At the university, together with his colleague Wayland D. Hand, Wilgus established the discipline of folklore studies.
[4] Wilgus also organized and directed five folk festivals on the UCLA campus, suggestive of his interest in the performance as well as of the study of folklore.
[4] During his career, Wilgus carried out fieldwork around the Cumberland River, in Kentucky and Tennessee (with Lynwood Montell[6] and around Ireland, recording the singers Tom Munnelly and John Reilly.
[2] His work around the Cumberland River made the case for the blues ballad to be seen as a subgenre of American balladry.
[7] His presidential lecture was titled 'The Text is the Thing'[8] and has been described as "a lively response to the [then] current fashion in the field for performance studies".