Call for Participation: Fairy Tales, Folk Lore and Legends 2nd Global Conference

The Knight and the Faerie - Daniel Eskridge

This call for participation, posted 2 days ago by inter-disciplinary.net, sounds very interesting with all the possible subjects, and there are so many options for approach available I have only included the content information and basics (emphasis in bold, mine). Although the conference is a full three days (both Tuesday and Thursday are full days, as well as the Tuesday), and would be able to include many papers and presentations, the organizing chairs are going to have real work on their table narrowing down the choices of abstracts!

The first conference program, held in Budapest, Hungary in March this year (2016), can be found HERE, while the Abstracts from that conference (which are also fascinating) are HERE and HERE. They indicate a great second conference!

(Anyone feel like shouting me a ticket to Portugal next year?)

From hastac.org. Note: it was really hard to choose excerpts from so I have included all but the "fine print" which you can read at the link:

Fairy Tales, Folk Lore and Legends2nd Global Conference

Call for Participation 2017

Tuesday 4th April  – Thursday 6th April 2017

Lisbon, Portugal

In contemporary retellings of historic fairy tales certain characters recur without failure: wicked witches, evil stepmothers, Rumplestiltskin, jinn, gnomes, trolls, wolves and thieves, as well as fairy godmothers, departed beloved mothers, firebirds, dwarves, princesses, dragons, woodcutters and princes charming. Disney has established a near monopoly on how these characters are viewed in contemporary society and how their stories are retold but the Disney lens is not the only one available. Fairy tales, folk lore and legends are the common patrimony of us all and the canvas on which the vast mural of good versus evil plays out; our darkest dreams or nightmares struggle against our better selves and highest hopes in these tales. At the same time, the relationship between these tales and modern society is a complex one that invites closer consideration of the changing nature of the stories and how modern sensibilities have both challenged and been challenged by the values and viewpoints that underpin the narratives. 

Childhood itself, the presumed audience for most of these stories, has itself undergone radical redefinition since the tales first began to be collected or written. How have those changes influenced or been reflected in the retelling of the tales over time? Fairy tales can be interpreted in a variety of ways and from a variety of viewpoints: they can be psychological exposes, blueprints for dealing with the traumas of childhood and early adulthood, guides to navigating life, windows onto social realities long forgotten, remnants of ancient mythology or hints at how to access the Transcendent. How have adult sensibilities of what is appropriate for children appeared in the retellings or new collections? How many tales are actually retold for the benefit of adults, despite their supposed audience of children? 

During the 2016 project, the unexpected preponderance of Disney-related discussions surprised all the participants. The Disney footprint seems to be inescapable when discussing this literature, whether a particular story has served as inspiration for a Disney film or not. That in itself is perhaps a subject worth discussing. The the 2017 project meeting will focus on non-Disney retellings of the classic tales as well as those tales which Disney has chosen thus far to ignore. 

The Fairy Tales interdisciplinary research and publishing stream investigates how fairy tales/folk tales/legends represent both good and evil, how these are personified or interact, what these reveal about the lives of those who have told them over the years, what they mean for us who read or listen to them today. Possible subjects for presentations include but are not limited to:

Exploring the Tales Themselves

- Functions of tales over time and across cultures
- Socio-political context of tales and their capacity to serve as allegories for real life issues
- Justice and morality in the tales
- Fairy tale utopias and dystopias and the blurred lines between fiction, fact, reality, science fiction and mythology
- How fairy tales shape ideas about happiness
- Considerations of why tales are an enduring aspect of culture
- Factors that make some tales more popular than others (and why popularity can shift over time)
- (Re)interpretations and re-imaginings of the same tales differ over time or across cultures
- Relationship between fairy tale characters and real life humans: do human ‘good guys’ or ‘bad guys’ behave so differently from fictional goodies and baddies, where there times when characters that seem fantastic to modern folks were actually considered to be more realistic by historical readers/listeners, what factors shape the changes that cause people to perceive characters as more or less real
- Relationship between fantastic and magical elements of tales and lived reality
- Tales and monsters: monstrous animals, monstrous humans, children’s interaction with monsters
- Intended lessons and values of stories and counter-interpretations, particularly in relation to gender, sex, materialistic values, notions of virtue and authority
- Processes around the domestication of fairy tales
- Tales as a source of/mechanism for oppression of individuals or groups
- New/modern tales
- Critical approaches to tales
- Tales and their authors
- Fairy tale artwork and imagery
- Fairy tale geographies: spaces and places of both the worlds within fairy tales as well as the spaces and places where the narratives are told or written

Encountering Fairy Tales/Legends/Folk Tales

- Studies of readers/audiences across time and cultures
- Listening versus reading: impact of oral traditions on the narratives, impact of illustrations in reception of the tales, etc.
- Relationship between traditional and modern forms of interactive storytelling involving fairy tales
- How adaptation to other mediums, such as film, television, visual art, music, theatre, graphic novels, dance and video games, affect the content of the tales themselves, appreciation of the narrative or our interpretations of narrative meaning

Uses of Fairy Tales/Legends/Folk Tales

- In advertising (re-imagining tales in advertising imagery, marketing the princess lifestyle, etc.)
- Tales and pedagogy: using tales as teaching and learning tools
- In tourism through destination marketing of spaces associated with fairy tales, Disneyfication of tales, etc.
- In the formation of national/cultural/ethnic identity
- In the publishing business
- Communities, biography and fairy tales: How social communal identity is forged around telling and re-telling tales

Tales, Health and Happiness

- Tales and magical thinking in the human development
- Tales and psychological/clinical practices involving tales
- Tales and unhealthy behaviour/beliefs
- Effect of tales on shaping notions of (un)happiness, (in)appropriate ways to pursue it and how to respond to respond to others’ (un)happiness
- Tales and aging (“growing old” as a theme in tales, how tales shape perceptions of old age, etc.)

Live Performances of Tales

- Theatrical, dance and other types of staged presentations
- Pantomime
- Vocal performances
- Art installations
- Readings
- Curated film screenings

What to Send
300 word abstracts, proposals and other forms of contribution should be submitted by Friday 28th October 2016.All submissions be minimally double reviewed, under anonymous (blind) conditions, by a global panel drawn from members of the Project Team and the Advisory Board. In practice our procedures usually entail that by the time a proposal is accepted, it will have been triple and quadruple reviewed.

You will be notified of the panel’s decision by Friday 11th November 2016.
If your submission is accepted for the conference, a full draft of your contribution should be submitted by Friday 3rd March 2017.

Abstracts may be in Word, RTF or Notepad formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: Fairy Tales Abstract Submission

Where to SendAbstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs:

Organising Chairs:
Stephen Morris: smmorris58@yahoo.com
Rob Fisher: fairy2@inter-disciplinary.net

You can find the full details HERE.