Humanities within International and National Scholarly Contexts symposium on 13 November

Humanities within International and National Scholarly Contexts symposium to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics. The symposium will take place on November 13th, 2017, at 16.15 in the Senate Hall of the University of Tartu (Ülikooli 18).

The Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics (JEF) was founded in 2007 as a joint publication of the University of Tartu, the Estonian National Museum and the Estonian Literary Museum. JEF publishes articles in the research areas of ethnology, folkloristics, museology, cultural and social anthropology. As a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, issued twice a year, the full content of JEF is available online. Since 2016 JEF has been published in partnership with De Gruyter Open, the world’s second largest publisher of Open Access academic content.

In the process of starting the Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics a decade ago, current trends in research policies, marked by the need to publish journal articles in English, played a crucial role. However, these policies do not exclusively prescribe future realities that scholars and editorial teams have to enforce, rather practical research is manifested in constant dialogue with political precepts. This symposium invites discussion of the role of scholarly publishing as well as ways to accommodate topical trends with everyday realities. What are the choices prescribed by national or international contexts? How can a balance between social responsibility and research policies be found?

Language is one of the issues discussed at the symposium. Firstly, we would like to investigate what symbolic messages are mediated if studies of so-called ‘national sciences’ are expressed in the mother tongue, and how is that different if they are translated for the international community? Secondly, we would like to discuss the issue of simultaneously addressing both local and international audiences. How can the roles of researcher at local research institutions and member of global research networks be combined? Thirdly we are intrigued by the boundaries between disciplines and research domains. For example, while the close connections between ethnology and folkloristics have shaped the focus of JEF and determined the interdisciplinary scope of the journal, in the wider international context, our research field is frequently labelled anthropology. Therefore, we can ask what the consequences are of the disciplinary shift from the humanities to the social sciences? How do disciplinary choices influence the journal’s ‘identity’ as well as the ways in which it is accepted and labelled worldwide? These topics too are related to the contexts of global research policies.

Please let us know by November 7th, 2017 if you would like to participate by responding to taive@folklore.ee.

Programme

16:15          Ergo-Hart Västrik (University of Tartu) “Sissejuhatavat: Tagasivaade ajakirja Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics kümnele aastale / Introduction: A Retrospective of the First Decade of the Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics”

16:30          Simon Bronner (Pennsylvania State University) “The Challenge of Folkloristics and Ethnology to the Humanities”

17:00          Pille Runnel (Estonian National Museum) “Quo Vadis, teaduskirjastamine ja humanitaaria? / Quo Vadis? Scholarly Publishing and the Humanities”

17:20          Taive Särg (Estonian Literary Museum) “Emakeelne teadus, rahvusvaheline teadlaskond ja terviklik rahvuskultuur / Research in the Mother Tongue, the International Scholarly Community and the Unity of National Culture”

17:40          Rūta Muktupāvela (Latvian Academy of Culture) “Folklore Studies in Contemporary Latvia”

18:00   Discussion