Yesterday, I had the
pleasure of being invited to attend the “Newer Researchers in Folklore
Conference”, organised by The Folklore Society and held at their central London
base in the Warburg Institute, Bloomsbury. As many have expressed with some
trepidation, all is not well for English folkloristics; while we have seen the
University of Chichester open its Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and
Fantasy, the past decade has witnessed the closure of other departments devoted
to the field. In the academic sphere, folkloristics is rarely accorded the
respect and recognition that it deserves, and indeed in many cases is barely
visible and very poorly understood. Further, folklore itself is widely
associated with Morris dancers, Maypoles, and all things twee, rather than
being understood as encompassing all of the popular beliefs, customs, and
traditions of any given society; the "lore of the folk", if you will.
Understandably, this sorry state of affairs is one that greatly concerns the
Folklore Society, and it is was clear that one of the core purposes behind this
conference was to find a way to reverse this decline and inject new life into
this fascinating old discipline.
Organised by Dr. Matthew
Cheeseman and Dr. Paul Cowdell (the latter of whom could unfortunately not be
at the event itself), the one-day conference was also attended by the Society's
President, Professor James H. Grayson, as well as its Vice President Robert
McDowall and prominent British folklorist Jeremy Harte, while Dr. Caroline
Oates kindly dealt with the organisational issues surrounding food and drink.
However, these eminent scholars were not to take centre stage, for as its name
suggests, the day was devoted to "newer researchers", which in many,
although by no means all, cases was a synonym for "younger
researchers". Certainly, the majority of us in attendance were either in
the midst of our doctoral research or stepping out into the daunting early stages
of an academic career. Although I recognised a few familiar faces from earlier
folklorist events, this was nevertheless the first time that so many of us in
these early stages of academia had been brought together in one place to
discuss the field and our role in it.
Our opening keynote
speaker was Professor Diane Goldstein, the director of the University of
Indiana's Folklore Institute, one of the foremost departments for folkloristics
in the United States. In her talk, she outlined the academic opportunities that
were open to folklorists in her own part of the world, championing the term
"folklorist" as a badge of pride and suggesting that as a discipline,
folkloristics can be differentiated from sociology as a result of its
ideological bent. Suggesting that better days for folklore studies may well be
on the horizon, she provided a number of useful suggestions for how those here
in England can galvanise to improve conditions for the discipline and bring it
up to the standard present in much of North American and Europe. This was
followed by a talk from a representative of publishing company Taylor &
Francis, who produce the Folklore Society's peer-reviewed journal, Folklore. As
could be expected, some comments were raised regarding the ethical problems of
author-financed open access services, something which has attracted a lot of
attention, at least in Anglo-American academia, over the past few years.
After lunch, we embarked
on a series of presentations, in which we each introduced our research, future
plans, and our own relationship to folklore. First up was Gunnella
Thorsgeirsdottir, an Icelandic scholar who has recently completed her doctoral
research into the folk beliefs and practices surrounding pregnancy and
childbearing in Japanese society. She
was followed by Bristol-based independent scholar and journalist Gideon Thomas,
who discussed his interests in Anglo-American folk musical traditions. Next was
Dr. Will Pooley, a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Historical Research
who specialises in traditional culture within the Francophone world. He was
followed by a scholar with whom I co-organised last year's third "Popular
Antiquities: Folklore and Archaeology" conference, Dr. Tina Paphitis, who
has recently completed her work on the folklore of archaeological landscapes in
Britain. Taking quite a different approach to the study of folklore was Dr.
Victoria Newton, who is presently a Research Associate at the Open University;
her specialism is in popular beliefs surrounding women's contraception and
fertility in contemporary Britain. Next up was Éva Gyöngy Máté, a Hungarian
doctoral candidate at the University of Debrecen who has been looking at the
mediality of landscape in contemporary Scottish fiction.
Doctoral student Melanie
Lovatt proceeded with an introduction to her work with individuals living in
old age homes from a perspective rooted in material culture studies. She was
followed by independent scholar Alice Little, who outlined her research into
both musical instruments in museums and on historical folklore collectors like
Percy Manning. French-American doctoral student Nicolas de Bigre proceeded with
an outline of his work with immigrant communities in North-East Scotland,
focusing on their personal-experience narratives of being an immigrant. Next
was Ben Kehoe, whose recent master's degreee thesis examines late
nineteenth-century Sicilian popular perceptions of Giuseppe Garibaldi and the
Revolution of 1860. Heading back to the U.K., Ceri Houlbrook discussed her
approach as a "folklore archaeologist" in analysing the fascinating
tradition of coin trees in modern Britain. Social historian Erika Hanna then
offered us a discussion of her work in analysing Dublin's Urban Folklore
Project, which was carried out from 1979-80. Adopting a very different approach
was independent scholar Michelle Griffiths; herself a performance artist, she
has been looking for new avenues in which to combine folklore and artistic
expression. After I then outlined my own research projects into both Anglo-Saxon
belief systems and the contemporary Pagan use of archaeological monuments,
paying particular attention to my use of folkloric sources, Cheeseman then
rounded the day off with an outline of his doctoral research in the folklore of
student life.
The conference provided a
fantastic opportunity to bring together newer researchers who are all, in one
way or another, embarking on studies within the remit of folkloristics. We were
able to meet one another, learn of each other's research, and discuss our shared
concerns and obstacles, as well as potential ways of dealing with them. In
doing so, it was undoubtedly of great value to the field. However, what became
particularly apparent was that few, if any of us, identified solely as a
folklorist. Instead, we tended to think of ourselves as scholars of
archaeology, history, sociology, or literary studies first and foremost, and as
a folklorist second, third, or even fourth. Some, including myself, were even
hesitant about labelling ourselves "folklorists"; in part this was
because most of us lacked in-depth academic training in the methodologies and
theoretical perspectives of folklore studies, but also because there are few if
any academic positions in English academia for a self-described folklorist.
Conversely, others, not least Professor Goldstein herself, urged us to proudly
label our best work as "folklorist", thus hoping that greater
academic exposure and impact will result in an improved future for the field. I
hope that she's right, and (for better or worse) I will certainly be more
comfortable in declaring myself a folklorist in future.
