Kuues rahvusvaheline noorte folkloristide konverents Vilniuses 1.-3. juunil 2016

The 6th International Conference of Young Folklorists 2016 "Us and Them: Exploring the Margins"

Place: The Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, Antakalnio 6, LT-10308 Vilnius, Lithuania
Date: June 1-3, 2016
Organizers: The Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore in Vilnius, Lithuania; Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore, University of Tartu, Estonia.
Partners: Lithuanian folk culture center

This conference is an international academic event, which annually brings together advanced students and recently graduated scholars from different countries to come to Estonia or Lithuania, and gives them an opportunity to present their research to an international audience. The conference aims to foster academic communication, collaboration and research in the field of folklore.

Folkloristic research is often about "us" studying "them", nevertheless investigation takes place at home or within distant culture. The problem we want to rise in this conference is not about the ambiguous disciplinary relationship with the modernity or concept of folk. We encourage the exploration of the peripheries of reality that folklore scholars face when they are trying to understand, explain and interpret the alien world of the "other".

The borders which exist between individuals, families, clans, tribes, communities, nations, countries, civilizations, religions etc. are one of the most important evidences on how culture and identity works. On the other hand, the notion of the borders inevitably implicates the discussion about the margins: once the line of what supposed to be normal, rational and comprehensible is crossed – unfamiliar and sometimes dangerous spheres appear. This moving can be both physical and mental and has to be treated as identity forming process as well.

The 6th Conference of Young Folklorists 2016 "Us and Them: Exploring the Margins" addresses various aspects of researches related to the phenomena of the margins and borders from the folkloristic, ethnological or anthropological perspectives.

For any queries, please contact: Asta Skujytė-Razmienė or Lina (Sokolovaitė) Leparskienė at yofo2016@gmail.com.