YoFo 2023

The 12th International Conference of Young Folklorists "Beyond the Field: Fieldwork in the 21st Century" will take place from 13 to 15 September at the Conference Centre of the National Library of Latvia. More than 30 young representatives from Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and India will participate in the conference.

The conference programme and abstracts can be found at: https://lulfmi.lv/files/YoFo2023.pdf

Everyone is welcome to attend!

The 49th issue of journal "Letonica" (English edition) is published

The latest thematic issue of the English-language humanities journal "Letonica" is dedicated to women's contribution to Latvian culture and society, looking at it from the perspective of history, art history and literary studies. The issue is part of the Latvian Council of Science's fundamental research project "Women Agency in Latvian Culture and Society (1870-1940)" (No. Lzp-2020/1-0215), which aims to reflect on women's contributions through the prism of biographical research, thus achieving a deeper and more nuanced understanding of history.

The introduction and the nine scholarly articles in the issue focus on agency. Women are not only active, rational subjects who want autonomy and self-realisation, fighting against dominant norms and institutions that oppress them and systematically limit their possibilities, but they also accept these norms. This reveals the multifaceted, complex and contradictory features of women's agency, which cannot be imagined outside the established gender hierarchies and institutional and structural contexts since historically specific relations also condition the ability or inability to act.

ILFA Joins DARIAH as a Cooperating Partner

The Institute for Literature, Folklore and Art (ILFA) at the University of Latvia has recently become a Cooperating Partner of the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH-EU). This partnership marks an important milestone for ILFA as the first research organization from the Baltic States to join DARIAH.

ILFA is renowned for its innovative research and collaborative networks in cultural studies and humanities. Additionally, ILFA develops digital resources for humanities and art studies and actively promotes digital humanities in Latvia. ILFA's cooperation with DARIAH will grant them access to valuable data and tools for humanities research, strengthen their participation in international digital humanities networks, and contribute to the development of digital humanities in Latvia.

Through its partnership with DARIAH, ILFA aims to further strengthen its research capabilities, expand its international collaborations, and promote the development of digital humanities in Latvia. DARIAH, on the other hand, values ILFA's expertise in crowdsourcing and looks forward to leveraging their experience for their own initiatives. This collaboration not only benefits ILFA and DARIAH but also enhances the digital humanities landscape in the wider Baltic region.

Learn more about ILFA's participation as a Cooperating Partner on the DARIAH website.

Lois Kalb’s Lecture on Mass Housing in Riga

On 17 May 2023, Lois Kalb will visit the ILFA and give a public lecture, “Uncommonly Modern: Property, Intimacy and Mass Housing in Late and post-Soviet Riga (1970-2000)”. Lois Kalb is a PhD researcher at the history department of the European University Institute in Florence. She is interested in the urban political economy of late Soviet mass housing districts. Her current project lays at the intersection between history and anthropology and looks at the changing relations between forms of property, intimacies and social life of mass housing districts in Riga over the course of the late Soviet period and the transition period of the 1990s.

In this lecture, she will present parts of her current PhD project on mass housing and urban social change in late and post-Soviet Riga, over the course of the 1970s, 80s, and 1990s. “I look at the transforming dynamics between large-scale political and economic processes, the urban built environment and everyday social life. By looking at different aspects of mass housing districts, such as housing maintenance and repair, housing distribution and family life, I search for emergent property relations.” The lecture will put forward some tentative findings of what such property relations can tell about the post-socialist transition in Riga, about housing privatization and people’s everyday lives becoming more private over time.

Letonica Nr. 48 is issued

Day of Aspiring Scholars 3

For the third consecutive year, doctoral students in humanities and social sciences and PhD candidates are invited to apply for the scholarly and creative conference "Day of Aspiring Scholars", which, for the first time, will take place in a hybrid format: the papers will be read in person, but a live internet broadcast will be provided, as well as the opportunity to submit pre-recorded poster presentations.

The aim of the conference is to promote academic growth of future researchers by supporting networking and solidarity. Unlike previous years, when the conference did not have a unifying theme, this year the theme of the conference is creativity in scholarship.

This theme allows highlighting creative and interdisciplinary approaches in research, thus not only creating a space for an exchange of ideas, but also supporting innovative research. Applicants are invited to reflect on what are the main unexpected obstacles encountered while developing doctoral work, and how these obstacles can be overcome using interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, or experimental approaches, collaboration and/or various creative solutions.

The organizers encourage participants to present not only academic papers but also – to prepare interdisciplinary and creative presentations. When creating the program, applications for both academic papers and artistic performances will be considered, emphasizing those that have been developed both individually and collaboratively, and blurring the line between creative self-expression and research.

​The 12th International Conference of Young Folklorists

The 12th International Conference of Young Folklorists "Beyond the Field: Fieldwork in the 21st Century" will take place from 13 to 15 September 2023. Since 2010, conferences have been held alternately in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, and in 2022 for the first time in Finland. It brings together young researchers in the field from the region.

Read more: here

DHELI project launched to advance digital humanities in Latvia

With the aim to strengthen and develop the humanities in Latvia, a new project of the National Research Programme "Digital Humanities" called "Towards Development of Open and FAIR Digital Humanities Ecosystem in Latvia" or DHELI is being launched at the beginning of this year, with funding from the Science Council of Latvia. The project is coordinated by the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Arts of the University of Latvia with Dr. philol. Sanita Reinsone as its lead, and involves representatives from the National Library of Latvia, Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Latvia Institute of Latvian Language and Livonian Institute, Rēzekne Academy of Technologies, Riga Technical University.

Digital Humanities (DH) is an interdisciplinary area of research that blends fundamental and applied research methods to address questions within the humanities, social sciences, and arts. This field employs computational methods and uses digital resources and tools for data processing, analysis, and visualization. A prime example of the practical application and wide usage of DH is language technology, showcasing the significance of a well-established digital humanities infrastructure that not only supports researchers but also benefits a wider audience.

The DHELI project builds upon the outcomes of the National Research Programme project "Digital Resources for the Humanities: Development and Integration," which was completed in October 2022. This was the first inter-institutional and interdisciplinary project in Latvia devoted to digital humanities and received an exceptional evaluation from international evaluators, affirming its remarkable impact and successful results.

The Call for Papers in a panel on folklore revivals in non-democratic contexts (SIEF2023 Congress “Living Uncertainty”)

Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia (ILFA) is looking forward to the SIEF2023 Congress “Living Uncertainty” which will take place in Brno in June next year!

Together with colleagues from the University of Tartu and the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, we are organizing a panel on folklore revivals in non-democratic contexts. We welcome scholars to submit paper proposals on the uncertainties and strategies of people practicing folklore under strong governmental control of public expression during the second half of the 20^th century.

The Call for Papers is open until 10 January 2023!

Please share this information with scholars who do research in this field and would be interested in presenting and networking.

The panel is organized within the research project “Folklore Revival in Latvia: Resources, Ideologies and Practices” implemented in 2022–2024 and funded by the Latvian Council of Science (Project No: lzp-2021/1-0243).

Baltic Belles: The Dedalus Book of Latvian Women's Literature

Dedalus Books Ltd has published an anthology of Latvian women's short fiction, compiled and foreworded by Eva Eglāja-Kristsone, senior researcher at ILFA.

It is a period marked by change, war, occupying regimes, and renewed freedom. Much of the early work written by Latvian women writers such as Anna Rumane-Kenina, Angelika Gailite, Anna Brigadere, Alija Baumane, and Mirdza Bendrupe is realist in nature, depicting an upheaval of mores and relationships forged not through tradition, but the pangs of love and passion.The Soviet era brought strict censorship to all forms of the arts, including literature.Despite this, authors like Regina Ezera were able to push their craft deeper into the psychological analysis of their characters. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, US-based Latvian exile writer Ilze Skipsna forged ahead with her own version of the psychological short story.

The work of authors such as Andra Neiburga, Gundega Repse and Nora Ikstena in the late 80s and early 90s heralded a new era of female writers in a country yearning for its freedom which it finally achieved. Authors who appeared after the millennium like Inga Abele, and Inga Zolude, who have shaped and continue to shape contemporary Latvian literature, round out this collection.

The stories have been translated by Ieva Lešinska, Žanete Vēvere, Māra Rozīte, Laura Adlers and Susan McQuade.

More information here.

Online Game “Reassemble a Folk Song!”

The Archives of Latvian Folklore of the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Arts of the University of Latvia has developed a digital, online game "Reassemble a Folk Song!". The game is based on a puzzle principle, where the text of a folk song has to be "broken" into pieces. The game is available for everyone after registration at https://saliectautasdziesmu.garamantas.lv.

Folk songs are one of the cornerstones of Latvian culture. For centuries, they have been considered to be a source of national ideas, history and values. The collection of folklore, and folk songs in particular, in the 19th century was not only a documentation of folk self-expressions, but an important event on the difficult path towards development of the nation. The collection consisting of almost 219,000 folk song texts was gathered and organised by K. Barons at the second half of the 19th century. Collection is stored in the Dainu Skapis (Cabinet of Dainas), which has now become a symbol of Latvian traditional culture. Since 2001, the Dainu Skapis has been included in the International Register of the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme.

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