Call for Book Chapters: New Approaches to Folklore Fieldwork, Documentation, and Presentation

Vernon Press invites book chapters for a forthcoming edited volume by Eric Miller (World Storytelling Institute) on the subject of “New Approaches to Folklore Fieldwork, Documentation, and Presentation.”

A central theme of New Approaches to Folklore Fieldwork, Documentation, and Presentation is ways electronic (and other) technology are being used to experience, participate in, record, store, access, present, and possibly reconstruct aspects of cultures under study, and attitudes about these ways, on the parts of all concerned.

The book would ask such questions as:

1.  Under what conditions could "ethnographic fieldwork with participant observation" be conducted via interactive telecommunication (online)? Acceptable conditions might include instances in which members of the community and culture under study are:

   A) Doing some of their folk activities and/or other community communication online.

   B) Physically inaccessible (due to them being quarantined due to a pandemic and/or in outer space).

2. In cases in which the fieldwork is done via physical presence, under what conditions could the end-of-fieldwork documentation process occur, at least in part, via interactive telecommunication?

   One chapter of the book would concern "Ethnographic Videoconferencing," which has developed out of Ethnographic Photography, Film, and Video.

3.  What are some ways in which…

   A) Native Scholars (who are members of the culture under study),

   B) Outside Scholars, and

   C) Outside Scholars' Native Research Assistants (who are members of the culture under study)

           ...are documenting cultures using multimedia (that may also be interactive and/or online)?

Local knowledge is dwindling. Young people all over the world tend to be more interested in learning ways to do things on their mobile phones than in learning the traditional ways of their people. Members of the generation currently coming of age (and adjacent generations) are, in many cases, experiencing the ending of cultural developments that may have begun as early as the start of modern humanity approximately 100,000 years ago. The people remain. But in many cases, local languages and other traditional cultural practices are going extinct.

In the future, one way community members and others will be able to learn about and even reconstruct the traditional practices of a community might be through the above-mentioned multimedia documentation.

      4.    What are some ways Folklore fieldwork can be conducted in the age of "The Great Dispersal" (humans living elsewhere than on the Earth)? 

As more and more humans go to live on spaceships and space stations and on other planets, it may not be possible for ethnographic researchers to conduct "ethnographic fieldwork with participant observation" in a physically present manner. In such cases, under what conditions, if any, might conducting fieldwork via interactive telecommunication be accepted by the fields of Folklore and Anthropology?

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Word count for individual chapters: between five and eight thousand words.

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The deadline for submissions of abstracts is 1st December 2024.

Acceptance notifications will be sent on or before 15th December 2024.

The deadline for submissions of chapters is 1st June 2025.

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Book Editor: Dr Eric Miller <eric@storytellinginstitute.org>

(PhD in Folklore, University of Pennsylvania),

Director, World Storytelling Institute (https://storytellinginstitute.org).