40th International Ballad Conference

Meertens Institute, Amsterdam
Maritime Institute, Terschelling

The 40th International Ballad Conference
of the Kommission für Volksdichtung is to be held 
in Amsterdam and Terschelling (Netherlands),
Monday morning, 5 July, to Saturday morning, 10 July 2010.
The conference is being hosted by the Meertens Institute, Amsterdam.

Call for Papers

Ballad conferences are open to ethnologists, (ethno-)musicologists, literary historians and other scholars. The main theme of this conference is WATER. We welcome papers on maritime, coastal and insular music cultures, shanties and other songs of sailors and fishermen, ballads about the sea, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, sources and fountains, rain and draught, beaches, banks and bridges, swimming, shipwrecks, drowning, floods, fishes, sea monsters, mermaids etc. Other possible issues include performance, literacy vs. orality, language and identity, and ballad history, preferably in connection with the main theme. Call for papers is now closed.
 

Conference Location

The conference will start in the Meertens Institute in Amsterdam and will be continued in the Maritime Institute Willem Barentsz at Terschelling, one of the West Frisian islands in the very North of the Netherlands.
 

Keynote Lectures

Prof. dr. Simon Bronner (Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg: "It's Only Me from Over the Sea":Water and Sexuality in Symbol, Story, and Song
Dr. Christopher Smith (Texas Tech School of Music, Lubbock): Dancing for Eels on the Catherine Wharf: Afro- and Irish-American Musical Interactions in the Age of Sail
 

Concerts

Michel Colleu & Pascal Servain (Bretagne): Ballads and complaints of French sailormen
Camerata Trajectina (Utrecht): Shanties from the Dutch East India Company
 

Sponsors

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Province of Fryslân
Community of Terschelling
Lammert Koopmans Stichting

Programme and booking

Dowload programme and booking form
Download application for reduction of conference fee
Submit before March 15 2010

For further information, contact the Conference Organisers:
prof. dr Louis Peter Grijp (+ 31 20 4628536, Dit emailadres is beveiligd tegen spambots, u heeft javascript nodig om het te kunnen bekijken ),
drs Martine de Bruin (+31 20 4628513, martine.de.bruin@meertens. knaw.nl) and
MA Marieke Lefeber (+31 20 4628579, Dit emailadres is beveiligd tegen spambots, u heeft javascript nodig om het te kunnen bekijken )
P.O. Box 94264, NL-1090 GG Amsterdam, Fax + 31 20 4628555
Joan Muyskenweg 25, NL-1096 CJ Amsterdam