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. He was the general editor of the "Folktales of the World", a multivolume series published by the University of Chicago Press. He served an advisory editor of the series "International Folklore", as well as the series editor of "Folklore of the World". In addition, he contributed articles to numerous scholarly and popular periodicals. From 1957 to 1962 he edited the Journal of Folklore Research. He was elected president of the American Folklore Society, 1966 to 1968. In addition, he was the founder and editor of the journal of the Folklore Institute at Indiana. . Dorson has been called the "father of American folklore" and "the dominant force in the study of folklore". That study, according to Dorson, 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". Dorson's fieldwork touched upon African-American folklore in Michigan, folklore of the Upper Peninsula, other regional folklore in the United States, the folklore of Japan, and other topics. Among other academic recognitions, Dorson was awarded the Library of Congress award in History of American Civilization in 1946, and three Guggenheim Fellowships. In 2003, the Michigan Traditional Arts Program of the Michigan State University Museum awarded him the Michigan Heritage Award posthumously for his Michigan-based fieldwork contributions. According to Anne Keene, at Indiana: According to William Wilson:
