Dani Schrire
Wish you were here: Narrating the Holy Land in Postcards
February 2023
Speaker's Biography:
Dr. Dani Schrire a lecturer at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem affiliated with two graduate programs: the Program for Folklore and Folk-Culture Studies (head) and the Program in Cultural Studies.
Abstract:
Postcards are emblematic objects of modernity and although they were invented in Europe in 1869 they spread rapidly across the globe . The “rediscovery” of the Holy Land in the West parallels the emergence of the postcard and various publishers produced full sets of postcards that were distributed also among people who never visited the sacred places. Based on research carried out in the David Pearlman Holy Land postcard collection of ca. 200,000 cards (donated in 2019 to the Folklore Research Center at the Hebrew University), I deliberately focus my talk on postcards from the 1960s and beyond when postcards lost their urgency and became mundane objects with writing conventions and postal practices that were already taken for granted. Narrating the Holy Land in this modern short folk-genre negotiates Biblical myths, political turmoils and everyday life, often in surprising and peculiar manners
Cristina Bacchilega
Learning and Unlearning Folklore: Questions of Recognition, Transcoding, Genre, and Justice Revisited
November 2022
Speaker's Biography:
Cristina Bacchilega coedits Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies and is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Hawai‘i-Mānoa where she taught fairy tales and their adaptations, folklore and literature, and cultural studies. She is the author of Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies (1997), Legendary Hawai‘i and the Politics of Place: Tradition, Translation, and Tourism (2007), and Fairy Tales Transformed? 21st-Century Adaptations and the Politics of Wonder (2013). And the coeditor of two recent collections, The Penguin Book of Mermaids with Marie Alohalani Brown (2019) and Inviting Interruptions: Wonder Tales in the 21st Century with Jennifer Orme (2021). Her current projects are collaborations that continue to pursue situated understandings of folklore and the fantastic.
Abstract:
My trajectory as a folklorist and fairy-tale scholar has been shaped by the experience of being a woman and settler of color in Hawaiʻi for close to forty years, a settler who seeks to be an active ally for Hawaiian sovereignty and social justice. Learning from Hawaiian moʻolelo and Hawaiian scholars has played a role in this trajectory solidifying my recognition of multiple traditions of wonder and why that matters. While raising questions of translation or transcoding, genre, disciplinary boundaries, and justice, this talk explores the relationship between Indigenous wonderworks and the fairy tale as one of several wonder genres.
Asta Skujytė-Razmienė, Lithuania
"Folklore in the Digital Realm: The Case of “The Witcher III: Wild Hunt”"
September 2022
Speaker's Biography:
Asta Skujytė-Razmienė is a Lithuanian folklorist. In 2014 she started working at The Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, in the Department of Folklore Archives. In 2019 she defended her PhD thesis “Conception of Contagious and Infectious Diseases in Lithuanian Folklore from the 19th to the First Half of the 20th Century”. Currently she is working as the head of the Department of Folklore Archives and preparing her monograph on the perception of diseases and illnesses in Lithuanian folklore.
Abstract:
Choosing folklore material as a source of inspiration for computer games is quite an old practice. Creators decide either to closely follow and recreate various legends and myths in the virtual world or just leave some hints at the material used. In my lecture I will concentrate on “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” from “The Witcher” (2007-2015) game series, created by a Polish video game company “CD Projekt Red”. As the third instalment is often described as “Folkloric RPG” by the fans and the critics alike, my goal is to take a closer look at the game, while attempting to answer the question, what makes this particular game to feel “authentically folkloric”? So, by focusing on “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt”, I will argue that the creative team of “CD Projekt Red” might found a quite unexpected way to (re)construct and represent the possible mythological worldview of the times past in the virtual surroundings.
Ercilia Moreno Chá, Argentina
"The payada: an improvised oral poetic duel in Latin American contexts"
June 2022
Speaker's Biography:
ERCILIA MORENO CHÁ. Argentine ethnomusicologist. She was a researcher at the Universidad de Chile (University of Chile) and the Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Pensamiento Latinoamericano
(National Institute of Anthropology and Latin American Thought ) of Argentina. She served as Director of the Argentine Instituto Nacional de Musicología “Carlos Vega” (National Institute of Musicology “Carlos Vega”) and she collaborated with the Smithsonian Institution and the UNESCO, as advisor for Latin American traditions. Author of books and articles dealing with Latin American improvised oral poetry (payada) , being her most recent book “Aquí me pongo a cantar…” El arte payadoresco de Argentina y Uruguay. (2016) Here I come to sing. The art of the payada (oral poetic duel) in Argentina and Uruguay.
Aquí me pongo a cantar…” – PDF book
El arte payadoresco
de Argentina y Uruguay
Abstract:
The improvised poetic duel is an ancient world tradition that is still present today in Latin America where it takes various forms. One of these forms is the “Payada”, which is performed by two minstrels (payadores) singing and playing guitar. It has become a ritual performance with a special structure and inherent symbolism. Both of these aspects are drawn on in both the private context and during shows, festivities and Cultural Performances (Singer 1972).
The Payada phenomenon is performed with firm respect for traditional gender conventions. Its main objective is to compete by means of drawing on a variety of resources and types of poetic license, in order to prove which performer has the best skills in the art of poetic improvisation within the musical genres of each region. Expression varies is accordance with the audience and the context in which the performance takes place. Generally, it involves not only poetic art but also rhetorical and argumentative skill. The Payada has a three-part structure: the beginning iin which the payador introduces himself and/or greets the audience; the confrontation of ideas itself, and then finally a farewell. In performative terms, the art of Payada echoes the various phases of perfomance described by Richard Schechner (1994) in his studies of theatrical performances from the East and West: training, workshops, rehearsals, warm-ups, performance, relaxation and consequences. Improvised duels of this kind involving contests by two or more poets are a widely accepted global phenomenon. Payada as a particular kind of musical poetic confrontation is nonetheless an important part of an Iberoamerican tradition and involves a very unique genre of discourse. Case studies of the art from Argentina, Chile and Uruguay will be presented.
Sadhana Naithani, India
"Wildly Ours 4.0: Colonial Narratives of Non-Human Animals"
April 2022
Speaker's Biography:
Sadhana Naithani is professor at Centre of German Studies and Coordinator of Folklore Unit, SLL&CS, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is the current president of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research and Honorary Fellow of the American Folklore Society. Her research interests span European and Indian, folklore and folkloristics. She has written on the disciplinary history of folkloristics in the contexts of British colonialism, on German folklore theory after WWII and on folkloristics in the Baltic countries under Soviet rule. Currently she is documenting narratives of time in German villages and researching folklore about wild life in colonial India.
Abstract:
Non-human animals have been conceptualized in human mind through narratives. Arguably, the oldest genre of folk narrative – the fable – resolved conundrums of human life and society through tales of non-human animals. Its impact was such that the fictional images of certain animals determined their real identity, for better or worse. Human beings construct their world narratively, but the narratives grow, change, renew and experience the displacement of old and emplacement of new narratives.
Colonial history is one such period of large-scale narrative change. In the postcolonial discourse on colonialism the focus has remained on human-human conflict/relationship for a long time, yet research on the exploitation of the wild life in colonies has been gaining ground.
The focus of this paper will be on the narratives about wild life generated and circulated in colonial contexts that determined the fate of several species who lived in the wild.