The Ritual Year

The working group on The Ritual Year was established at the conference in Marseille on April 29, 2004. Initiated by Dr Emily Lyle the inaugural meeting was held on 11 July 2004, in the department of Celtic and Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

Any SIEF member who wishes to join the working group should contact secretary Irina Stahl on ritualyear(at)siefhome.org. The Ritual Year working group provides a valuable forum for discussion. Our meetings encompass a wide choice of materials and approaches, and the focus may well change from conference to conference. The format is flexible to ensure we hear presentations from scholars representing a wide range of countries and approaches.

Topics discussed include: civic ritual and processions, community identity, masking and drama, carnival and reversal, reciprocity and exchange, computerised aids to calendrical research, sports, dance and music, contemporary popular use of religious images, cosmological roots, interfaces between the secular and the religious and between different religions, festival foods, and symbolism linked to the economic bases of society, especially as concerns agriculture.

The field of study that often relates to this one rather closely in teaching students is that of life cycle customs, and the perceived connections between the year cycle and the life cycle seem likely to strengthen so that it may seem more and more appropriate to consider parallels between them. As in other ethnological areas of enquiry, members will take account of continuity, change and meaning, but the thing that is unique to this working group is the framework of the year.

BOARD:
Honorary Chair: Emily Lyle (UK) e.lyle(at)ed.ac.uk
Chairs: Irina Sedakova (Russia) irina.a.sedakova(at)gmail.com and Laurent Fournier (France) laurent.fournier(at)univ-amu.fr
Secretary: Irina Stahl (Romania) ritualyear(at)siefhome.org