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Alina Oprelianska's talk "Age and gender in Ukrainian Wonder Tales"
Dear collegues!
You are welcome to the meeting of Academic Folklore Society, that takes place on the 25th of January in Estonian Literary Museum (Vanemuise 42, Tartu).
The meeting starts at 4:15 p.m.
Alina Oprelianska will give a talk "Age and gender in Ukrainian Wonder Tales".
Gender assignment in fairy tales or wonders tends to be described within the frame of the character’s sexuality, which means that gender is regarded as male, female or the one that belongs to one of the LGBTQ+ categories.
But what if we try to look at gender regardless the sexuality and beyond the modern frame of sexual (self)identification?
A common knowledge is that tasks and rewards are gendered in tales. But what if we look at it outside of male/female paradigm?
The presentation aims to deconstruct gender assignment in Ukrainian wonder tales of the XIX - beginning of the XX centuries from the scope of categories that impacts gender performance and consequently - gender assignment. In the presentation Alina suggests that gender performance in wonder tales occurs in a close relation to character’s age and social status.
Going beyond the idea of “proper” man and woman, she is going to concentrate on such features as job segregation, fertility, pre- or post-childbearing age, social body, and relation to supernatural (direct or through beliefs). For deconstruction, the queer theory and post-colonial approach in order to left behind binarity and naturalization of heteronormativity will be used as well as the theoretical frame of vernacular knowledge.
The research will concentrate on childhood, widowhood, and ageing as productive forms of marginalization. The research is based on wonder tales and belief narratives from Ukrainian folkloric and ethnographic collections of the XIX – beginning of the XX centuries.
Everybody is welcome to join!
