Special Issues of the “Folk Art and Ethnology” Journal, Dedicated to Foreign Ethnology – New Experience of Scientific Cooperation

The article is dedicated to one of the areas of international inter-academic cooperation of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, namely the preparation and publication of foreign special issues in Ethnography and Folkloristics of the «Folk Art and Ethnography» (now it is «Folk Art and Ethnology») Journal in the 21st century. The director of the IASFE, academician Hanna Skrypnyk has become the initiator of the project. Its implementation has been carried out by two scientific centers of the Institute – Ukrainian and Foreign Folkloristics Department along with Ukrainian Ethnological Center Department. The experience of preparing these joint editions with the participation of foreign scholars has contributed to expanding the horizons of Ukrainian humanities through the representation of the latest, relevant issues and terminological components within separate sections of translated materials by researchers from different countries. Various studies from many European countries as well as Israel, the USA, Canada and Japan have been submitted in Ukrainian translation in 16 special issues for the first time. In 2010 these materials have been included into the fundamental two-volume edition of the IASFE «Modern Foreign Ethnology: Anthology» (Hanna Skrypnyk is editor-in-chief). The individual special issues are described in details, the first of which are Hungarian, French and Israeli, as well as Polish, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Turkish and Serbian, Croatian, their topics and problems, authors and coordinators, issues of preparation and design, translation, presentation, etc. The implementation of the project on special issues of the journal is a significant achievement of Ukrainian science, as it emphasizes attention to intangible cultural heritage as a factor of national and cultural identity, and at the same time testifies to the anthropocentric orientation of modern humanities and a modern approach to the analysis of folklore text. The special issues considered may be necessary and interesting not only for scientists, but also to wide cultural circles, promote intercultural communication and contacts between countries, and the involvement of Ukrainian science in Ukraine’s European integration.