The Educational and Academic Center for Typology and Semiotics of Folklore was founded in 2003 on the basis of the seminar “Folklore and post-Folklore: Structure, Typology, Semiotics”, which had been active at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities since the mid-1990s and around which there formed a team of folklorists from Russia and abroad (USA, Italy, France and other countries).
The Center combines research (development of theoretical interpretations of modern folklore studies) and education, offering an M.A. program in Folklore and Mythology, a Ph.D. and a postdoctoral program in Folklore Studies).
In the research of the faculty of the Center, folklore texts are studied in functional, communicative and structural aspects. Typology and interconnections between the oral and the written culture are studied, folklore traditions of different regions are studied (European Russia, Siberia, Central Asia, etc. New areas of folk culture, modern mythology and modern folklore (post-folklore) is also collected and researched.
The Center organizes folklore and ethnographic expeditions, national and international conferences and seminars, as well as Schools of Young Folklorists.
The center has partnership agreements with a number of Russian and foreign universities.
The Center publishes its own journal “Folklore: Structure, Typology, Semiotics”, and the book series “Tradition – Text – Folklore: Typology and Semiotics”. The full list of works by the Center’s faculty comprises over 750 titles (including more than 80 monographs and collections of articles).
The results of the Center’s research are posted in “Folklore and post-folklore: structure, typology, semiotics”.
