Ignored the tellers and singers who kept the arts alive through performance. The seed of a newer perspective, however, was also present among the first AFS membership, in the work of Franz Boas, a young anthropologist newly-arrived from Germany. Boas had an early scientific interest in cultural differences in perception, and was disposed to first-hand, empirical investigation of culture in living societies. Boas' thinking was revolutionary. As a teacher of anthro at Columbia, Boas influenced an entire generation of young anthropologists, encouraged documentation of folklore, uregd in-depth fieldwork.
Understanding requires sytematic fieldwork, immersion in society.
Along this same time, first academic programs in folklore being created. Beginning to see that folklore continued to be created, even in modern times. But in the early 60s, some significant shift occurred in folklore studies. Perhaps most significant shift prompted by a study of Yugoslavian epic poetry by two Harvard scholars interested in the formulaic phrases in Homeric literature. Their theory was that Homer, blind greek poet of the 2nd century B.C., was practicng an oral tradition, and relied on formula in composing epic poems.