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Hi all, It seems there is more time to register your interest in AAG sessions than we first anticipated, so please feel free to get in touch about the session outlined below. Very best, Hayden, Dydia and Fraser _______________________ AAG 2006 CALL FOR PAPERS Chicago 7th-11th March 2006 FOLK GEOGRAPHIES: LAND, LIFE, LORE In the rich history of cultural geography, the study of folk is regarded as a point of origin and well-established field of inquiry. Still vibrant today, folk studies provide a touchstone for many geographers' encounters with landscapes, locales and communities of past and present. This deep rooted disciplinary concern with ordinary and lay knowledges is shared by scholars from quite different intellectual traditions of cultural geography for whom the idea of 'folk' is a means to approach questions about materiality, memory, performance and creativity in method. Given that such common ground exists, it's so funny how we don't talk anymore. Rather than eliding or sustaining this disengagement, Folk Geographies presents a space for disciplinary dialogue. We hope to enlist a diverse group of cultural geographers who might not otherwise find themselves in the same session but whose work speaks of the land, life and lore of folk geographies. Contributions can address different sorts of question. What expressions and shapes do folk geographies take? Do they offer conditions for collaborative research endeavor? Might they usefully re-shape the established plea for a 'people's geography'? Whose worlds do folk geographies disclose? What kinds of politics reside in 'folk'? Where are the sites steeped in lore now located? Are 'vernacular' and 'indigenous' terms that folk geography can continue to trade in? This call for papers invites scholars from different - sometimes discreet - communities of practice to revisit the place of folk study in cultural geography. Papers can discuss present day efforts to create popular forms of geographical inquiry, focus on historical geographies of past practice, or concentrate on debate-shifting currents of thought and conduct. Possible themes for consideration might include, but are not limited to: Folk studies and the popular imagination Habits and habitation Vernacular landscapes Custom, myth, magic and belief Mapping, survey and classification Dance, song and craft Narrating lore and legend Bardic landscapes and oracular performances Folk studies and radical politics Folk, race and nation Urban legend and folklore Dubious folklore The gender of folk The figure of the folklorist Folk heroes and folk devils Archiving and recording folk geographies The politics of recovery and preservation Folk studies, modernism and anti-modernism Folk studies and oral history Folk studies as figurative and conceptual resource Please send abstracts (of no more than 250 words) to the organizers Dydia DeLyser, [log in to unmask] or Hayden Lorimer [log in to unmask] or Fraser MacDonald, [log in to unmask] by September 23rd 2005.