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UAA hosts traditional belief and healing systems conference May 27-30 By: Staff May 26, 2009 Department of Anthropology and Dean's Council, College of Arts and Sciences, are sponsors of the international conference
The International Society for Shamanistic Research (ISSR) will hold its 9th biennial congress at the University of Alaska Anchorage, May 27th-30th, 2009. The conference, to be held at the UAA Commons, is the Society’s first meeting in North America. It will provide a new forum for shamanistic research from interrelated cultural, medical, linguistic, and archaeological perspectives. The congress will include papers on traditional beliefs as reflected in ethnographic and archaeological data (including rock art), but will also focus on contemporary healing practices. There will be a special focus on Alaskan materials.
Conference opening: UAA administration and Mihály Hoppál (President of ISSR, Director, Institute of Ethnology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary)
Plenary Session speaker: Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer (Georgetown University, Washington, DC), Expanding Credibility for Traditional Belief and Healing Systems in a Changing World
Keynote Speaker: David S. Whitley (Tehachapi, CA), Cave Paintings and the Human Spirit: The Origins of Creativity and Belief (Presentation and Book Signing).
Special Performances: Ivan Szendro (Hungary); Svetlana Daribazarova (Buriat shamaness, Russia).
Group presentation: Shaolin Project, China; special exhibition: ethnographic films on shamanism.
The Conference truly is international and will be attended by scholars and practitioners from all around the world: Japan, China, Taiwan, Mongolia, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Finland, Germany, Italy, Greece, and Sweden. International perspectives will include a session on the Dene-Yeniseian cultural and linguistic connection (Edward Vajda, Western Washington University; James McNeley, Dine College; Alexandra Maloney, UAA-TSPU, Russia).
The 9th ISSR conference will include, for the first time, the perspectives and activities of indigenous peoples as a part of the intellectual exchange on shamanism in both traditional and contemporary contexts. The conference will be open to non-members in the broader anthropological and other scholarly communities, as well as indigenous peoples, especially Native Alaskans. Native Alaskans as well as faculty and students of the University of Alaska will participate in the conference, which will also feature
interaction with the ongoing cultural, educational, and research activities of the Alaska Native Heritage Center. Among the Alaska Native participants will be George Charles, Bob Sam, Kathleen Graves, and Dr. Rita Blumenstein (Yu’pik Tribal Healer).
Sessions are open to the public with partial and full day registration rates available at the door. For more information: issr_09_alaska@hotmail.com and http://anthropology.uaa.alaska.edu/Shamanism_conference.htm.
This Project is supported in part by a grant from Alaska Humanities Forum (M09-0012) and the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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