Historical and Contemporary Practices of Taboo Making and Taboo Breaking in Ukrainian and Mongolian Folklore

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Folklore realm along with folkloric thinking is full of prohibitions and taboos. At the same time folk narratives and phenomena flourish with examples of both violation and liberation from the imposed restrictions and well-established rules. The panel is going to look at the examples of folk genres and folkloric phenomena from a point of view of building and breaking the taboo as social, cultural, institutional, or intellectual norm. We will delineate on how the idea of a fixed norm, rule or commonly accepted behavior interacts with the society (both contemporary and premodern) and shapes it, as well as dive into how the taboo breaking permeates and impacts the existing norm. The panel will concentrate on Ukrainian and Mongolian folklore and folkloric phenomena from the 19th-early 20th centuries till nowadays.

Sub Unit

• Folklore Studies

Papers

• Breaking and Keeping the Aesthetic Taboos of Sharovarshchyna in the Ukrainian Diaspora - Iryna Voloshyna, Indiana U Bloomington

• The Concept of HEROISM in Ukrainian Fairy Tales and Contemporary Oral Narratives of Ukrainian Military - Olesia Naumovska, Taras Shevchenko National U of Kyiv (Ukraine)

• Shaping Gender through Beliefs: Ukrainian 19th Century Beliefs and Productive Marginalization in a Context of Gender Construction - Alina Oprelianska, U of Tartu (Estonia)

Discussant

• Nataliia Naumovska, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign