Southern Indiana Folklife

In the 1970s and into the early 1980s, Warren taught an advanced fieldwork course that entailed field residence in south-central Indiana for three weeks during the summer. Graduate students in folklore would travel with their professor to meet artisans and other community members and to document built structures on the landscape. Dubois County was the hub of these activities, but students could wander freely into adjacent counties according to the leads they uncovered. All students were required to keep detailed field journals and to write substantial reports on their research, and many of of these documents have found their way into the Roberts Collection at the IU Folklore Archives, where they now constitute a wonderful opportunity to examine ethnographic data on the folkways of southern Indiana.

We present here a sampling of these journals and reports. You can click on the PDF option at upper left for easier viewing of these files.