SIEF workgroup
seminar
„Rituals and Anniversaries“
Our Winter 2022 webinar will take place on Monday, 12 december 2022, at 11:00 Tallinn time (09:00 GMT) via MS Teams.
The topic will deal with culinary traditions and traditional receipts. Two teams, from Romania and
Bulgaria will resume their fieldwork activity and highlight some of their research findings.
The titles and the abstracts of the presenters are as following:
1. Otilia Hedeșan and Diana Mihuț (Research Centre for Heritage and Anthropology, Western University of Timișoara),
Romanian Food Heritage: A Contemporary Research
The speakers will be presenting their latest research project: “A Digital Collection of The Romanian Food
Heritage and The Societal Transfer [of Knowledge]”, funded by the Executive Agency for Higher Education,
Research, Development and Innovation Funding. Involving an interdisciplinary team of researchers, several
years of fieldwork in various regions inhabited by Romanians and intensive archival investigation, the
main goal of this project was to preserve and to make available to the general public various sources
of the Romanian food heritage. The two speakers will resume some of their main research findings and
share some of their experiences with the audience.
2. Ivaylo Markov (Institute for Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)
and Petya Vasilieva-Grueva (Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski)
Culinary Traditions in Small Settlements in Bulgaria: Local Instrumentalisation, National Symbolization, and Global Representation
The speakers will resume the findings of their research project:
“Culinary Traditions and Cultural-historical Heritage in Small Settlements –
Inventing, Exploiting, Promoting”, funded by the National Science Fund of Bulgaria.
At the beginning, the audience will be introduced to the goal, aims, activities and
preliminary results of the project. In the second part of the presentation, Ivaylo Markov
will focus on his own contribution to the research project, referring to the local
valorisation of a national recognized culinary symbol: the Bulgarian yogurt. He will
examine the three local food feasts, dedicated to yogurt, held in the towns of Razgrad
and Tran, and in the village of Momchilovtsi. The interweaving of global tendencies,
national policies and local initiatives cause similar, though not identical, processes
of conceptualization and instrumentalisation of the yogurt, in all three places, as a
resource for (1) preservation and promotion of local cultural identity and heritage;
(2) sustainable development by diversifying the tourist product; and (3) new business
initiatives for some of the local residents.
3. Rituals and Anniversaries (open talk) Mare Kõiva, Terry Gunnell, Laurent S. Fournier, Žilvytis Šaknys et al.
The announced speakers (and others) will share personal memories about our WG and the major contribution of
our Founder and Honorary Chair, Emily Lyle, who has brought and kept us all together for so many years.
The webinar and the discussions will be moderated by Irina Stahl, Irina Sedakova and Laurent Fournier.
As usual, our e-meeting will be hosted by the Estonian Literary Museum and the Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies (Tartu).
For participation, please write to ritualyear@siefhome.org.
You will be sent a link that will be activated half-an-hour before the event.
The event poster can be downloaded here
Organiser: Estonian Literary Museum, department of folkloristics
Contacts:
ELM department of folkloristics
Mare Kõiva: mare@folklore.ee
Estonian Litereary Museum, 2022