Shaker Studies and Folklore: An Overview

Over the course of this century, only two folklorists have, to my knowledge, published significantly on the Shakers-Daniel Watkins Patterson and Diane Sasson. For a group that is so rich in controversy, belief systems, intercultural matrices, folkloric genres, and even in the primary documents in which to find these things, the Shakers have been disregarded by the very analysts who could provide meaningful cultural analysis-folklorists.' What Barry wrote more than half a century ago concerning Shakers and folk song scholars applies to Shaker topics and folklorists today as well: