JUNE 2025
Ana María Dupey, Fernando Fischman, Maria Palleiro
The 1970s as a Turning Point of Folklore Studies in Latin America.
June 18, 2025. at 5 p.m. CET
Speaker's Biography:
Ana María Dupey works at the National Institute of Anthropology and Latin American Thought, National Academy of Folklore. She holds a PhD in sociology from the Argentine Catholic University, and a MA in anthropological sciences from the University of Buenos Aires. She is an associate professor of folklore general at the University of Buenos Aires, and a consultant researcher in the National Institute of Anthropology and Latin American Thought. She is the author of books, chapters of books and articles in refereed journals, as well as the editor of several journals and books on folklore.
Fernando Fischman holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Buenos Aires and a MA from the Folklore Institute, Indiana University. He is a researcher at CONICET (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas) and a professor at the University of Buenos Aires He serves as a coordinator of the PEACSO (Program of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts) at FLACSO, Argentina. In 2023, he was elected Fellow of the American Folklore Society.
Maria Palleiro has a PhD in philosophy and letters from the University of Buenos Aires (doctoral thesis in folk narrative). She is a senior researcher in folk narrative at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Argentina and Vice President for Latin America of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research (ISFNR). She is a professor of the postgraduate seminar “Orality and Discourse Analysis” at the University of Buenos Aires. She has been a full professor of methodology of folklore research at the National University of Arts, Buenos Aires and a visiting professor at Salerno University (Italy), Ljubljana University (Slovenia), University of Tartu (Estonia), and the Ethnology Institute of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA). She is the author of books, proceedings and articles in indexed publications dealing with her research areas: folk narrative, social beliefs and discourse analysis.
Abstract:
This lecture deals with the 1970s as a turning point of folklore studies in Latin America, focused on two outstanding folklorists, ex Vice Presidents for Latin America of the ISFNR: the Chilean Manuel Dannemann and the Argentinian Martha Blache.
To begin with, Maria Palleiro will deal with “Argentinian Folk Narrative Studies in the Latin American Context”, providing a panoramic overview of Latin American folk narrative studies. She will offer a quick diachronic itinerary of the most relevant Argentinian folk narrative collections, noting the trends in Folklore Studies in each period. This diachronic overview will be aimed at pointing out how collecting, classifying and archiving folk narrative can change, by considering the interweaving between folktales and belief narratives that erase boundaries between different narrative genres. In this sense, she will underline the contribution of Manuel Dannemann and Martha Blache to this turning point, regarding classification and interpretation of folk narrative.
Fernando Fischman will deal with “The Uncoupling of “Identity” from “Folklore”. Confrontations and Reformulations”, pointing out that, beginning in the 1970s, a series of reformulations took place in the academic production of the Latin American folklore studies. One of these, arising from the work of Martha Blache, revisited the relationship between folklore and identity, generating controversies over this naturalized connection. His presentation will put forward some of the arguments brought about by her work in different spheres of the region’s intellectual field and the consequences for subsequent scholarship production.
Finally, Ana María Dupey will deal with “Theoretical Milestone in the Folklore Studies in Argentina: Contributions from Martha Blache”. Her presentation will be aimed at outlining the guidelines of her own contribution to a book that will be published in honor of Dr. Blache. In this regard, she will display the argumentation through which she considers the substantiate the contributions of Dr. Martha Blache to the innovation of folklore studies in Argentina and other countries of Latin America at the end of the 20th century.
These contributions will be oriented to underline how this turning point of the 1970s still guides the researches in folk narrative studies nowadays, in the Latin American context.