Folklore moves beyond the study of the old and time-honored to explore emergent meanings and cultural forms. Trending tweets, food trucks, slam poetry, and hip hop freestyling are just as relevant to folklorists? study as are string-band tunes, Cherokee quilts, family recipes, and blues. The communities that our students study are equally broad, ranging from Lumbee sheetrock workers and Latino line cooks to urban homesteaders and Black Lives Matter activists. The main way that we explore contemporary folklore, in turn, is ethnographic fieldwork, the real-world study of people?s lives in everyday settings, grounded in conversation and participatory engagement.