EditorsIntroFinal Editors’ Introduction FOLKLORICA 2020, Vol. XXIV ii Editors’ Introduction to the Folklorica Special Issue “Vernacular Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic” 3e exponential spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) through the Hubei province of China in December of 2019 had the world watching and fearing a repeat of the 2002-2004 pandemic of its predecessor, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 1 (SARS-CoV). 3ose fears were realized on 30 January 2020 when 7,818 cases across 19 countries prompted the World Health Organization to declare a public health emergency of international concern. 3at status was upgraded to a global pandemic on 11 March [WHO 2020] due to rising cases in Iran, Japan, South Korea, and particularly in Italy, the primary entry point of the virus into Europe. A newly discovered zoonotic virus, SARS-CoV-2 is closely related to the first SARS Coronavirus as well as to a number of viruses found in bats and pangolins [Sun et al. 2020]; it is believed to have passed to humans through the processing of bats for traditional Chinese medicine. 3e initial virus outbreak has been tentatively traced to a wet market in the city of Wuhan, although contact tracing in search of an index case, or patient zero, has thrown this source into question [Areddy 2020. See also Bodner et al. 2021: 32-34, 185-86], and scientific investigation has not ruled-out the possibility that the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology [Kramer 2021]. As the virus spread, nations across the globe scrambled to prepare their medical systems for a wave of infection based on highly variable projection models. Rushed attempts to obtain and distribute necessary supplies and to establish channels of national and international communication coincided with an assortment of lockdown measures implemented in highly divergent fashions and with varying timelines. Anthropologist Jeremy Walton [2020] has compared this jarring institution of state power to Foucault’s well-known description of the disciplinary projects introduced as anti-plague measures in early modern France [Foucault 1995: 195-98]. Walton stresses how surveillance, curtailment of movement, and the coercive power of government bodies have been rapidly imposed in the pandemic upon a wide swathe of society that has been heretofore largely or completely sheltered from these aspects of state power. 3e adjustments precipitated by this have been neither simple, nor heterogeneous. A year and a half out from the initial spread of the disease, the disruptive realities of the pandemic have become, for many of us, routinized. While commentators in the earliest months were quick to draw parallels between COVID-19 and past epidemics (the Swine Flu, SARS, the 1918 Flu, or even the Black Death), the true response to this pandemic has been historic in its own right. As Yuval Noah Harari [2021] writes in his recap of a year with COVID, modern science, digital infrastructure, and global linkages have turned what were once uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. Global connections have allowed us to monitor chains of infection and trace the spread of the virus Editors’ Introduction FOLKLORICA 2020, Vol. XXIV iii Image 1. A matrioshka doll wearing a face mask and surrounded by COVID-19 germs. Painted by Tamara Koryova in a factory in Semenov, Russia [Euronews 2020] like none before, while digital technologies have allowed large sections of society to work from home, assuaging some of the prohibitive economic costs of extended lockdowns. 3at same digital infrastructure has also provided scientists and doctors throughout the world the ability to share information in real-time, leading to fast-tracked sequencing of the virus and production of vaccines. With a highly uneven roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines and new strains of the virus being discovered, we have yet to reach a clear certainty of where the future of the pandemic will lead. 3e benefits of modern technology, though, have allowed for a response that has no parallel in human history, suggesting a prompt exit from pandemic conditions in the near future. Yet, as Einstein once noted, our technology often outpaces our humanity. Indeed, it has been our cultural and specific legacies that have most resembled past manifestations in other epidemics and have shown both their best and worst sides in the responses to this pandemic. Global flows of wealth have created a hierarchy of nations based on access to life-saving medical supplies and technologies, making some countries’ pandemic experience much more similar to past plagues. Political leaders—drawn between sometimes opposing national and global concerns and presented with a rapidly evolving understanding of the virus—have had to shoulder serious burdens through the pandemic and many deadly mistakes have been made navigating those positions. Digital surveillance, which allowed for precise and controlled monitoring of disease vectors, has also set some very dangerous precedents regarding government overreach into Editors’ Introduction FOLKLORICA 2020, Vol. XXIV iv personal privacy and data collection on citizen populations. 3e hope that currently unfolding vaccination regimens will prove successful is also bringing with it the perceived threat of “vaccine passports” and other digital and bureaucratic tracking technologies. While such policies may positively curtail viral spread, they may also simultaneously divide societies in harmful ways and infringe on constitutional and human rights. Among regular citizens, discrepancies in our work forces between those who could and could not make the move to online functioning and work from home has laid bare clear disparities in socio-economic class. It has also produced a cadre of front-line workers whose proximity to heightened danger has been largely compulsory. Strict capacity and masking rules, as well as imposed closures of small and large businesses that rely on in-person attendance (arts venues, cinemas, and restaurants to name a few), will pose an economic toll that we have not yet fully grasped and is already revealing still greater economic disparities [Davis 2020]. At the very outset of the pandemic, too, we saw the fear of broken supply chains leading to panic buying of supplies in many countries, which created the very shortages that were, in most cases, never a credible threat. In this environment of uncertainty and stress, our unique position as the story-telling species has led to an explosion of expressive culture and artistic production, the vast majority of which has been digitally mediated. It has, in fact, been difficult to avoid both positive and pernicious folklore throughout the pandemic. Ritualized communal cheers have been orchestrated to support medical practitioners [Booth et al. 2020], who have responded with TikTok videos of elaborate dance routines [Jennings 2020]. Pandemic jokes, songs, memes, and anecdotes have been shared across numerous online networks [see Images 1, 2, 3, and 4], and folk genres such as sea shanties have seen modern-day revivals in viral online form [Smyth 2021]. As people receded into their homes and sheltered in place, many expanded their horizons for digital connection or used the Internet to project vernacular messages of support to the world (an overview of the trajectory of English-language folklore over the first months of the pandemic can be found in Pennesi [2021]). 3ere has been an antagonistic side to pandemic folklore too. Widespread distribution of conspiracy theories and rumors across social media platforms has disseminated misinformation, fear, and mistrust regarding government measure, scientific findings, medical practices and the nature of the coronavirus itself. 3is material has also spawned an expansive proliferation of critical and often hostile ostensive practices—the ways in which people act out legend narratives or rumors in real life [see Fine and Ellis 2010: 112]. Protests against lockdowns, masking rules, and other facets of government pandemic responses have been organized in numerous cities across the globe, while active campaigns to “reveal the pandemic as a fallacy” (for instance, the #filmyourhospital movement [Bodner et al. 2021: 57]) have obstructed the functioning of medical systems and imperiled doctors and nurses. Various ethnic and racial groups, especially Asians, perceived to have played a disproportionate role in the spread of the virus, have the victims of racist Editors’ Introduction FOLKLORICA 2020, Vol. XXIV v verbal and physical attacks [Human Rights Watch 2020]. Politicians and public figures like Bill Gates [Greenspan 2021] have had elaborate webs of conspiracy theory woven around their intentions and actions in responding to the pandemic. Everywhere, government measures for mitigating the spread of the virus have been met with suspicion and distrust, and the ever-present messaging of anti- vaccination proponents has been taken to their bullhorns, finding a new and receptive audience. From the outset of the pandemic, various commentators began drawing parallels between folk responses to this and past epidemics [Foss 2020; Klein 2020]. Echoes in contemporary lockdown conditions of the plague circumstances which prompted the 100 tales in Boccaccio’s Decameron became a clichéd topic of academic focus in popular print [CBC 2020; Findlen 2020; Kungel 2020; Marcus 2020; Spicer 2020] and even prompted Ke New York Times to produce a short-story collection called 3e Decameron Project [New York Times 2020]. But it has fallen to folklorists to engage systematically and comprehensively with the vernacular productions that have both responded to and shaped the character and course of this pandemic. We are engaged in this work even as our normal research toolbox has been upended, and many have been forced to navigate the world of exclusively online research [OHA 2020]. 3e intrinsic role that folklore serves in Image 2. Coronaviruses for sale in a Slovakian shop window [Radio 101 2020] Editors’ Introduction FOLKLORICA 2020, Vol. XXIV vi alleviating stress and offering individual and communal vantages to claim a sense of control in times of uncertainty means that its production and dissemination is exponentially increased in conditions like the current pandemic. As Maribel Alvarez [2020] has so succinctly stated “folkorists are the archivists of the art of coping.” Now, more than ever, it has become critical for folklorists to take part in the public and professional dialogues surrounding vernacular production and cultural movements vis-à-vis the pandemic, and we have had our hands full. At the time of this writing (in the early months of 2021) there have already been numerous online and print efforts to document this folklore in its nascence, to capture some essence of the scope and form of these manifestations, to trace the traditional aspects that have been re-packaged, re- invigorated, or completely remade in this novel pandemic, and to respond to the function and importance of these expressions. A series of university departments, institutes, and archives, as well as folklore associations and centers, have established collection projects to gather submissions of vernacular responses to the pandemic or to present academic analyses of such collected material. 3ese include the University of Aberdeen’s Elphinstone Institute Archive’s “Lockdown Lore Collection Project” [University of Aberdeen 2020], Cork Folklore Project’s “Chronicles of COVID-19” [Cork Folklore Project 2021], 3e Digital Archives of Latvian Folklore’s “Diaries in the Time of Pandemic 2020-2021” [Garamantas 2020], and Image 3. Romanian cucii mummers distributing metaphoric vaccines in Brănești, Ilfov County [Cucii din Branesti 2021] Editors’ Introduction FOLKLORICA 2020, Vol. XXIV vii UNESCO’s “Call for Submissions about Experiences Related to Intangible Cultural Heritage during the Pandemic” [UNESCO 2020]. Sites aimed at critical professional analysis, collection and tracking of pandemic folklore have also been created, including the Encyclopedia of Coronavirus Rumors and Fakes created by 3e Laboratory for 3eoretical Folkloristics at 3e Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration’s [RPANEPA 2020. See Kononenko’s report in this issue]. Numerous folklorists have been active in public outreach during the pandemic, penning articles for various online and print publications aimed at non- academic audiences. Examples of these have been too numerous to cite [see, for example, Bock 2020; Deutsch 2020]. However, special attention should be drawn to the range of materials disseminated by long-time anti-vaxx, conspiracy theory, and rumor scholar Andrea Kitta [East Carolina University 2020; Kitta 2020; 3urston 2019], whose latest book, Ke Kiss of Death: Contamination, Contagion, and Folklore [2019], was published at a surprisingly opportune moment. 3is serendipity allowed for a normal book publicity plan to serve as an opportunity for critical public outreach. 3ough her book is not focused directly on COVID- 19, it deals with a number of topics regarding social responses to disease that have become exceedingly salient in the pandemic. Given current circumstances, the book’s author and publisher, Utah State University Press, have offered a digital version of the text for free download on the press’ website for a limited time [UPC/USUP 2020]. Eliot Borenstein’s Ke Plots Against Russia: Conspiracy and Fantasy after Socialism [2019] and two other texts spearheaded by Anastasiya Astapova, Conspiracy Keories in Eastern Europe: Tropes and Trends [Astapova et al. 2021a] and Conspiracy Keories and the Nordic Countries [Astapova et al. 2021b], also center on conspiracy theories and feature a regional focus of particular interest to Folklorica’s readers. All three of these books provide an impressive breadth of analysis regarding past and current conspiracy thinking in Eastern and Northern Europe. 3ese volumes, too, went to press before COVID- 19’s arrival, but much of the vernacular background against which coronavirus lore is currently being integrated in Europe is explored by the books’ authors. Finally, a series of important folklore publications that emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic itself have already begun to hit presses or wend their way through peer review. Most notable to date has been a series of works specifically targeting the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories through, predominantly, online channels of social media. 3e Misinformation Review at Harvard’s Kennedy School published a special issue on the pandemic in the summer of 2020 [McGinty and Gyenes 2020], offering a series of articles tracing the development of a diverse range of phenomena surrounding the spread of conspiracy theories and online misinformation in the pandemic. Topics covered include the psychology that informs most online sharing and the unique role served by news and social media in spreading misinformation about COVID-19. Elsewhere, Timothy Tangherlini and his computational folkloristics team at University of California, Berkeley have continued their work into the generative Editors’ Introduction FOLKLORICA 2020, Vol. XXIV viii modeling of contemporary legends, conspiracy theories and other lore during the pandemic. 3ey have produced some exceptional recent works that explore the transmission patterns and structural make-up of legends, conspiracy theories, and other pandemic, and pre-pandemic lore [Tangherlini et al. 2020; Tangherlini and Roychowdhury 2020]. Image 4. “Healthy and Happy Easter” by Polish cartoonist Waldemar Rukść. Kis cartoon of the Easter spirit driving away COVID-19 circulated widely on Eastern European Facebook pages in Spring 2021. [Rukść 2021] 3e final months of 2020 brought us Covid-19 Conspiracy Keories: QAnon, 5G, the New World Order and Other Viral Ideas, a book penned by a team of scholars including folklorists Jon Bodner, Wendy Welch, and Ian Brodie [Bodner et al. 2021]. From QAnon and Pizzagate to 5G towers and the political art of Ben Garrison, the book provides an exhaustive explanation of the way that pandemic lore has settled into, built upon, and developed existing North American vernacular conspiracy culture. 3e book will stand as a hallmark folklore text of this pandemic. More recently, the Bulgarian Academy of Science has produced an edited volume, Етнология и епидемии Социокултурни измерения на пандемията от COVID-19 [Ethnology and Epidemics: Sociocultural Dimensions of the COVID-19 Pandemic] [Baeva and Ilieva 2021]. 3is text presents a wide sweep of the social and cultural implications of the pandemic in Bulgaria, including important contributions from ethnologists, musicologists, and Editors’ Introduction FOLKLORICA 2020, Vol. XXIV ix folklorists, and is available for free digital download [PMDPHoBAS 2021]. We also soon expect to see additions to this research, including Ben Bridges, Ross Brillhard, and Diane E. Goldstein’s edited volume Behind the Mask: Vernacular Culture in the Time of COVID-19 [Bridges et al., forthcoming] and a multidisciplinary volume on COVID play edited by Anna Beresin and Julia Bishop [Anthropology of Children 2021]. In addition, folklore collectives and journals such as Journal of the American Folklore Society, Contemporary Legend, City Lore, and Cultural Analysis have all issued calls for submissions on pandemic lore for special issues or other publications. Into this mix we submit this special edition of our journal. From the earliest months of the pandemic, we at Folklorica followed the dramatic and abundant production of COVID-19 related memes, songs, jokes, conspiracy theories, legends, and other lore that was issuing from the areas of the world under our purview. Discussions in May of 2020 among SEEFA’s Executive Board produced a call for papers in July that has engendered the present volume. With our special issue, we wanted to gather submissions from scholars who were tracking the inchoate and tumultuous early vernacular responses to the pandemic in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. We welcomed experimental, tentative, and in- progress research in the form of both articles and reports. Our goal was to take an early scholarly snap-shot of how Eastern Europe and related and neighboring areas were experiencing and reacting to the pandemic from the initial spread on European shores in early March until the late summer, when pandemic measures had reached their most stringent form in many countries. We hope that this volume will add to the discussions currently being held in folklore circles about manifestations of pandemic folklore by representing a specific region of the world with a unique history influenced by its geographic location at the border between Europe and Asia and its largely post-imperial and post-socialist heritages. Moreover, the most notable works assessing COVID-19 folklore produced to date have concentrated heavily on the pernicious, antagonistic, or anti-authority positions taken by people in various parts of the world, particularly in North America. 3e discussions surrounding those movements are of critical importance to understanding the climate of the pandemic and recent trends in global politics. Most assuredly, those currents of expressive culture are explored by many of the submissions presented in this special issue. However, many of our authors have also explored the positive, supportive, generative, and beneficent aspects of COVID-19 folklore—vernacular attempts to support public health services, calm nervous populations, and entertain the common people in both lockdown and frontline work environments. 3e articles in this issue have emerged from research on the folklore of the pandemic in East Slavic traditions (Russia, Rusyns in Carpathia, and Ukraine), in South Slavic traditions (Bulgaria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia), as well as in diaspora among many peoples from Eastern Europe and Eurasia. 3ey represent all the major areas of our discipline: material culture, oral lore, and practices. We have organized the articles to capture these disciplinary Editors’ Introduction FOLKLORICA 2020, Vol. XXIV x relationships, beginning with two pieces on material culture, followed by two on narrative and song, and finally by two on practices as endorsed by charismatic leaders. As we have discussed, folklorists faced challenges as well as benefits from the forced curtailment of planned fieldwork. Many of the authors had their research plans change suddenly but were able to pivot when a serendipitous topic related to coronavirus lore fell into their laps. We can relate to this dilemma. Jeanmarie’s three planned trips to Russia to wrap up research for a book manuscript on holy springs were put on hold, while Dorian was forced to forgo two planned trips to Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina to begin his postdoctoral fieldwork on the migrant crisis. Jeanmarie responded by shifting her attention to two projects on North American folklore of the pandemic: one on the vernacular response to the Kentucky governor as a legendary hero of the pandemic (forthcoming in the Contemporary Legend special issue on pandemic folklore) and another on pandemic pet adoption. Dorian took another tack; he relied on “remote” fieldwork, gathering new songs from the Internet and followed up by online interviews with the bards who sang them to produce his article for this volume. Sarah Craycraft was in the field when the lockdown was imposed in Bulgaria. Her planned trips to study village-based projects that foster intergenerational connections among the urban and rural populace were cancelled. However, her previous work on this topic allowed her to proceed with a virtual ethnography project on how these organizations themselves retooled to serve another purpose entirely during the early months of the pandemic: to provide solace and support to fellow citizens. Drawing on established networks and their existing online presence, two of these groups made a point of using the Internet to connect with the village elderly to check in on them virtually after physical visits had been curtailed. 3ese villagers, in turn, responded by sharing their folklife, as they would have with the visitors, but with a goal to assuage concerns about the pandemic. 3ey shared secrets of medicinal plants and how to make traditional Bulgarian dishes or crafts (as well as songs and stories). As Craycraft demonstrates, these folk practices, having been preserved (in part as a result of these groups’ efforts), came to the fore during the pandemic to provide much needed solace. We have seen many similar examples of foodways serving this purpose in the North American context, but the villagers’ efforts went beyond perfecting bread baking while stuck at home. 3ese women represent fortitude in the face of a crisis, living as they do in remote villages, and they conveyed care through the power of vernacular knowledge about objects and practices to their fellow (largely urban) Bulgarians. Katya Chomitzky presents a similar picture in her study of facemasks with traditional Ukrainian embroidery techniques both in Ukraine and among the Ukrainian diaspora. Certainly, the masks themselves are designed for protection from the virus, but, as she documents, the addition of motifs from traditional embroidery gave them added benefit as a “protective talisman.” Just as the Bulgarian women shared their secrets about healing plants, these women used Editors’ Introduction FOLKLORICA 2020, Vol. XXIV xi natural elements, such as flowers, in their decorations to access the restorative power of the plants themselves. As in the Bulgarian situation, the masks, like other embroidered items, convey an important sense of identity about being Ukrainian, a pride in the cultural heritage and its preservation. Buying the masks also supported the community financially in a difficult time. Chomitzky’s data from both mask producers and wearers demonstrates the power of folklore to tap into various resonances of identity, often simultaneously: from politics to heritage (be it national, ethnic, or regional) to folk healing practices. Recognizing the performative function of material culture, whether Bulgarian food videos online or Ukrainian masks, is key to understanding the power of these messages to group members. Elena Boudovskaia’s material also centers on the intersection of politics— local, national, and, in some cases, international—and local identity among Rusyns in Ukraine. 3e narratives she collected from this region reveal first the persistence of pattern in narrative. COVID-19 stories were not novel or unique, but rather conform to established story types about death and illness in the village tradition. While Bulgarian and Ukrainian material culture served as protection from the virus, these narrators relied on protective language by avoiding speaking about the afterlife or about death itself. More importantly, as Boudovskaia shows, the stories convey an understanding of proper behavior in the village and in the family. 3e narratives serve as a means of negotiation for the tellers, who are coping with shifting village demographics, the vagaries of national politics— including the lack of concern for the average person, especially those in rural parts of the country—and personal and communal loss as a result of the pandemic. 3e stories allow a space both to criticize improper behavior and to reaffirm the power of local values and ways of life. Stories then open a window onto family and village practices, but Boudovskaia’s work also reveals how storytelling can reframe the conversation and create reality in and of itself. Dorian Jurić’s bards similarly have the power to establish a state of affairs in the world. In their chronicle songs about the pandemic, produced between March and May 2020, they presented a united front: conveying solidarity in the face of crisis. Despite holding different political views, these bards urged people to come together and join with the government and medical authorities to defeat the virus. 3ey drew on the martial characteristics of a rich epic tradition to describe the battle against the coronavirus. However, in interviews with the author, they revealed the complexity of their opinions, many of which were not conveyed in the songs themselves. Unlike Boudovskaia’s interlocutors, these men are in the public eye and, as the voice of the people, they walk a fine line. 3e bard, as a result, is bound to take the authorities to task for failing the people. However, expressing critical opinions about government actions during a pandemic may result in harm to others and threaten their social standing as defenders of the folk in the long run. Jurić demonstrates how these singers strove to balance these contradictory roles at a time of crisis in an effort to protect fellow citizens. Editors’ Introduction FOLKLORICA 2020, Vol. XXIV xii Iryna Voloshyna studies another sort of “defender of the folk” entirely. In the context of New York City, among the diaspora, she discovered that the popular alternative physician Anatoly Kashpirovsky had reemerged during the pandemic. In the context of a revival of the “Cold War” and a nostalgia for a lost socialist “golden age,” the 90s cult figure was once again receiving a great deal of attention in an online environment. He purported to have a cure for the virus and was willing to sell it. Voloshyna demonstrates how Kashpirovsky, despite his claims to be a scientist and medical doctor, draws upon the traditions of folk healing. His patients respond in kind, ascribing to him a kind of mystical power that goes well beyond that of the typical physician. A doctor who draws on both medical and vernacular expertise, as Ekaterina Belousova [1998] has shown, is particularly powerful in the post-socialist East Slavic cultural context. Kashpirovsky’s defense of the common folk, unlike the South Slavic bards, did not include defending them from possible harm from conspiracy theories about the virus. Rather, he tapped into rhetoric about the West’s goal to destroy Russia by creating the virus itself. While such rumors spread about China in the North American context, in the view of this “cold warrior” at least, the true enemy was America. He simultaneously capitalized on anxiety and dissatisfaction about the Russian government by challenging the safety of the Sputnik V vaccine. In other words, only he could be trusted to defend the people from the nefarious plans of the authorities. While alternative medicine may be the solution for Kashpirovosky’s adherents, J. Eugene Clay offers up another option for those facing the pandemic crisis: Russian Orthodoxy. In a profile of the apostate monk Sergii (Romanov), former abbot of the Ganina Iama monastery near Ekaterinburg, Clay explores how Sergii has used his extraordinary social standing to support anti-Western conspiracy theories supposedly intended to destroy Russia as well as the belief that Stalin was a secret Christian. Ultimately, his insubordination against church authorities in the face of COVID-19 restrictions on religious services resulted in his arrest by special forces and excommunication by the Russian Orthodox Church. While the pandemic is but a brief chapter in Sergii’s biography, Clay illustrates how a chain of conspiracy beliefs espoused by this conservative cleric parallels developments in Russia broadly and in the conservative wing of the Russian Orthodox Church in particular. Sergii’s path from a convicted murderer to a charismatic church leader (the subject of two popular documentaries with his own YouTube channel) and back to prisoner illustrates the power of folk narrative and vernacular belief. Legends served as the hallmark of Sergii’s personal philosophy, and he relied on them to capitalize on disaffection with the current state of affairs in Russia to enhance his own position. He ties those beliefs to faith in Russian Orthodoxy, encouraging both (secular) belief and ostensive behaviors on the part of the laity to engage in practices consonant with these stories, e.g., to persist in celebrating mass and taking communion throughout the pandemic. Despite his popularity, he finally overstepped in his conspiratorial response to the pandemic. 3is article reveals striking parallels to the development of conspiracy theories espoused by QAnon [cf. Bodner et al. 2020] and reminds us that the crisis Editors’ Introduction FOLKLORICA 2020, Vol. XXIV xiii of faith in institutions and the culture wars are far from restricted to North America. In that vein, the issue rounds out with a report by Natalie Kononenko on a web database compiled by members of the Laboratory for 3eoretical Folklore Studies at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow. She presents an overview of the materials on the site, both the texts themselves and the analyses offered by the team. 3is piece will be especially useful for those without Russian-language skills, but who want to trace textual variants of particular narratives in non-English contexts. While we have organized the articles based primarily on the genre of folklore they study (although, in some cases, the pieces are not limited to only one genre), there are several recurring themes that cross these genre (or, indeed, national) boundaries. Not surprisingly, in a pandemic context, questions of vernacular medicine come to the fore in several of the pieces. While Craycraft discusses how women shared knowledge of natural remedies with fellow citizens in Bulgaria, Voloshyna highlights the interaction of biomedicine and vernacular healing in her study of Anatoly Kashpirovsky. Although Kashpirovsky may have discovered an actual treatment for the virus, the aim of vernacular medicine is not always cure, but prevention and protection, a theme explored by Craycraft, Boudovskaia and Chomitzky. Kononenko provides examples of both treatments and prevention attested in the web database of the Laboratory for 3eoretical Folklore Studies. Prevention, of course, is not always against physical illness, but against spiritual threats or curses. Boudovskaia, in her discussion of euphemisms, and Clay, in his mention of the belief that communion could not infect the faithful, touch on this topic as well. Protection indeed is the common factor of the charismatic figures profiled in the articles by Clay, Jurić, and Voloshyna. 3ese powerful men, despite their vastly distinct social roles, tap into the human desire for security in the wake of a crisis through vernacular practice and oral folklore. In that vein, these men also reveal why citizens of these various nations feel so precarious in the first place. Certainly, the pandemic plays a role in the fear, but the underlying concerns center on institutional failures—be they the failures of governmental, medical, or religious institutions. 3ese same themes are echoed in the village narratives and material culture that Boudovskaia, Craycraft and Chomitzky discuss. 3is issue demonstrates clearly what folklorists already know and struggle to convey to those outside the field: the power of vernacular culture to provide solace and make sense of the world. In some cases, folklore holds the answer for us, be it in the form of a talismanic face mask or of a traditional song. Engaging with the material is enough to give people hope and restore a sense of order. In other cases, folklore gives voice to human concerns but provides little relief. Legends, rumors and conspiracy theories, in particular, grapple with the nature of reality and our anxiety about it. In many cases, though, they only exacerbate our concerns, rather than assuage them. Nevertheless, these narratives do not disappear, because they offer a space to debate these (often taboo) fears about our Editors’ Introduction FOLKLORICA 2020, Vol. XXIV xiv daily lives and social ills. All too clearly 2020 has revealed the power of folklore to those outside our field. While unfortunately many may not realize that fake news and bread baking are the purview of the discipline, they have paid much more attention to core material in folkloristics, both to bring comfort and to destabilize social order. Folklorists have long studied both aspects of vernacular culture and recognize both its power to harm and to heal. In that vein, this issue adds the voice of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian nations to the conversation. We hope it likewise demonstrates the importance of folk studies to an understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic not only in this region of the world, but across the globe. Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby, Editor Dorian Jurić, Guest Co-Editor BIBLIOGRAPHY Alvarez, Maribel. 2020. “Folklife in the Age of Pandemics,” Border Lore. Cited by https://borderlore.org/folklife-in-the-age-of-pandemics/. (consulted 21 January 2021). Anthropology of Children and youth Interest Group. 2021. American Anthropology Association. Cited by https://acyig.americananthro.org/2021/05/05/seeking-chapter-submissions- for-covid-play-academic-volume/. (consulted 3 July 2021). Arredy, James T. 2020. “China Rules Out Animal Market and Lab as Coronavirus Origin,” Ke Wall Street Journal. Cited by https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-rules-out-animal-market-and-lab-as- coronavirus-origin-11590517508. (consulted 10 December 2020). Astapova, Anastasiya, Onoriu Colăcel, Corneliu Pintilescu, and Tamás Scheibner, (eds.). 2021. Conspiracy Keories in Eastern Europe: Tropes and Trends 1st ed. London: Routledge. Astapova, Anastasiya, Eirikur Bergmann, Asbjørn Dyrendal, Annika Rabo, Kasper Grotle Rasmussen, Hulda 3órisdóttir, Andreas Önnerfors. 2021. Conspiracy Keories and the Nordic Countries. London: Routledge. Baeva Vihra, and Angelina Ilieva (eds.). 2021. Етнология и епидемии Социокултурни измерения на пандемията от COVID-19 [Ethnology and Epidemics: Sociocultural Dimensions of the COVID-19 Pandemic]. Sofia: издателство на БАН „Проф. Марин Дринов“. Belousova, Ekaterina. A. 1998. Белоусова, Екатерина А. “Наш малыш: Социализация новорожденного в современной городской культуре” [Our Kid: Socialization of the Newborn in Contemporary Urban Culture], Живая старина 2: 24-25. Editors’ Introduction FOLKLORICA 2020, Vol. XXIV xv Bock, Sheila. 2020. “Deliberate Infectors & Exotic Origins: 3e Folklore Behind COVID-19,” UNLV New Center. Cited by https://www.unlv.edu/news/article/deliberate-infectors-exotic-origins- folklore-behind-covid-19. (consulted 22 February 2021). Bodner, John, Wendy Welch, Ian Brodie, Anna Muldoon, Donal Leech, and Ashley Marshall. 2021. Covid-19 Conspiracy Keories: QAnon, 5G, the New World Order and Other Viral Ideas. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. Booth, William, Karla Adam, and Pamela Rolfe. 2020. “In fight against coronavirus, the world gives medical heroes a standing ovation,” Ke Washington Post. Cited by https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/clap-for- carers/2020/03/26/3d05eb9c-6f66-11ea-a156-0048b62cdb51_story.html. (consulted 28 March 2021). Borenstein, Eliot. 2019. Ke Plots Against Russia: Conspiracy and Fantasy after Socialism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Bridges, Ben, Ross Brillhard, and Diane E. Goldstein. Forthcoming. Behind the Mask: Vernacular Culture in the Time of COVID-19. Bloomington, IN: Trickster Press. CBC (Canadian Broadcast Corporation). 2020. “How this Anthropologist Found Inspiration and Quarantine Comfort in a 700-Year-Old Book,” Canadian Broadcast Corporation. Cited by https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/stories- are-soul-fire-1.5800701/how-this-anthropologist-found-inspiration-and- quarantine-comfort-in-a-700-year-old-book- 1.5801359?fbclid=IwAR2lf8mdWrHOk5fVE6p3Uo6YOo8_E3Wzr42BO SuXzg72A3-6Lfsnb9e0puw. (consulted 13 November 2020). Cork Folklore Project. 2021. “Chronicles of COVID-19,” Cork Folklore Project. Cited by https://corkfolklore.org/3ePeoplesArchiveofCOVID19/s/chronicles-of- covid-19-ireland-2020-beyond/page/home. (consulted 20 March 2021). Cucii din Branesti. 2021. “Unnamed image of Cucii with vaccines,” Facebook. Cited by https://www.facebook.com/CuciiDinBranesti/photos/pcb.37597736340763 20/3759772370743113. (consulted 17 March 2021). Davis, Wade. 2020. “3e Unraveling of America. Anthropologist Wade Davis on how COVID-19 signals the end of the American era,” Rolling Stone. Cited by https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/covid-19- end-of-american-era-wade-davis- 1038206/?fbclid=IwAR2YVZh3Fmft8ZWoV960rxPN4m607XdNpzRpCO 5-BVK-jKW1Ey1joo059bg. (consulted 6 August 2020). Deutsch, James. 2020. “3e Values—and Dangers—of Folklore during a Global Pandemic,” Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage. Cited by https://folklife.si.edu/magazine/values-dangers-of-folklore-global- pandemic. (consulted 6 August 2020). Editors’ Introduction FOLKLORICA 2020, Vol. XXIV xvi East Carolina University. 2020. “Coronavirus conspiracy theories are nothing new,” Ke Washington Daily News. Cited by https://www.thewashingtondailynews.com/2020/03/10/coronavirus- conspiracy-theories-are-nothing-new/. (consulted 2 February 2021). Euronews. 2020. “Screen shot from news story ‘Russia’s famous matryoshka dolls get a coronavirus makeover’,” Euronews. Cited by https://static.euronews.com/articles/stories/04/64/55/04/1440x810_cmsv2_ e8aeb8c3-2066-5df4-b0f4-8ecae2449af5-4645504.jpg. (consulted 31 August 2020). Findlen, Paula. 2020. “What Would Boccaccio Say About COVID-19?” Boston Review. Cited by http://bostonreview.net/arts-society/paula-findlen-what- would-boccaccio-say-about-covid-19. (consulted 24 April 2020). Fine, Gary Allen, and Bill Ellis. 2010. Ke Global Grapevine: Why Rumors of Terrorism, Immigration, and Trade Matter. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Foss, Katherine A. 2020. “Quarantine Won’t Be Forever, but Pandemic Humor is Timeless,” Zocalo Public Square. Cited by https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2020/07/27/pandemic-humor- timeless-quarantine-covid-1918-flu/ideas/essay/. (consulted 1 August 2020). Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and Punish. Ke Birth of the Prison. Transl. by A. Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books. Garamantas. 2020. “Diaries in the Time of Pandemic 2020-2021,” Garamantas.lv Digital Archives of Latvian Folklore. Cited by http://garamantas.lv/en/collection/1415829/Diaries-in-the-Time-of- Pandemic-2020-2021. (consulted 3 April 2021). Greenspan, Rachel E. 2021. “How Bill Gates became a favorite target of far-right conspiracy theorists,” Insider. Cited by https://www.insider.com/bill-gates- climate-change-block-sun-conspiracy-theory-fake-texas-snow-2021. (consulted 30 June 2021). Human Rights Watch. 2020. “Covid-19 Fueling Anti-Asian Racism and Xenophobia Worldwide,” Human Rights Watch. Cited by https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/12/covid-19-fueling-anti-asian-racism- and-xenophobia-worldwide. (consulted 30 June 2021). Jennings, Rebecca. 2020. “3is week in TikTok: When doctors and nurses go viral,” Vox. Cited by https://www.vox.com/the- goods/2020/4/21/21228378/tiktok-doctors-nurses-viral-videos. (consulted 19 June 2020). Kitta, Andrea. 2019. Ke Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore. Logan: Utah State University Press. Kitta, Andrea. 2020. “COVID-19 Gossip, Rumor, Legend, and Conspiracy 3eories,” YouTube. Cited by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=- x6gKUG6DTE. (consulted 2 February 2021). Editors’ Introduction FOLKLORICA 2020, Vol. XXIV xvii Klein, Jessica. 2020. “A Trove of Sad, Funny, and Familiar Stories from the 1918 Flu Pandemic,” Atlas Obscura. Cited by https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/letters-and-diaries-1918-flu- pandemic. (consulted 9 March 2021). Kramer, Jillian. 2021. “What you need to know about the COVID-19 lab-leak hypothesis,” National Geographic. Cited by https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/what-you-need-to- know-about-the-covid-19-lab-leak-hypothesis. (consulted 6 June 2021). Kungel, Rita. 2020. “Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’ in the Time of Covid 19,” Tuscan Trends. Cited by http://www.tuscantrends.com/boccaccios-decameron-in- the-time-of-covid-19/. (consulted 1 April 2020). Marcus, Millicent. 2020. “Reading the Decameron through the Lens of COVID- 19,” Ke Yale Review. Cited by https://yalereview.yale.edu/reading- decameron-through-lens-covid-19. (consulted 1 November 2020). McGinty, Meghan, and Nat Gyenes, eds. 2020. COVID-19. Misinformation Review 1 (3). Cited by https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/volume-issue/volume-1- issue-3/. (consulted 5 March 2021). New York Times. 2020. “3e Decameron Project,” Ke New York Times. Cited by https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/07/magazine/decameron- project-short-story-collection.html. (consulted 1 March 2021). OHA (Oral History Association). 2020. Remote Interviewing Resource Task Force. Oral History Association. Cited by https://www.oralhistory.org/remote-interviewing-resources/. (consulted 6 March 2021). Pennesi, Karen. 2021. “What Does a Pandemic Sound Like? 3e Emergence of COVID Verbal Art,” Anthropologica 63 (1). Cited by https://cas- sca.journals.uvic.ca/index.php/anthropologica/article/view/229/304. (consulted 10 May 2021). PMDPHoBAS (Professor Marin Drinov Publishing House of BAS) 2021. EBOOKS. Professor Marin Drinov Publishing House of BAS. Cited by https://press.bas.bg/en/eBooks-105/show-106(25). (consulted 2 April 2021). Radio 101. 2020. “I tak… Dobar dan” [Like that… Good day], Facebook. Cited by https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fww w.facebook.com%2Fradio101hr%2Fposts%2F3025617694215715. (consulted 1 August 2020). RPANEPA (3e Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration). 2020. “Энциклопедия коронавирусных слухов и фейков” [Encyclopedia of Coronavirus Rumors and Fakes], Российская академия народного хозяйства и государственной службы при Президенте Российской Федерации. Cited by Editors’ Introduction FOLKLORICA 2020, Vol. XXIV xviii https://nplus1.ru/material/2020/04/08/coronarumors. (consulted 15 March 2021). Rukść, Waldemar. 2021. “Healthy and Happy Easter” [Zdrowych i Wesołych Świąt Wielkanocnych]. Facebook. Cited by https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fww w.facebook.com%2Fwaldemar.ruksc%2Fposts%2F2908599439420561. (consulted 15 May 2021). Smyth, Gerry. 2021. “Perfect timing: an Irish academic’s sea shanty book boosted by a TikTok trend.” Ke Irish Times. Cited by: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/perfect-timing-an-irish- academic-s-sea-shanty-book-boosted-by-a-tiktok-trend-1.4516871. (consulted 27 March 2021). Spicer, André. 2020. “3e Decameron – the 14th-century Italian book that shows us how to survive coronavirus,” New Statesman. Cited by https://www.newstatesman.com/2020/03/coronavirus-survive-italy- wellbeing-stories-decameron. (consulted 10 March 2020). Sun, Jiumeng, Wan-Ting He, Lifang Wang, Alexander Lai, Xiang Ji, Xiaofeng Zhai, Gairu Li, Marc A. Suchard, Jin Tian, Jiyong Zhou, Michael Veit, and Shuo Su. 2020. “Covid-19: Epidemiology, Evolution, and Cross- Disciplinary Perspectives,” Trends in Molecular Medicine 26 (5): 483-95. Tangherlini, Timothy R., and Vwani Roychowdhury. 2020. “Covid Conspiracies: A Computational Approach to Rumor and Conspiracy in a Time of Pandemic,” Folklore Fellows Network 54: 3-11. Tangherlini, Timothy R., Shadi Shahsavari, Behnam Shahbazi, Ehsan Ebrahimzadeh, Vwani Roychowdhury. 2020. “An Automated Pipeline for the Discovery of Conspiracy 3eory Narrative Frameworks: Bridgewater, Pizzagate and Storytelling on the Web,” PLOS ONE 15 (6): e0233879. Cited by https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233879. (consulted 27 February 2021). 3urston, Timothy. 2019. “Andrea Kitta. 3e Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore. New Books in Folklore. Interview with Timothy 3urston,” New Books Network. Cited by https://newbooksnetwork.com/andrea-kitta-the-kiss-of-death-contagion- contamination-and-folklore-utah-state-up-2019/. (consulted 2 February 2021). UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). 2020. “Living heritage experiences in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Ke United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Cited by https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=Uq5PHbM5- kuwswIpVrERlPFwScS5u59LsaYAqLW4SGRUNzFHQjBNMUQ0RDN KSE5DSTc4TFIxOUJBQy4u. (consulted 19 January 2021). University of Aberdeen. 2020. “3e Lockdown Lore Collection Project,” Ke University of Aberdeen. Cited by Editors’ Introduction FOLKLORICA 2020, Vol. XXIV xix https://www.abdn.ac.uk/elphinstone/public-engagement/LockdownLore. (consulted 1 March 2021). UPC/USUP (University Press of Colorado & Utah State University Press). 2020. “3e Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore by Andrea Kitta,” University Press of Colorado & Utah State University Press. Cited by https://upcolorado.com/utah-state-university-press/item/3703-the-kiss- of-death. (consulted 1 March 2021). Walton, Jeremy F. 2020. “Four Days Quarantine in an Ankara Hospital, or, Disciplinary Power in the Time of Covid-19,” American Ethnologist, Pandemic Diaries: Making Sense of Kings. Cited by https://americanethnologist.org/features/pandemic-diaries/making-sense- of-things/four-days-quarantine-in-an-ankara-hospital-or-disciplinary- power-in-the-time-of-covid-19. (consulted 9 March 2021). WHO (World Health Organization). 2020. “WHO Director-General’s opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 – 11 March 2020,” World Health Organization. Cited by https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening- remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---11-march-2020. (consulted 30 November 2020).