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Thoughts upon returning from AFS – Last week I returned from my perennial trek to the States for the annual meeting of the American Folklore Society. AFS has been my academic home away from home since I first attended the annual meeting in 2014; with the exception of two COVID years, I’ve gone every year. Actually, during the second COVID year, I presented a paper in a virtual session, but I don’t really count that as going to the conference. There was the advantage of not having a physical room to be kicked out of when our time was up, which meant that we could have a good, long discussion afterward. This led to a forthcoming special journal issue, so it wasn’t all bad, but in my mind there is no substitute for actually being present at a conference.

AFS is my once-a-year opportunity to recharge my batteries. This seems like a funny thing to say, because it is physically exhausting. I am constantly dealing with jet lag, I get up early for morning sessions and stay up into the wee hours of the morning socializing with colleagues, and during the day my schedule is packed with panels and other events. Despite how physically tired I am, though, I always feel mentally and emotionally refreshed. I am by nature an introvert, but a) introversion-extroversion is a spectrum, not a dichotomy, and b) being an introvert doesn’t mean you don’t like people. I don’t mind being around a lot of people as long as I like those people, and I like pretty much everyone at AFS. They are all my colleagues, but many of them are also genuine friends, even if I only get to see them in person once a year. So while I am always inspired by the fascinating research that my colleagues do, the real reason I go to AFS is for the contact with people I truly enjoy being around.

Back in 2018, I brought four graduate students to AFS, one of whom was my advisee. It went well—they all did great and had a good time—but I started to think that the experience might be a one-off. I went on my own in 2019, and the following year COVID hit. I returned to AFS in person in 2022 and started thinking about maybe bringing along some grad students again. The following year, when the meeting was held in Portland, Oregon, I again brought along four students (and, again, one was my advisee—we’ll call her Y). It was another great experience, but I thought it would again be a one-off. Last year, though, Y decided to join me again, along with another grad student. She joined me again this year in Atlanta, along with my other advisee, an MA student we’ll call S. Y has been to three AFS meetings in a row now and has a cohort of friends she has made among the other graduate students who regularly attend the conference. I don’t think I could keep her away from AFS at this point if I tried.

On the last night of the conference, I was up late in the lobby drinking and socializing with colleagues. It was past midnight, and I found myself sharing a bottle of Monkey Shoulder with a friend of mine. Out of the blue, he asked me what I thought about the way that liminal spaces were being represented on the internet. I looked at him for a moment and wondered if he somehow knew about this site. But it turns out he decided to just bring it up at random. He talked about how people seemed to equate “liminal” with “spooky”—gas stations in the middle of the night, empty back rooms, abandoned buildings, etc. I’ve seen this as well, but I never really paid much attention; I’m used to people misinterpreting concepts. But since my friend brought it up, I shared my thoughts. I’ve written at length about the concept of liminality elsewhere on this site, so I won’t rehash that here, but the gist of it is that a liminal space requires a transformation to take place. In a liminal place or state, you are temporarily freed from the social constraints that you are normally subject to. You will eventually return to your normal social life, but you won’t be returning as the same person. To sum up, it’s not the nature of a space itself that makes it liminal—it’s what you experience when you are in that space.

When I explained this, my friend took a sip of Monkey Shoulder and asked, “But how is that different from ritual?” The answer is that it’s not. An important part of many rituals—particularly rites of passage—is the liminal stage. If you’ve read my longer essay, you know that the concept of liminality was first formulated to describe the stage in a rite of passage when the initiate has left behind their former social self but before they rejoin society as their new self. So liminality is a key part of many rituals, although not all liminality is ritual in nature.

In the course of our conversation, I realized that AFS was a perfect example of a liminal experience—perhaps not for me, but for my students. I visit the States often enough now that it’s probably not as transformative for me anymore. For my students, though—especially S, who was attending her first overseas conference—I could tell that it was a transformative experience. I was made aware early on that they both felt they had been liberated from the constraints of Korean society. On the day we arrived in Atlanta, after settling in to our respective rooms at the hotel, we met up for dinner. We went out to a nearby taphouse, and when the food came out I was on my phone tapping some information into my beer app. When I looked up, I saw that both Y and S had already started eating. That might not strike you as odd if you’re not familiar with Korean society, but in Korea the eldest person at the table is always the first to start eating. When I have a meal with my students in Korea, I usually encourage them to start eating, but they will invariably just sit there until I pick up my chopsticks. So it was a bit of a shock to see my students no longer standing on ceremony. I laughed and said, “Oh, so you drink the American water and now you’re American!” They laughed along with me and didn’t seem the least bit fazed.

I don’t know exactly how transformative AFS was for them, but I hope it did change them. I fully expect that the next time we have a meal together they will once again wait for me to pick up my chopsticks, now that we’re back in Korea, but I also hope that they’ve taken something away from AFS that will remain with them and become part of who they are. I said above that AFS is probably not as transformative for me anymore, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t change me at all. Like I wrote at the beginning, it recharges me, and that is transformative. It inspires me, and that’s transformative, too. I hope it does the same for my students, but on an even deeper level.

Well, I’m not sure if I’ve successfully put into words everything I was thinking, but I wanted to at least give it a shot. That will have to be enough for now.