UPCOMING EVENTS

Despite its long history, feminist scholarship continues to be marginalized within academia. As a result, too often the knowledge that is produced within these texts is ignored, not taken seriously, or simply forgotten about. In an attempt to remedy this process of forgetting and ignoring, the working group Feminist Approaches to Ethnology and Folklore hosts online reading sessions via zoom. Every two months its members come together to discuss an article that can in some way be considered seminal for the history, development or state of the art of feminist scholarship ranging from early work to recent publications. Readings can focus on feminist theory, but can also include contributions that exemplify a use of method or a subject or theme that is particularly relevant to feminist scholarship. Our discussions focus on what these texts can teach us. What can we learn from these texts in terms of the uses, abuses, and potential of feminist theory and approaches? And how can these texts inspire our own contributions to the field?

We always aim for lively debates and want these online sessions to contribute towards building an international community of feminist scholars sharing their thoughts, questions and insights.

These zoom-sessions are a collaborative enterprise. We therefore invite everyone who is a member of the working group to propose an article, topic or text they would like to discuss. The article you propose can be your own work, but it can also be an article that you think is critical to our enterprise as a working group on feminist theory. We also ask the person proposing the article to be the person facilitating the discussion during the session. So do you have a good idea for a text or article? Please reach out and share your ideas with the board!

Practical information: these reading sessions take place every two months, on the second Friday of the month from 4-5 pm GMT. Information about the text and topic of upcoming sessions is available on our Facebook page.

Our meeting takes place in the remote north of Iceland, itself located at Europe’s furthest periphery. Iceland is constantly in a state of geological, geographical and meteorological precarity on the edge -- engendering an instability that contributes to unstable descriptions and impressions. Hólmavik, at its northern periphery is doubly “on the edge.” We are hosted by the Univ. of Iceland’s Research Center in Hólmavik, and by the Museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft, which resonates with yet another kind of precarity -- of those outside of society, shunned, avoided, and perhaps in contact with the supernatural. Our fields themselves are precarious in academia. And the status of “woman” has been historically (and in academia and the production of knowledge) peripheral, subordinate, and precarious, despite the paradoxical centrality of “woman” to the integrity of the family, the foundation of said society.
Read more here >>

Due dates
Abstracts: Nov. 15
Decisions on the proposals and open Registration will be in early February
Readings for Concept Pieces: March 25
Working papers to be distributed: May 25th