The Center for Research on Festive Culture fosters research about the world's past and present festive cultures by means of conferences and other communications among interested scholars or informed amateurs of festivities. Its programs are designed to answer three needs:
- To extend intellectual exchange about this subject beyond national and normal professional boundaries.
- To rethink the idea of festive culture itself, broadening the usual idea of its subject-matter.
- To provide particular space for the work of younger scholars pursuing these subjects.
Schedule for Fall 2008 Seminars
Call for Papers: Seminars 2008
Co-sponsored by the Newberry Library Division of Research and Education and the Center for Research in Festive Culture at Northern Illinois University, this seminar is organized by Sam Kinser, Emeritus, Northern Illinois University.
Friday, September 26~ 2:00-5:00 pm
Katherine Wright, Northern Illinois University, De Kalb, IL: Greek Orthodox Easter in Present-Day Greece: Rituals and Fireworks
Friday, November 21, 2008 ~2:00-5:00 pm
Kenneth Bilby, Columbia College, Chicago: Conjuring the Ghost of John Canoe: Re-imagining a “Slave Festival” in the New South and the Caribbean
Gillian Weiss, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland: Freedom March: Barbary Slave Processions in Early Modern Europe
For more information, please consult www.festival-studies.org.
While there is no fee to attend the Seminar, participants should register in advance. Additionally, copies of the papers will be available about one month before the lecture. To register or to request a copy of the paper, please contact Leslie Kan at kanl@newberry.org. Requested papers will be sent to your email address. If you do not have an email address, send your mailing address to Leslie Kan, Newberry Library, 60 West Walton Street, Chicago, IL 60610.
(Newberry Library, Chicago, Friday afternoons, September-November)
DEADLINE TO SUBMIT PROPOSALS: NOV. 11, 2007
Dear colleagues and friends,
The response to this year’s theme, the association of festivity with (or sometimes against) religious impulses, was especially gratifying. Not only did we receive an increased number of proposals, but applications came from a much wider area, including Europe. So the varied relations between religious and festive forms of belief and performance will again be our theme in 2008. For those contacting the Center for the first time, it may be useful to read last year’s Call for Papers on our website, which explains the thinking behind the choice of this theme (festival-studies.org).
The Center meets in a small room around a large table. Ten to twenty interested parties (professors, graduate students, independent scholars) attend. Because it is a seminar and not a conference, its aim is to contribute through discussion to ongoing work (see the explanation of the plan and purposes of the CRFC in our website). Accordingly, papers are distributed to and read by those planning to participate about one month in advance of each seminar date. Seminar papers thus appropriately include interrogations and hypotheses rather more than exhaustive descriptions and definitive conclusions. Since papers are not read at the seminar, we ask paper-givers to present in about ten-minutes’ time a synopsis of their main ideas—and/or research difficulties—at the beginning of their session. This format has turned out to be quite useful not only to those attending but especially to those presenting their work.
Last year I asked that applications for the seminar reach me by the time of All Saints/All Souls. This year the date is November 11, which for Americans of a certain age has meant the armistice celebration of World War I. Marechal Foch thought he knew what that date really meant, as he dedicated a votive plaque to Saint Martin at the basilica of Tours, sacralizing the victory. But how shallow! Martinalia (i.e. St. Martin’s Feast Day, still celebrated in many parts of Europe) commemorates Roman Vinalia, and that, my friends, means “Le Nouveau Beaujolais est arrivé!”–Well, o.k., French law says that the new year’s Beaujolais wine must “arrive” (casks opened) on the third Thursday, not around the second Thursday (politics, always impinging on the festive…).
Send your wine-inspired lucubrations to me, therefore, by November 11. As usual, each seminar session combines one senior-scholar paper with a study by a junior scholar who has recently finished or is about to finish doctoral work. As mentioned last year, I hope particularly to receive proposals carrying forward our inquiries into Middle-Eastern festive-religious practices, initiated in 2006 by the papers of Janet Afary and Hakki Gurkas. To apply, please send a one-page c.v. and a one-page synopsis of the proposed paper, including a statement about the relation of the paper to your other work. Send these materials by e-mail either to me, Sam Kinser, Director, CRFC (sakinser@aol.com) or to Leslie Kan, secretary for the CRFC at the Newberry Library, Chicago (kanl@newberry.org).
Although nothing definite can be promised at this point, it is probable that persons whose papers are selected and who live far beyond the Midwest can be reimbursed for a considerable part of their travel expenses. Lodging is also provided through the hospitality of Chicago-area seminar members. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
Samuel Kinser, Center for Research in Festive Culture