C a l l f o r P a p e r s
Oral Charms in Structural and Comparative Light
An International conference at the Russian State University for Humanities, Moscow
October 27th-29th, 2011
You are kindly invited to submit your proposals in the field of charm studies to the Moscow conference on 'Oral Charms in Structural and Comparative Light'. This conference aims to be as broad as possible in terms of geographic spread of charms discussed, and the same time strict in its major themes: the questions of systematization of charms, their typological and structural analysis and the comparative studies of charms various national and linguistic traditions.
The conference will focus on following topics:- the comparative study of different national charm traditions, the history of charms in Europe; the spread of specific charm formulas; fever charms in time and space;
- charm indexes and their systematization;
- charms and incantations as texts; charms and witchcraft; charms and related traditions (church prayers, pagan incantations, apocrypha, curses, benedictions etc);
- oral and written charms; charms books; magic inscriptions; ancient and medieval amulets, curse tablets in archaeology;
- the social background of charm tradition; charms and their transmission in folk Christianity; differences between Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox traditions; the functions of the priest in Christian and non-Christian societies; love and social charms;
- psychological and social sources of charm suggestion; the 'work' of charms, the actuality of charm tradition in modern urban societies;
- ethnographic films on charms and their importance for the study of the traditions of words of power.
The conference language will be English.
This Conference is organized by the Committee on Charms, Charmers and Charming of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research (ISFNR), the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy, the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy and the Russian State University for Humanities (RGGU - RSUH)
The ISFNR's Committee on Charms, Charmers and Charming aims to the facilitate charms studies in various countries by a wide variety of means, including, but not limited to, the elaboration of common methodology for the structural and typological description of charms, and the editing of international and local charms-indexes. The 2011 conference follows on from a series of conferences organized by the Committee in London (2003, 2005), Pecs (2007), Tartu (2008), Athens (2009) and Bucharest (2010) in which scholars from various countries exchanged ideas from interdisciplinary perspectives (see the ISFNR site for further information: http://www.isfnr.org/).
The deadline for proposals is the 15th of January 2011. Please send the title of your paper and an abstract (of not more than 100 words) to:
roper@ut.ee, with copies to: tamih.msu@mail.ru; atoporkov@mail.ru
Please also send the following information: your first and last names, academic affiliation, work address, home address, e-mail, contact telephone and fax numbers.
The early submission of paper proposals is strongly recommended, as there will be (at maximum) twenty-six presentations. The Organizing Committee will select proposals on the basis of their fit with the main themes of the Conference. The proposals will be considered as they come in and every effort will be made to give a definite response as soon as possible. There is however no limit on the number of people who wish to attend the conference. The length of each paper with discussion must not exceed 30 minutes.
We intend to publish texts of papers before the conference and we ask all the chosen participants to send us papers of three to five pages (including references, 8 000 - 15 000 characters, or 1500 - 3000 words) in .doc or .rtf format, Times New Roman, by the 15th of March 2011.
All costs (travel, accommodation, food, health insurance) are to be paid by the participants themselves. Details of the precise costs of accommodation (generally 60-80 Euros a night for a single room), meals and the conference trip will be included in our Second Circular.
The Russian Academy has exchange programs with academies and institutions from numerous countries, so the participants are highly recommended to apply to come to Moscow within the exchange program.
We kindly ask you to note that we have moved the previous date of the conference forward by one week (7 days).
The Organizing Committee