Oral Tradition Volume 27, Number 2October 2012
About the Authors
Nina E. Livesey
Nina E. Livesey is Assistant Professor of Early Christianity at the University of Oklahoma. She is an active member of Westar Institute, formerly known as the Jesus Seminar. She regularly teaches courses on biblical literature, the apostle Paul, women and religion, and religion and film. Her primary interest being early Jewish-Christian relations, she has authored Circumcision as a Malleable Symbol (2011) in addition to several articles on the subject of early Christian literature.
Carole Pegg
Carole Pegg (Faculty of Music and the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit [MIASU], University of Cambridge, England) is an anthropologist who specializes in music and is the author of Mongolian Music, Dance, and Oral Narrative: Performing Diverse Identities (2001). Since 2002, she has been researching the music, spiritual beliefs, and practices of the indigenous peoples of the Altai-Sayan Mountains in southern Siberia.
Elizaveta Yamaeva
Elizaveta Yamaeva (Gorno-Altaisk State University, Republic of Altai, Russian Federation) is a folklorist who specializes in Altaian myths, epics, and spiritual practices. She is the author of “Cults and Beliefs of Burkhanism in the Context of the Religious Heritage of Uigur-Manichaeans,” which appeared in the Scientific Bulletin of Gorno-Altaisk State University. She is currently interested in non-verbal text, particularly with a focus on the connections between ancient rock art and folklore.
Margaret Field
Margaret Field is a Professor of American Indian Studies at San Diego State University. Her research interests include language socialization, language ideology, and the sociolinguistics and pragmatics of American Indian languages. Her recent publications include Native American Language Ideologies: Language Beliefs, Practices, and Struggles in Indian Country, co-edited with Paul Kroskrity (2009); “Kumeyaay Stories: Bridges Between the Oral Tradition and Contemporary Classroom Practice” in Telling Stories in the Face of Danger (2011); and “Kumeyaay Language Variation, Group Identity, and the Land” in the Journal of American Linguistics (2012).
Elizabeth Wickett
Elizabeth Wickett is a folklorist, writer, and documentary filmmaker, specializing in the study of oral traditions, folk epics, and the belief systems of Upper Egypt and, more recently, of Rajasthan. Her recent publications include Seers, Saints, and Sinners (2012), and she has also produced a series of films and monographs on the art and performance traditions of Jaisalmer, including Singing on Broken Ground, which focuses on the Jogi Nath Kalbelia of Rajasthan, and Picassos of the Thar, which explores the embroidered tapestries of Sindhi Muslim women.
Jan Jansen
Jan Jansen is a Lecturer at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology, Leiden University. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Mali since 1988 and has published ethnographic studies on craftsmen (bards, blacksmiths, and divination experts) as well as critical historical work on the Mali Empire. Additionally, he has edited several bilingual text editions of oral traditions. Since 2010 he has been the Managing Editor of History in Africa: A Journal of Method.
Nesrin Kalyoncu
Nesrin Kalyoncu obtained her bachelor’s degree from the Gazi University and her masters degree from the Abant İzzet Baysal University (AİBU) in Turkey. In 2001, she completed her doctorate in Music Pedagogy with a secondary emphasis in Musicology and Education Sciences at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. Currently, she is head of the Department for Fine Arts Education at AİBÜ where she also works in the Music Education Division. She has numerous publications in various subject areas of Music Pedagogy and has served since 2011 as an elected board member of the European Association for Music in Schools (EAS).
Cemal Özata
Cemal Özata graduated from the Music Education Department of Gazi University in 2002. He is currently a Ph.D. student at Abant İzzet Baysal University (AİBÜ), where he obtained his masters degree in 2007. As a music teacher, he taught for several years in Bolu and has been working for six years in Çankırı Selahattin İnal Fine Arts High School. His research focuses on Turkish folk music and traditional music in oral culture. Additionally, he teaches and conducts Turkish folk music and Bağlama ensembles.
John Miles Foley
The late John Miles Foley was a specialist in the study of the world’s oral traditions. He wrote with particular emphasis on ancient Greek, medieval English, and South Slavic. In 1986 he founded the journal Oral Tradition, and as architect-navigator of the Pathways Project, his last book Oral Tradition and the Internet: Pathways of the Mind was published in 2012 (University of Illinois Press). The body of his work is widely recognized as one of the most influential contributions to the study of the world’s oral traditions. Further information is available at his portal (http://johnmilesfoley.org/portal/Welcome.html).
Chao Gejin
Chao Gejin (Chogjin) is Senior Researcher and Director of the Institute of Ethnic Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. His research interests cover folkloristics, oral tradition, intangible cultural heritage, and Chinese ethnic minorities’ literatures, especially oral epics. His publications include The Heroic Songs of the Past: Fieldnotes on the Oirat Mongolian Epic Tradition (2004) and Oral Poetics: Formulaic Diction of Arimpi’s Jangar Singing (2000), as well as numerous papers.
