Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives
The Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives (BMUFA) is the largest North American repository of Ukrainian and Canadian-Ukrainian folklore materials. It is open to students, scholars, and the general public. It is used in teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses related to the BA, MA and PhD programs in Ukrainian Folklore. It is also used by outside researchers for studies related to Ukrainian and Canadian folklore, and as a resource for continuing community outreach projects and publications.
The BMUFA is part of the Peter and Doris Kule Centre for Ukrainian and Canadian Folklore (Kule Folklore Centre) in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta.
What is Folklore?
Folklore is understood to be “expressive culture in small group settings.” Alternatively, it can be described as “vernacular culture” (local lived experience, with some distance from official elite culture and commercial pop culture) in past and particularly in contemporary contexts. Traditional folklore materials concentrate on peasant culture (low technology rural family-based farming in Ukrainian territories).
Folkloristics in Europe has tended to engage with issues of national/cultural identity. Particularly in its North American tradition, the scope of “folklore” has expanded in the past century to include the traditions of any (sub)community or societal stratum.
Folklorists tend to engage in “fieldwork,” engaging directly with people who live(d) the culture in question. Folklorists tend to work in the tradition of ethnography, and value archival collections.