Mariya Lesiv is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Her research interests include folklore and politics, belief and religious folklife, and diaspora studies. Lesiv’s book, The Return of Ancestral Gods: Modern Ukrainian Paganism as an Alternative Vision for a Nation, was published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2013. She has also contributed articles to edited volumes and academic journals, including Anthropologica, Journal of American Folklore, Ethnologies, Folklorica, and Western Folklore.
She is a recipient of both the Insight Development Grant and the Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Her most recent funding supports the project “Trauma and Heritage: Ukrainian War Migrants in the Host-Region of Newfoundland.”
Lesiv served as President of the Folklore Studies Association of Canada / l'Association canadienne d'ethnologie et de folklore (2021–2022), and as President of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association (2020–2024).

Abstract:

Folklore of Anger in the Precarity of War: Humble Theory and the Unhumble Vernacular
“Humble theory” defines the work of many Western folklorists, including their choices of research topics and critical perspectives. These choices often highlight the voices of marginalized individuals and groups – voices that many folklorists are inspired by, align with, or advocate for. This trend largely reflects the discipline’s growing commitment to equality, inclusivity, social justice and the larger ideals of positivity and “niceness.” Are Western theoretical frameworks developed in contexts of relative social stability, security, and peace applicable to the situations of war, related rupture, and the daily precarity of life and death? Drawing from my recent individual and collaborative work (Lesiv 2021; Howard and Lesiv 2025), I will engage with this question while exploring creative responses by Ukrainians to Russia’s full-scale invasion, particularly focusing on expressions that are rooted in traditional curses.
Western folkloristic perspectives that might place such folklore as “Russians, may you all die like dogs!” in the category of unhumble manifestations of aggression, anger, and hate speech, fail to understand many meaningful nuances. However, if approached through the lens of humble theory (with associated empathy and attention to insider voices on the ground), while avoiding the biases of Western ideals, such expressions reveal vernacular responses to the subtle dynamics of Russian systemic vernacular imperialism. This phenomenon – whose formation trajectories resemble those of systemic racism – remains largely invisible to outsiders but fuels Russian aggression. Understanding systemic vernacular imperialism has significant implications for decolonization processes in regions historically dominated by Russia and for related regional studies.