GHOSTS AND APPARITIONS IN THE FIELD
Friday 27th May 2011, 10.15am to 6 pm
Scott Polar Research Institute, Lensfield Road, Cambridge
A special all-day session of the Magic Circle seminar group
(http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/research/seminars/magiccircle/)
Convenors: Dr Olga Ulturgasheva and Dr Shane McCorristine
Sponsors: Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge
and Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CARA)
What is spectrality? How can we theorise haunting? What forms of livelihood give rise to the
expansion and proliferation of ghosts? What ontological implications do ghosts (imps,
vampires, spirits and other creatures of human and non-human origin) have for people’s
perceptions of themselves, their present, past and future?
This event is aimed at exploring the multiple notions and constructs of the ghost and the
ghostly, broadly defined, in the current research of anthropologists and historians. Whether
ghosts represent a separate community of projections, divided between entertainment,
religion, and parapsychology (as in the Western European perspective) or a vital everyday
force implicated in myriad social processes and cosmologies (as in various ‘non-Western’
contexts), the fact remains that ghosts and ghostly affects are embedded in our cultures,
ideologies and memoryscapes. The aim of this workshop is to provide an opportunity for
participants to exchange ideas and speak to each other about the ghosts that haunt their
research. Presentations in each session will take the form of an opening statement of working
ideas of no more than 10-15 minutes, followed by an open discussion with the other
participants lasting 15-20 minutes.
Tea, coffee and biscuits provided free of charge; also sandwich lunch for those who
confirm attendance to ou202@cam.ac.uk before 1pm on Thursday 26 May
PTO for full programme...
Programme
10.15am Registration. Coffee and tea.
10.45am Welcome introduction
11.00am Dr Vanessa Grotti (University of Oxford) 'Relatives and the invisible: kinship,
spirits and the dead in an Amazonian society'.
11.30am Dr Gilly Carr (University of Cambridge) ‘Haunted by the Occupation: Soldiers,
Slave-Workers, and Other Tales from the German Bunkers in the Channel Islands’
Discussant Dr Shane McCorristine
12.00 pm Tea/Coffee break
12.15 pm Dr Katherine Swancutt (University of Oxford) ‘Ghosts and the Quest for
Timelessness in Southwest China'
12.45pm Dr Ivan Peshkov (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland) ‘Siberian Ghosts of
Chinese Taiga. Memory and Forgetting among Reindeer Evenki (Tungus-Yaku) in Inner
Mongolia’
Discussant Dr Olga Ulturgasheva
1.15pm Lunch break
2.00pm Dr Kostas Zorbas (Democritus University of Thrace/SPRI) ‘From Tuvan shamanic
spirits to the Lamia: Greek phantoms through the eyes of a Siberianist’
2.30pm Dr Piers Vitebsky (SPRI, University of Cambridge) Why do Baptist ghosts in Tribal
India behave differently from pagan ones?
Discussant Dr Vanessa Grotti
3.00pm Tea/Coffee break
3.30 pm Dr Olga Ulturgasheva (SPRI, University of Cambridge) 'Foreshadowing the
Future: Djuluchen and Partibility of Personhood in Northeastern Siberia'
4.00pm Dr Shane McCorristine (National University of Ireland, Maynooth/SPRI)
‘Mesmerism, Spiritualism and Arctic Exploration’
Discussant Dr Katherine Swancutt
4.30pm Dr Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough (University of Cambridge) 'Tracing Norse-
Greenlandic Cultural Memory in the Sagas: From Erik the Red to Trolls in the Wilderness’
5.00pm Dr Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov (University of Cambridge) ‘On Ghosts in Critical
Theory’
Discussant Dr Piers Vitebsky
5.30pm General Discussion and Summing up