Folklore Studies

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Photo: Petroglyph, Ristiina, Finland

RMN Newsletter is an open access bi-annual publication of Folklore Studies / Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies, University of Helsinki (ISSN 1799-4497), appearing in December and May of each year.  The newsletter is primarily oriented to constructing an informational resource and discourse space for researchers of diverse and intersecting disciplines who share common interests in the problems, strategies, values and limitations of:

• investigations into the history underlying the diverse and variegated emergent manifestations of a tradition or other cultural phenomenon;
• relationships between evidence of a tradition manifested in different historical periods;
• relationships and historical processes underlying manifestations of a tradition encountered across multiple cultures;
• and the potentials and limitations of analogical comparisons between living traditions or traditions subject to extensive documentation in the 19th and 20th centuries and the traditions of earlier historical periods for which evidence is extremely limited.

These interests are not bound to any one discipline, and the increasing movement toward interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary study and research projects makes it important to have a multidisciplinary informational resource.  The orientation of the newsletter is therefore not the publication of research articles.  It is instead oriented toward information about events, people, activities, developments and technologies, and research which is ongoing or has been recently completed. It also constructs a venue in which scholars can engage in discussion rather than constraining contributions to the conclusions of research (which are here presented in abstracts for rapid survey, directing the reader to the full publication). 

RMN Newsletter welcomes and promotes its readership to engage in the discourse space which it offers, and promotes an awareness that your contribution to the voices presented here and engagement with them will support, maintain and also shape this emergent discourse space.