Folklore of Student Life – "Folklore of Student Life" holds the accumulated wisdom and wit of several IU undergraduate classes and of a good many IU undergraduates, all focused upon the folklore — those shared avenues of creativity and expression — that is part of the college experience at Indiana University. This website is a joint production of Prof John McDowell and his students in a number of undergraduate classes

Welcome to the collective harvest of IU student folklore, produced by IU undergraduates in several semesters of F351 Folklore of Student Life, the first of these in 2014, the last in 2021.

Using the buttons on the right, or the Index linked above, you can help yourself to a serving of your favorite fare. For each variety, there are three categories — archival, taken from the collections in the IU Folklore Archives; ethnographic, recorded directly from observations and interviews with members of the student community; and cybernetic, drawn from the channels of online communication. You can also search all the posted material for keywords by using the searchbar in the right-hand menu. As you get into the individual collections, you will see that the F351 students set about documenting the folklore and also thinking about aspects of its form, content, and meaning. I hope you will enjoy their insightful commentaries as much as the folklore material itself!

On this website, you will encounter single items extracted from the collections created by each F351 student. If you wish to get a sense of how an individual folklore item fits into the original student collection, you can enter the name of the student collector into the search box, or click on their name in the tag at the bottom of an entry, and its companion items will appear as options on your screen.

Please note that we do not endorse the content of this material, but rather present it as a true and honest reflection of student lore at Indiana University. Due to the explicit character of some material, viewer discretion is advisable.

If you are so inspired, feel free to leave a courteous message, to which the host will reply when possible. Thoughts about new variants and related material are most welcome!

I offer a heart-felt word of thanks to Susan Henning-Harris, our web consultant, and to Trevor Blank and Rachel Gonzalez, graduate student helpers — your ideas and efforts are deeply appreciated! And I thank Monica Marion for refurbishing this website according to 2023 styles and standards.

JMcD, 2023

Header image shows the 2014 F351 class, photo credit to Lizzie