The International Society for Folk Narrative Research is conducting the online lecture series entitled Voices from Around the Globe, which are open not only to our global network of international folk narrative scholars, but also to the general public. Initiated by the former President of the ISFNR professor Sadhana Naithani, the series was launched on April 15, 2022 and since then, the lectures take place online at 5 pm CET, on the third Wednesday of every alternate month. The series is coordinated by a member of the Executive Committee of the Society. For each lecture, the respective Vice Presidents of the ISFNR in turn invite speakers from Europe, North and South Americas, Asia, and Africa to present their research. The lectures are given in English. After the event, the prerecorded lectures are made available on the ISFNR website.
The ISFNR members and other researchers are cordially invited to join us in this exploration of various cultural phenomena – local and global, old and contemporary, stable and changeable. Folk narrative scholars continue to record, map and communicate how people are navigating their cultural practices and values through turbulent and peaceful times and through the palimpsestic layers of history, which have witnessed the rhizomatic growth of narratives. Indeed, in our own time, it is relevant to ask whether folk narrative still has the means to grasp the truth of a post-truth world.
Detailed information and links to the forthcoming lectures are announced on the ISFNR website and Facebook, and emailed to all members of the ISFNR. For more information, please contact Lina Būgienė (bugiene.lina@gmail.com).
NOVEMBER 19. LECTURE IS CANCELLED.
Lewis Seifert
(Post-) Colonial Folklore Collections as Transcultural Texts: Examples from the Francophone World
November 19, 2025. at 5 p.m. CET
Short biography:
Lewis Seifert is professor of French and Francophone Studies at Brown University (Providence, RI, USA). He has published extensively on early modern French literature, including contes de fées, and Francophone adaptations of oral traditions. Among his current projects is a study of tricksters in literary and cinematic versions of folk narratives in the Atlantic Francophone world.
Abstract:
As by-products of colonialism, the many collections of indigenous folklore translated into European languages are problematic for (at least) two reasons: first, because they purport to represent in writing texts performed orally, which also involves translation across languages and cultures; and second, because their editors often extract the oral performances from their local contexts and substitute themselves for the original performers. Still, these collections and the texts they present are significant records of traditions that in many instances have waned or disappeared, often as a consequence of colonialism. Building on Donald Haase’s suggestion that such collections be understood as “transcultural texts” and focusing on a selection of folklore collections and adaptations from countries formerly colonized by France, I will explore some of the questions they raise as well as strategies for reading them.