On NOVEMBER 26 the MACI (Municipal Autonomous Cultural Institution) of the Architectural and Ethnographic Museum "Shchelokovsky Khutor (Farm)" and the Higher School of Economics held a seminar dedicated to the study of the problem of the miraculous in Nizhny Novgorod folklore "Curiouser and curiouser ..."
The workshop-collaboration took place on the territory of the Architectural and Ethnographic Museum.Organizers of the seminar were : Lyapaeva Olka Nikolaevna — Head of the scientific and educational department; and Merkulova Edita Nikolaevna - Academic Supervisor of the Master's degree program, and second-year students of the Master's program Applied Linguistics and Text Analytics.
Girfanov Rayyan (second –year master student) made a presentation "Evil spirits in the genre of bylichka" (Based on ethnographic materials from the south of the Nizhny Novgorod region); and Gleb Vorozhtsov and Mikhailova Valeria presented a report on “The concept of a “Christian miracle” in the legends of the Diveevsky nunnery”. Master's students demonstrated how computer tools can be used to analyze ethnographic material. Museum staff Olga Ivanovna Alexandrova, senior researcher, and Maxim Ilyich Olyunin, master of anthropology at the Russian State University for the Humanities, also museum employee, spoke about the changes in the tradition of the miraculous. The museum staff also shared with students information about how ethnographic material is collected in rather closed communities; demonstrated the performance of the bylichki of the Nizhny Novgorod region, reproducing the characteristic phonetic features of each settlement. The seminar was held in an atmosphere of warmth and interest and was considered useful for both parties. It was decided to continue cooperation between the MAUK of the Shchelokovsky Khutor Architectural and Ethnographic Museum-Reserve and the Master's Program in Applied Linguistics and Text Analytics of the National Research University Higher School of Economics.