CFP: Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice: Folklore, Conflict & Peace

Under the guest editorship of Tatiyana Bastet, Doctoral Researcher in History at the University of Hertfordshire, and Ceri Houlbrook, Folklore and History Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice invites essays for a special issue on Folklore, Conflict and Peace.

Essays are invited that use folklore to explore tension and conflict, with a move towards positive peace. Folklore’s prevalence, both in the past and today, makes it a valuable lens through which the theme of peace can be accessed and considered. While positive peace is defined by an absence of both direct and indirect violence, it is the movement towards a space, time, or feeling as much as it is each of these things itself. This movement may bring tension, contradiction, or even conflict, but does this have to be violent in nature? This special issue questions how folklore can play a role in this movement, drawn on cultural reconciliation and the promotion of peace. How are customs employed to build communities? What rituals do we observe to enable personal peace? Folklore can also be willfully divisive and disruptive. By engaging with the conflict that lies at the heart of many folktales, can we use folklore to come to a place of resolution?

General themes that contributors can address in their essays include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Cultural customs and community building
• The folklore of the neighbour
• Kindness as a theme within folklore
• Peace and conflict in legends, folktales, and fairy-tales
• Rituals of catharsis and personal peace
• Folklore and the quest for ecological peace
• Folklore as divisive and disruptive
• Folklore’s use in cultural reconciliation
• Folklore as a vehicle to a place of conflict resolution

The deadline for the submission is January 15, 2023. 

Content Questions

Expression of Interest and questions to the guest editor are welcome and may increase the chance of publication. Please direct content-based questions or concerns to the guest editors:

Tatiyana Bastet: [email protected]

Ceri Houlbrook: [email protected]