mythology minor.

https://mcl.as.uky.edu/folklore-mythology

[bopper]

Google tells us:
https://www.afsnet.org/page/WhereToStudyFolklore?

[happy1]

In addition to the above, may colleges allow students to create their own major. You can look at if this option is available as well as what related coursework is offered at schools you are considering.

[Corbett]

The American Folklore Society

This list is apparently not comprehensive. For example, the University of Pennsylvania has a Folklore & Folklife program, but is not listed. https://www.sas.upenn.edu/folklore/

[warblersrule]

^
That website seems outdated, as Penn hasn’t offered an undergraduate minor in Folklore for at least a decade.

@Daily Pennsylvanian

Dan Ben-Amos is a storyteller at heart. This makes him perfectly suited to be a folklore professor, as his lectures often dwindle off into stories. Two of the courses he teaches at Penn, “Introduction to Folklore” and “Narratives Across Cultures,” allow him ample opportunity to practice his story telling with an audience of about 60 students.

These two courses don’t belong to a folklore department. One hasn’t existed at Penn since 1999, and currently only graduate students can get certificates in Folklore Studies. The Center for Folklore and Ethnography tried to fill the void for some time, but closed in 2008.

That’s not to say the list is comprehensive, though.

I agree with @happy1 that many colleges would allow you to cobble together a folklore & mythology major from courses in departments of anthropology, comparative literature, linguistics (for comparative Indo-European mythology), Scandinavian studies, classics, etc.

[Corbett]

That website seems outdated, as Penn hasn’t offered an undergraduate minor in Folklore for at least a decade.

Guess you’re right. I knew that Penn was traditionally a big player in folklore studies, and when I googled it, the Penn “Folklore & Folklife” page came right up. But it looks like there no longer is an undergraduate minor or any graduate degrees.

[ucbalumnus]

Based on the list in https://www.afsnet.org/page/WhereToStudyFolklore , folklore courses may be under other named departments, and may focus on particular areas. For example, University of Hawaii has the courses under its English department, with focus on Oceania.

http://english.hawaii.edu/oral-traditions/

[washugrad]

St. Olaf has a Medieval Studies major which might tick the same general interest area.

[compmom]

As others have said, there are other ways to study this area without a specific named major. You might enjoy schools that have fewer distribution requirements and more freedom to choose courses, so that you could take various courses in different departments (Brown, Amherst). Or schools that allow for independent work and interdisciplinary work (Bennington, Sarah Lawrence, Hampshire). Just giving examples but there are most likely many schools that would fit,

[carlson2]

Indiana University at Bloomington has a folklore major. http://www.indiana.edu/~folklore/undergraduate/

[JHS]

So sad about Penn. It really had a great folklore program.

If you look carefully at the Harvard program, it has a tiny number of concentrators, no dedicated faculty, and probably no unique courses other than some sort of seminar for concentrators working on their theses. Every concentrator has to choose a focus that more or less corresponds to some standing department. You could probably come close to replicating it at dozens of universities, except you would have to be majoring in Anthropology, or African American Studies, or Medieval Studies, or American History, or Slavic Languages, or Ethnomusicology, or Comparative Literature, etc., and focusing on folklore from there. And many colleges will have some sort of roll-you-own major program that would let you re-create a folklore major from offerings in various departments, as long as it’s big enough to have offerings in various departments.