Brigham Young University’s William A. Wilson Folklore Archives will be hosting its annual founder’s lecture Thursday, Nov. 10 at 7 p.m. in the Harold B. Lee library auditorium. David Dollahite, a professor in the School of Family Life will discuss “Turning Hearts to God and Family through Telling and Writing Sacred Stories.”
The public is welcome to attend. A reception with refreshments will follow the lecture.
Dollahite will share ideas on how to nurture storytelling in family life to benefit of current and future generations. He will focus on how the telling of sacred stories turns the hearts of generations to one another. He teaches and conducts research on religion and family life among Jewish, Christian and Muslim families, and has edited four books on family life.
The William A. Wilson Folklore Archives began as a stack of cardboard boxes in Professor Wilson’s office at BYU. Comprised of materials submitted by students of anthropologist John Sorenson and folklorist Thomas E. Cheney as well as Wilson’s own students, the materials lacked the organization and accessibility to make them useful for students and researchers.
Committed to collecting and preserving folklore, the archives focus on families, the religious life of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, university students and regional life in the Intermountain West. Home of the largest collection of Mormon folklore, the archive also houses significant collections of legends, customs, speech, beliefs, songs, material culture, tales and jokes, games, riddles and personal narratives.
The archives also house the papers of prominent folklorists Louise Pound, Thomas E. Cheney and William A. Wilson, as well as a variety of printed material dealing with folklore scholarship.
For more information, contact Roger Layton at roger_layton@byu.edu or (801) 422-6687.
Writer: Melissa Connor
