Building (and Resisting) Nation and Empire: Folklore, Oral Tradition, and Cultural Heritage as Usable Pasts

Session Submission Type: Panel

Affiliate Organization: Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association

Brief Description

Folklorists have long understood “tradition” as rhetoric, object, and process. This panel investigates the ideological, political, and cultural work done by and through uses of traditional folkloric forms—including epic, festive traditions, and folk practices in everyday life—in the pre- and former Soviet world. Panelists explore folklore’s role in Soviet nation building projects and continued use as an instrument of cultural heritage in Central Asia; the incorporation national literary figures/works of the South Caucasus and Central Asia into Soviet ideological and organizational paradigms; and cultural distancing vis-à-vis Ukrainian folk tradition revival as response to and rejection of Russian hegemony in times of war. These case studies reveal the many uses of tradition as tools of ideology, imperialism, and resistance, in past and in present. This panel is sponsored by the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association (SEEFA).

Sub Unit

• Folklore Studies

Chair

• Hannah Stone, Harvard U

Papers

• The Great Persian Poet in the Land of the Soviets: The Millennium of Ferdowsi in the Soviet Union in 1934 - Diego Benning Wang, Harvard U

• Hikmat Rizo and the Gurguli Epic in Soviet Tajikistan - Benjamin Gatling, George Mason U

• Ukrainian Festive Traditions as a Tool of Cultural Self-Determination - Nataliia Naumovska, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Discussant

• Benjamin Storsved, Indiana University Bloomington