Working Group on Feminist Approaches to Ethnology and Folklore

Workshop Embodiment Revisited 13-14 August, Helsinki

In August 2026, the FAEF Working Group is hosting their second interim meeting. We will meet in Helsinki for a two-day workshop on the topic of ‘Embodiment Revisited’. Although embodiment has long been a central concern of feminist theory, we consider the topic as it intersects with feminist theory to be unfinished business. The concept of Embodiment has too often been reduced to mean ‘things that originate from the body,’ and there is a great need to advance this theoretically. With this workshop, we want to create the opportunity for all of us to develop our thoughts and research in a collective format, through discussion and critical thinking, to take advantage of the broad range of insights that can emerge through group interaction.

Special Issue Cultural Analysis

Following the FAEF panels at the SIEF conference in Aberdeen, our FAEF Working Group is preparing a special issue of Cultural Analysis on the topic of ‘Unwriting through Feminist Approaches’. In this special issue, we take the position that whereas feminist approaches initially began as the process by which ‘silenced’ women’s voices were re-inserted into existing historiographies/narratives, it has expanded to question those unequal power structures that undergird those conventional narratives. That is, in our special issue, we seek to understand the inner workings and logic of existing methodologies and theoretical approaches, and to un-write disciplinary paradigms rather than merely making visible existing power mechanisms.

It is our hope that this special issue will begin the process by which feminist theory is integrated into our disciplinary discourses, not as an “add-on”, but as a fundamental component. The special issue is expected in late summer/fall 2027.