Introduction: Folklore Responds to Columbine and Adolescence

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Simon J. Bronner

Abstract

It may surprise you to know that this issue on adolescent folklore is a first. Its special claim is being a thematic set of essays focusing on adolescence as a social category of folkloric production by teenagers and for folkloric response by adults and children. This is not to say that folklorists have not been listening to teenagers since adolescence became known as a prominent life stage in the twentieth century. Especially in American colleges, folklorists fill archives with collections by and from adolescents, but they have rarely used these materials for a focused inquiry into the age. At the same time that some of the best known American folklore genres, such as contemporary legends and initiation rituals, derived largely from teenagers, it may be argued that, overall, age as a social category of folkloric production has been slow to be recognized, and adolescence as a vague period between childhood and adulthood has been given even less.

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