Folklore as Liberation and Empowerment

Folklore is a system of practices, arts, and beliefs among a community. Historically, folklore has had a powerful role in preserving cultural identity in the face of imperialism, colonialism, and oppression. With that in mind, this panel will consider questions like: what’s the role of folklore as resistance in decolonial myth-building, and how do writers approach this idea? What are ways in which mythology and folklore can be anti-colonial, and what are some examples? Is there a problem in writing down even a constructed folklore system when a core value of folklore is that it is organic, evolving, and usually oral? What happens when folklore is adopted (or co-opted) by nationalist interests? What are useful frameworks to understand folklore in fiction through an anti-colonial lens?