Call for Submissions 2013
Elli Köngäs-Maranda Prizes
American Folklore Society Women’s Section

Each year, the Women’s Section of the American Folklore Society awards two
prizes in honor of pioneering scholar Elli Köngäs-Maranda. The prizes
recognize superior work on women’s traditional, vernacular, or local
culture and/or feminist theory and folklore.

Student Prize
• for an undergraduate or graduate student paper (up to 30 pages in length)
• entrants must either be currently enrolled in a degree program as of the
submission deadline or have been enrolled in one during the 2012-2013
academic year
• carries an award of $100
• submission deadline is September 30th, 2013
• may be submitted as either email attachment (preferred) or as hard copy

Professional/Non-Student Prize
• eligible work includes: publications, films, videos, exhibitions or
exhibition catalogues, or sound recordings
• materials should have been published/produced no more than two years
prior to the submission deadline
• carries an award of $250
• submission deadline (postmarked) is September 30th, 2013
• please submit three copies of books, videos, etc.

The awards will be announced at the American Folklore Society Annual
Meeting in Providence, RI, October 16-19, 2013. Prize recipients need not
be members of the Society.

Please direct all submissions and questions to:

Brittany Warman
℅ The Ohio State University English Department
421 Denney Hall
164 West 17th Ave
Columbus, Ohio 43210

brittanywarman@gmail.com

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About Elli Köngäs-Maranda:

Internationally renowned feminist folklorist Elli Kaija Köngäs-Maranda was
born in Finland in 1932. She studied Finnish folklore at the University of
Helsinki and did her doctoral dissertation at Indiana University (1963) on
Finnish-American folklore. She held various research positions, and taught
at the University of British Columbia (1970-1976) and at Laval University
from 1976 until her premature death in 1982. She was elected a Fellow of
the American Folklore Society in 1978. Academically, she was known for her
structural analysis of traditional culture, demonstrating precision and
mathematical intellect, but also for her eloquent writing. She published
extensively and in English, French, Finnish, German, and Russian. Her
feminism was particularly evident in her research and writing on the Lau
people, based on fieldwork conducted between 1966 and 1976. In 1983, the
American Folklore Society Women’s section inaugurated two prizes in her
memory, one for student work and one for professional work, funded by
highly successful auctions, T-shirt sales, the making and raffling of a
quilt, and, most recently, the sale of note cards commemorating that quilt.

Barbro Klein’s obituary gives the most personal feminist view of Elli (see
Folklore Women’s Communication, fall-winter 1983 (30-31):4-7). For an
example of Elli’s work, see “The Roots of the Two Ethnologies, and
Ethnilogy.” Folklore Forum 15 #1 (1982):51-58, at <
http://hdl.handle.net/2022/1765>. See also Felix J. Oinas, “Elli Kaija
Köngäs Maranda: In Memoriam.” Folklore Forum 15 #2 (1982):115-123, at <
http://hdl.handle.net/2022/1778>. A full bibliography of her work in French
and English (as well as several example studies, a longer biography, and an
introduction to her contributions to folkloristics) is in Travaux et
Inédits de Elli Kaija Köngäs Maranda, Cahiers du CELAT 1, 1983. A later
consideration of Elli’s intellectual contributions, particularly her
unusual uniting of fieldwork and structural analysis, can be found in Leila
K. Virtanen, “Folklorist Elli Kaija Köngäs Maranda: A Passionate
Rationalist in the Field.” The Folklore Historian 17 (2000):34-41.

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Brittany Warman
PhD Student: English & Folklore
The Ohio State University
E-mail: brittanywarman@gmail.com // warman.17@buckeyemail.osu.edu
Website: www.brittanywarman.com