International Conference of the Lament Tradition

Lamenting – ritual wailing – is a practice that is known worldwide. The ways of lamenting and the meanings of laments vary from culture to culture and from context to context.

In this conference, we explore the variety of laments, their meanings, and their practices in relation to the world changing all around. The conference aims to reflect on questions and topics inherent to the contemporary field of lament research and to search for some common ground. We invite scholars to discuss the lament, its various representations and interpretations, and related metacultural discourses: the lament saved, kept, revived, revised, appropriated, experienced, sensed, in history, recorded, dug up from archives, reinterpreted, transmitted, and twisted into something new – but not lost.

The conference discussions find their home in the shared ground between folklore, cultural and religious studies, ethnomusicology, ethnology, and anthropology.

The public lecture (in Finnish) and the keynote lectures (in English) will be streamed and can be followed freely through Zoom. The links can be found on the website.

The conference will be held in Helsinki at the Finnish Literature Society as an in-person event.

Please see Lament conference web pages and register by 15.4.

For further information, please contact Dalva Lamminmäki, email laments2023@gmail.com.