Oral Tradition Volume 12, Number 2October 1997

About the Authors

Catherine S. Quick

Presently Assistant Professor of English at Stephen F. Austin State University, Catherine S. Quick teaches rhetoric and composition, world literature, and folklore. She has published “Jezebel’s Last Laugh: The Rhetoric of Wicked Women” in Women and Language and has also carried out extensive research on the role of oral traditions in the composition of the synoptic gospels.

Chao Gejin

Chao Gejin (Chogjin) serves as Senior Researcher and Deputy Director of the Institute of Ethnic Literature at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, as well as a professor at the CASS Graduate School. He specializes in Mongolian oral epic and has conducted fieldwork in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. His many essays and articles have appeared in a wide spectrum of journals. He recently published Oral Poetics: Formulaic Diction of Arimpil’s Jangar Singing (2000) and a Chinese translation (2000) of John Miles Foley’s The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology.

Walter Feldman

Walter Feldman, of the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, teaches Turkish language and culture and also serves as Coordinator of Turkic Programs. He has contributed articles to such journals as Asian Music, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Yearbook for Traditional Music, and Ethnomusicology.

Leslie Stratyner

Leslie Stratyner is Assistant Professor of English at Mississippi University for Women. Among her publications are “By the Banks of the Acheron: T. S. Eliot, Dante, and ‘The Hollow Men’” and “pe us as beagas geaf: Sauron and the Perversion of Anglo-Saxon Ethos.”

Vaira Vikis-Freibergs

Vaira Vikis-Freibergs, Professor of Psychology at the Université de Montréal, is the editor of Linguistics and Poetics of Latvian Folk Songs. She has also contributed articles to the Journal of Baltic Studies, The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet Literature, and the Scandinavian Yearbook of Folklore.

Thomas A. Hale

Thomas A. Hale holds the Liberal Arts Professorship in African, French, and Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University. He studies West African epic and griots, both of which are addressed in his Griots and Griottes: Masters of Words and Music (1998).