CALL FOR PAPERS

2025 Annual Meeting

Utah State University, Logan, Utah

April 4-5, 2025

Theme: Folklore and Reality

For much of the twentieth century, the relation of folklore to reality was of concern to folklorists. Functionalists discussed folklore as a mirror, distortion, or pure fantasy in relation to reality, while social constructivists framed folklore as a tool through which reality is constructed, contested, manipulated and resisted. In today’s world of deep fakes, AI, digital worlds, and fake news, what is “fake” and what is “real” are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish. The conference welcomes submissions addressing any aspect of folklore in relation to reality, as well as papers on any other folklore-related topic.

The Archer Taylor Lecture will be given by Enrique Lamadrid, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of New Mexico.

As always, the theme is a suggestion for those considering presentation, not a requirement. We welcome proposals for individual presentations and organized panels on any topic related to folklore.

As in the past, nonmembers who join the Society by the time of registration are eligible for membership benefits, including reduced registration fees and a subscription to Western Folklore. If registering by regular mail, please make checks out to the Western States Folklore Society and address them to:

Western States Folklore Society
17591 River Ranch Rd
Grass Valley, CA 95949

Paper presentations: If you wish to present a paper, please submit by email a short (100-150 word) abstract by February 1, 2025.

Please use the following format. Abstracts that do not follow these guidelines will be returned to the author for revision.

LAST NAME, First Name (Affiliation in parentheses). Title in boldface. Abstract descriptive text (100-150 words only) in regular typeface (not bold). (Your email address, enclosed in parentheses)

Abstracts should be submitted to the Abstract Review Committee. Cut and paste the following address into your email program: abstracts@westernfolklore.org.

Registration fees should be postmarked the same day as the abstract submission and should be accompanied by a brief note indicating your name and paper title (non-presenters please indicate “non-presenter”). All correspondence will be handled electronically unless specifically requested otherwise.

Sample abstract:

TYSON, Neil deGrasse (Andromeda Galactic University). Of Black Holes, Virality, Uncertainty, and Incompleteness. Science, technology, history, and other scholarly disciplines are rich resources for generating folk idioms. By implicitly referencing their academic sources, such idioms self-justify, thereby establishing and extending their usage—just as do contemporary legends and other folk genres. This paper addresses how certain everyday idioms result from simplifying, broadening, distorting, or ignoring their original and narrower technical and historical meanings. Such sociolinguistic mechanisms may reveal underlying world views and transient attitudes like those described by Lakoff and Johnson. Here I explore a few quasi-scholarly idioms in light of Oring’s critique of memetics as well as more traditional approaches to an understanding of their creation, function, and use in everyday discourse. (emailaddress@gmail.com)

Please check this page again for further information as it develops.

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