Oral Tradition Volume 24, Number 1March 2009
About the Authors
Paulu Zedda
Paulu Zedda is an improvisational poet or cantadori, according to the south Sardinian tradition of mutetu longu. He is also professore a contratto of the musical ethnology of Sardinia at the University of Cagliari. Zedda has published several studies on oral traditional poetry in Sardinia, including Sa Cantada: I Poeti Improvvisatori; Unu de Danimarca benit a carculai: Il mondo poetico di Ortacesus nelle registrazioni e negli studi di Andreas Fridolin Weis Bentzon tra il 1957 e il 1962; and “La cantada campidanese a fini,” in Su cantu de sei in Sardinnia; L’arte dei mutetus.
David F. Elmer
David F. Elmer is Professor of the Classics at Harvard University and Associate Curator of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature. His research focuses on ancient Greek epic, especially the Homeric poems; the ancient Greek and Roman novels; and the oral epic traditions of the former Yugoslavia. He is the author of The Poetics of Consent: Collective Decision Making and the Iliad (2013), and his articles have appeared in Classical Antiquity, Classical Philology, Transactions of the American Philological Society, the Journal of American Folklore, and Oral Tradition.
Valentina Pagliai
Valentina Pagliai is currently a Fellow at the Remarque Institute of New York University. She has conducted research on verbal duels in Italy as well as on racialization and discourse in Europe. Her publications include “Poetic Dialogues: Performance and Politics in the Tuscan Contrasto” (Ethnology, 2002), “Lands I Came to Sing: Negotiating Identities and Places in the Tuscan Contrasto” (Sociolinguistics: The Essential Readings, 2003), and “Singing Gender: Contested Discourses of Womanhood in Tuscan-Italian Verbal Art,” co-authored with B. Bocast (Pragmatics, 2005).
Venla Sykäri
Venla Sykäri is a Ph.D. candidate in folklore studies at the University of Helsinki. Over the last ten years, she has been engaged in long-term field research on the contemporary oral poetry in Crete, and is currently preparing a comprehensive presentation of the local tradition of rhyming couplets for her dissertation. The theoretical objective of her work is to show how this kind of dialogic oral tradition brings improvisation and individual creativity to the heart of the verbal art.
John Eastlake
John Eastlake completed his Ph.D. in Irish Studies at the Centre for Irish Studies, National University of Ireland, Galway in 2008. His thesis consisted of a comparative study of Irish and Native American autobiography, proposing a new, cross-cultural, critical theory and method of reading Native autobiography. He currently teaches Irish Studies in Galway, Ireland, and has just completed a co-edited volume of essays, Anáil an Bhéil Bheo: Orality and Modern Irish Culture.
Amadu Wurie Khan
Amadu Wurie Khan is conducting post-graduate work at the Department of Social Policy, University of Edinburgh, where he is currently researching the narratives of citizenship of asylum-seekers and refugees and the media in the United Kingdom. Previously he has undertaken extensive anthropological research on oral art forms among the Themne and Mende ethnic groups in Sierra Leone. He has also taught courses on African oral culture and literature, and English and Commonwealth written literatures. His academic study in oral performance has been further enhanced by his work as a storyteller, and he performs for audiences across the United Kingdom. More information is available at a.w.khan@sms.ed.ac.uk
Asier Barandiaran
Asier Barandiaran received his B.A. in Basque philology from the University of Deusto (Bilbao, Spain). In 2002 he was awarded a doctorate by the University of the Basque Country. Since 1995 he has served as Assistant Professor of the Basque Language and Literature at the University of Navarre. Barandiaran has published articles and books on Basque orality, particularly on bertsolaritza, as well as Basque rhetoric in various academic journals, including Fontes Linguae Vasconum, Oralia, and Egan.
Sam Tsang
Sam Tsang received his D.Phil. in Biblical Studies from Sheffield University and is currently associate professor of New Testament and Preaching in Hong Kong Baptist Theological Seminary, a Chinese-speaking seminary largely serving the Diaspora Chinese community. His dissertation on Paul’s metaphors in Galatians, “From Slaves to Sons,” was published in 2005. His research interests range over the areas of orality in the ancient world, social world(s) of the New Testament, Pauline studies, Asian-American Christianity, and Sino-theology. He has written nearly twenty books in Chinese on both the Old and New Testaments.
Bruno Alonso
Bruno Alonso is currently completing a degree in psychology at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. His research interests include educational psychology, identity theory, and psychotherapy. He is also a professional pop-music composer and producer.
Marta Morgade
Marta Morgade is Professor of Educational and Developmental Psychology at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Her research interests are semiotic theory, C. S. Peirce, and the history of psychology. Her articles have appeared in journals such as Anthropos, Estudios de Psicología, and Revista de Historia de la Psicología. More information about her work can be found at http://www.morgade.es
David Poveda
David Poveda is Professor of Educational and Developmental Psychology at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He is interested in children’s language and literacy practices across a variety of social contexts. He has published articles in journals such as Language in Society, Journal of Folklore Research, Pragmatics, and Text. More information and publications can be found at http://www.uam.es/david.poveda
Ross Bender
Ross Bender received a Ph.D. in pre-modern Japanese history from Columbia University in 1980 and is currently an independent scholar in Philadelphia. His research focuses on the history and religion of ancient Japan. His forthcoming publications include “Changing the Calendar: Royal Political Theology and the Suppression of the Tachibana Naramaro Conspiracy” in the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies.
