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Folklore: EJF 86 has been published
We are happy to introduce you to volume 86 of the journal Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, with Piret Voolaid (Estonian Literary Museum) and Saša Babič (Institute of Slovenian Ethnology) as guest editors. The special issue encompasses different materials, approaches, and topics of school and children’s lore in Estonia and Slovenia. The issue discusses methodologies as well as the material itself. The material under discussion is both old and contemporary, which gives us an opportunity to see the shifts in topics and forms as well as worldviews of schoolchildren.
The introductory articles constitute a brief overview of the history and specifics of the collection and research of school lore in Estonia and Slovenia. In the Estonian case we can speak about more than 100 years of experience in collecting and researching school lore. The comprehensive article by Saša Babič analyses school lore collecting in Slovenia, which was diametrically different from the Estonian case, being anything but fruitful. Contemporary collecting methods provided new opportunities but along with them also new thoughts about the material as well as new ways for reaching schoolchildren.
The issue continues with three articles discussing humour, creativity, and play in folklore among and about (school)children. The article by Barbara Turk Niskač and Katarina Šrimpf Vendramin, “Play and Folklore in Children’s Peer Cultures”, examines children’s creative production of and participation in a shared peer culture. Focusing on material on children’s use of counting-out rhymes, faecal humour, and word play, gathered through participant observation and video ethnography in two Slovenian kindergartens, the article demonstrates the importance of social participation in peer groups from an early age and the alliances, conflicts, and power hierarchies involved.
Anastasiya Fiadotava’s article “Children as Agents, Targets, and Intermediaries of Family Humour” focuses on the humour produced by, aimed at, or referring to children in family communication. It seeks to establish which roles children play in family’s humorous communication, and how these roles reflect their agency in the interactions with parents. The research results show that much of family humour is generated by children either consciously or unconsciously.
Piret Voolaid’s article, “Representations of Distance Learning in the Memes of the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Humour as Coping and Self-defence Strategy”, presents creativity as a consequence of the pandemic crisis. The author shows that students who are the main creators of memes regard the humorous memes about distance learning as a form of communication which offers an alternative and multifaceted perspective on this important method of learning during lockdown.
The following two articles constitute a different section: they emphasise the role of media, fear and adaptation to panic and its mirroring in games and tales. Astrid Tuisk’s article, “Children as Consumers and Co-creators of Cultural Products: The Impact of Foreign Films on Estonian Children’s Culture in the 1950s”, examines how the post-World War II trophy films, which differed from Soviet films in terms of their themes, ideas, presentation, and setting, became box-office hits and one of the sources on which the post-war generation built their gender identity.
Reet Hiiemäe and Andrus Tins present contemporary material of school lore in the article “Suicide Games, Abandoned Houses, and Thirst for Danger: The Youth’s Personal Experience Narratives and the Media’s Moral Panics about Semi-Supernatural Challenges in Estonia”. The article discusses the material that is not widely known in general public, and even more difficult to approach: the dynamics of the media and real life in relation to the so-called dangerous folklore of teenagers, which includes, for example, contacts with aggressive (semi-)supernatural fear creatures, frightening experiences in abandoned houses, and notions of so-called suicide games.
The last article in this special issue is “Slovenian Folk Lullabies: Analysis of the Lullaby Texts and Their Functions” by Vanja Huzjan. The author analyses folk lullabies through the psychoanalytic view as the archaic form of calming down with rhythm and begging.
The section of practical viewpoints presents a contribution by Anders Gustavsson under the heading “An Experienced Ethnologist’s Thoughts on Digitalization, Open Access, and Open Data as New Research Assets”, and one by Giulia Gollo, „Folklore and Greek Hagiography: Some Preliminary Notes”.
These are followed by a review essay by Aleksandr Rusakov, Anastasia Kharlamova, and Aleksandr Novik, under the heading “The Romani in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation”. The issue concludes with overviews of a conference and two doctoral theses.
Folklore: EJF is a peer-reviewed open access academic journal published since 1996 and the current issue is available online at http://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol86.
