Call for Papers
2026 Annual Meeting
April 2026 Theme: Folklore Old and New
April 17th & 18th, 2026 at University of Oregon in Eugene, OR.​
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Folklore is a resource that we draw on for resilience, comfort, community, and for making
sense of the world around us. It can be a vehicle of joy or grief or anger, with the capacity to express the full range of human emotions. Folklore is an especially vital resource for surviving turbulent times, both historically and today. How has folklore, both old and new, served as an individual or community resource? What does it offer us, and how does it facilitate resilience?
The Archer Taylor Lecture will be given by Enrique Lamadrid, professor emeritus in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of New Mexico.
As always, the theme is a suggestion for those considering presentation, not a requirement. We welcome proposals for individual presentations and organized panels on any topic related to folklore.
To submit an abstract for the upcoming Annual Meeting, you must first purchase your ticket on the Annual Meeting Registration Page.
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You will be emailed a confirmation once your ticket has been purchased and will have the option to submit your abstract by clicking a link in your confirmation email.
​If you are preparing an individual proposal submission, please use the following format (Abstracts that do not follow these guidelines will be returned to the author for revision):
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First and Last Name
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(Optional) Pronouns
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Email
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Title of Presentation
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Abstract of presentation (100-150 words only)
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Any additional needs or requests for this session (for example, a specific tech need or accessibility need)
If you are preparing a panel or workshop submission, please use the following format (Abstracts that do not follow these guidelines will be returned to the author for revision):
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First and Last Name of Chair
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(Optional) Pronouns
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Affiliation of Chair
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Email of Chair
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Title of Panel or Workshop
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Abstract of Panel or Workshop (100-200 words only describing the purpose or goal of this panel)
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Names, Affiliations, Emails, and Abstracts/Discussion Points (100-1200 words per presenter) for each presentation included in this panel.
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(Optional) Any additional needs or requests for this session (for example, a specific tech need or accessibility need)
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***All presentation abstracts will be published in our annual meeting program
Example of how presentation abstracts will be formatted in our Annual Meeting programming:
TYSON, Neil deGrasse (Andromeda Galactic University). Of Black Holes, Virality, Uncertainty, and Incompleteness. Science, technology, history, and other scholarly disciplines are rich resources for generating folk idioms. By implicitly referencing their academic sources, such idioms self-justify, thereby establishing and extending their usage—just as do contemporary legends and other folk genres. This paper addresses how certain everyday idioms result from simplifying, broadening, distorting, or ignoring their original and narrower technical and historical meanings. Such sociolinguistic mechanisms may reveal underlying world views and transient attitudes like those described by Lakoff and Johnson. Here I explore a few quasi-scholarly idioms in light of Oring’s critique of memetics as well as more traditional approaches to an understanding of their creation, function, and use in everyday discourse. (emailaddress@gmail.com)
Please reach out to operationsmanager@westernfolklore.org with any questions related to the abstract submission and review process.