Richard Dorson

Richard Mercer Dorson (March 12, 1916 – September 11, 1981) was an American folklorist, professor, and director of the Folklore Institute at Indiana University. Dorson has been called the "father of American folklore" and "the dominant force in the study of folklore".

Career Dorson was born in New York City into a wealthy Jewish family. He studied at the Phillips Exeter Academy from 1929 to 1933.

He then went on to Harvard University where he earned his A.B., M.A., in history, and his Ph.D. degree in the History of American Civilization in 1942. He began teaching as an instructor of history at Harvard in 1943. He moved to Michigan State University in 1944 staying there until 1957 when he took a position at Indiana University as professor of history and folklore as well as that of chairman of the Committee on Folklore. He taught at Indiana until his death.

Dorson criticized the commercialization of folk traditions, specifically that of Paul Bunyan. Dorson's study of American folklore involved several roles; "polemicist, critic, field collector, library scholar". Dorson also wrote that "no subject of study in the United States today is more misunderstood than folklore".

Contributions to folklore Dorson contributed two terms to the study of folklore that have gained common currency. The first is "urban legend"; meaning a modern "story which never happened told for true". Dorson also coined the word "fakelore" in a debate with author James Stevens. Dorson dismissed Stevens' book on Paul Bunyan, and the later work of Ben Botkin as fakelore, or "a synthetic product claiming to be authentic oral tradition but actually tailored for mass edification", which "misled and gulled the public".