2026: Water Lore: An Elemental Approach to Folklore and Mythology

Cheshma in Deleyna, Bulgaria. Photo by Sarah Craycraft.

How might water illuminate our ties to place, community, belief, and the expressive traditions in our lives, as we creatively reimagine the past in service of the present and future? A focus on the intersections of water and folklore opens space to explore the intersections of several topics of interest to folklorists, including oral tradition, memory, ritual, spirituality and belief, materiality and vernacular infrastructures, cognition, everyday lifeways, water sovereignty, community-based care, and public facing work with community partners, especially as these topics respond to the emergent, colliding crises of our present. This symposium features speakers from the Harvard community and beyond, with keynote lectures by Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby (University of Kentucky) and Laura Orleans (New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center).

SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE

Saturday, April 11, 2026 | Thompson Room, Barker Center, Barker Ctr, 12 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA 02138

8:30-9:00 am              Breakfast

9:00-9:15 am              Welcome Remarks by Michael Puett

9:15-10:15 am            Student Panel

                                       Emily Chamish, Paper title TBA

                                       Theo Glaeser, "In the Eye of the Beholder: The Lethal Appearance of Aquatic Monsters in                                            Indo European Myth"

                                       Hassan Tchangai Looky, "Wilip-gin Birrarung murron (Keep the Birrarung Alive): Liquid                                                Sovereignty and the Governance of the Yarra River/Birrarung in Settler-Colonial Victoria,                                             1886–2026"

                                       John Weaver, "Water at Work: The Jobs of Nāgas in Monsoon Asian Architecture"

10:15-11:00 am          Hartman Deetz, Mashpee Wampanoag 

                                       "Maushop and the Horned Serpent"

11:00-11:45 am           K. Brandon Barker, Indiana University Bloomington 

                                       "Finding the Lowest Level: Folk Narrative Motifs and the Folk Physics of Water"

11:45-12:00 pm         Coffee & Tea Break

12:00-1:00 pm            Keynote 1, Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby, University of Kentucky 

                                      "Sacred Springs in the Camps: Gulag Memory, Legend, and Place"

1:00-2:00 pm               Lunch (on your own)

2:00-2:45 pm               Tim Frandy, University of British Columbia 

                                       "The River Gives Life: Contestation, Connection, and Confluences in Sámi Waterlore"

2:45-3:30 pm               Sarah Craycraft, Harvard University, and Jordan Lovejoy, College of the Holy Cross

                                        "Cultural Strategies from the Sacrifice Zone: Ritual, Belief, and Rural Water Crises"  

3:30-3:45 pm                Coffee & Tea Break

3:45-4:30 pm                Devi Lockwood, Harvard University alumna and Ideas Editor, Time Magazine

                                       "From 1,001 Voices to One Boat: Rowing Syria Toward LA 2028"

4:30-5:30 pm                Keynote 2, Laura Orleans, New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center 

                                        "All Hands on Deck: Shared Authority in Telling the Story of New Bedford’s Fishing                                                        Community"

5:30 pm                           Dinner (buffet provided)

Harvard University is located on the traditional and ancestral land of the Massachusett, the original inhabitants of what is now known as Boston and Cambridge. We pay respect to the people of the Massachusett Tribe, past and present, and honor the land itself which remains sacred to the Massachusett People.