CFP: Open Voices: Folklore for All, Folklore of All

The Folklore Society of London, U.K. is seeking submissions for its annual conference, taking place virtually from May 6-8, 2022. Submissions are due by December 31, 2021.

The conference, titled Open Voices: Folklore for All, Folklore of All, will explore the contribution of folklore and folkloristics to diversity of all types, including ethnicity, religion, nation, region, gender, sexuality, disability, class, and others, via all aspects of folklore, including jokes, tales, legends, myths, symbolism, music, calendar customs, folk drama, material culture, the rituals of everyday life, and many others besides, in order to interrogate the collaborations and contestations arising from cross-cultural engagements across time and place.

The organizers invite 15-minute papers, presentations, performances or posters, on all aspects of folklore and folkloristic approaches exploring diversity, including, but not limited to:

• The examination of identity, collaboration, creolization, appropriation, contestation and conflict.
   
• Applied folklore work addressing broader issues such as human rights, equality, security, peace, sustainability, and health and wellbeing through approaches to diversity.
   
• Beyond the academy: the development and reconsideration of public folklore and its impact working within, for and with diverse communities.
   
• Whose folklore is it anyway? Who owns a tradition?
   
• Hybridity, multilingualism, and creolization in folkloric traditions
   
• Decolonizing folklore and ethnology: what can we folklore researchers learn from the past, to make the discipline more relevant, visible, equitable and engaged?
   
• Recording the voices of minority groups: folklore, diversity and the legacies of minoritization
   
• Does safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage ‘freeze’ a tradition and exclude others from joining in?

Conference applicants should email abstracts of up 150 words, plus a brief biographical note, to: [email protected], with Open Voices in the message line, and CC to [email protected].