The View From Kalamazoo

This looks fabulous – I haven’t the moolah to make the trip, so no abstract from me. Damn – I have the material, too.

Call for Papers: Charms, Charmers and Charming

A two-day international conference 23rd-24th September, 2005, at the Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London organised by the Folklore Society

Papers are sought on any topic relating to verbal charms (Segen, incantations, loitsut, zagovory, trylleformler, scongiuri, etc.) and especially the following:
charmers¹ books and charmers¹ repertoires, the transmission and memorisation of charms, international charm parallels, variation in charm texts and its motivation, the performance details of charming, charms as an expression of vernacular Christianity, the Œlife history¹ of particular charm-types, and (re)assessments of the classics of charms scholarship.

The conference follows on from a joint Warburg/Folklore Society event in January 2003, the proceedings of which were published by Palgrave as ‘Charms and Charming in Europe’ (2004). As with that event, it is intended that a selection of the papers will be published in book form.

Presentations should be 20-25 minutes in length. And while the working language of the conference language will be English, there are no geographical
limitations on the subject matter of the papers.

There is no conference fee for speakers, but potential speakers are advised that they are responsible for their own travel and accommodation costs.

Please send proposals consisting of a title and a paragraph-length abstract to
Jonathan Roper
by e-mail: [email protected]
or by post: Jonathan Roper, Natcect, 9 Shearwood Road, University of Sheffield, SHEFFIELD, S10 2TN, England.

The closing date for proposals is April 30th, 2005.