Oral Tradition Volume 20, Number 2

About the Authors

Ruth Finnegan

Ruth Finnegan FBA is Visiting Research Professor and Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University (UK), and the author of many works concerned with orality, literacy, and communication. Her books include Limba Stories and Story-Telling (1967), Oral Literature in Africa (1970), Oral Poetry (1977, rpt. 1992), Orality and Literacy (1988), The Hidden Musicians (1989), Oral Traditions and the Verbal Arts (1992), South Pacific Oral Traditions (jt ed., 1995), Tales of the City (1998), Communicating: The Multiple Modes of Human Interconnection (2002).

Andrew Gerstle

C. Andrew Gerstle is Professor of Japanese Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Publications include Kabuki Heroes and the Osaka Stage: 1780-1830 (2005), Chikamatsu: Five Late Plays (2001), Theatre as Music: the Bunraku Play ‘Mt. Imo and Mt. Se (1990, co-authored), Eighteenth Century Japan (1989, ed.), and Circles of Fantasy: Convention in the Plays of Chikamatsu (1986).

Haruo Shirane

Haruo Shirane is Shinchō Professor of Japanese Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of The Bridge of Dreams: A Poetics of The Tale of Genji (1987), Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Bashō (1997), and Classical Japanese: A Grammar (2005). He is also editor of Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology (2002) and Inventing the Classics: Canon Formation, National Identity, and Japanese Literature (2001).

John Miles Foley

John Miles Foley is a specialist in the world’s oral traditions, with particular emphasis on the ancient Greek, medieval English, and contemporary South Slavic traditions. He serves as W. H. Byler Distinguished Chair in the Humanities, as Curators’ Professor of Classical Studies and English, and as the founding Director of the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition (www.oraltradition.org, 1986-) at the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he edits the journal Oral Tradition (now online and open-access at http://journal.oraltradition.org) and two series of books. He is also founding Director of the Center for eResearch (www.e-researchcenter.org, 2004-), which fosters cross-disciplinary internet-related research, at the same institution. His major publications include The Theory of Oral Composition (1988); Traditional Oral Epic (1990); Immanent Art (1991); The Singer of Tales in Performance (1995); Teaching Oral Traditions (1998); Homer’s Traditional Art (1999); How To Read an Oral Poem (2002), which is complemented by the website www.oraltradition.org/hrop; an edition-translation of The Wedding of Mustajbey’s Son Bećirbey (eEdition at http://oraltradition.org/zbm); and A Companion to Ancient Epic (2005); as well as approximately 160 scholarly articles. His last two books have both been awarded the distinction of Outstanding Academic Title from Choice magazine. Foley has given more than 250 invited lectures in China, India, Russia, Mongolia, Japan, various countries in Africa and Europe, and the United States. He has received grants and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Program, the Mellon Foundation, and other institutions, and is a fellow of the Finnish Folklore Society and the American Folklore Society. He can be reached at FoleyJ@missouri.edu.

Karen Barber

Karin Barber is Professor of African Cultural Anthropology at the Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham. She has researched extensively on Yoruba oral and popular genres, and on African cultures more widely. Her most recent book was The Generation of Plays: Yoruba Popular Life in Theatre (2000).

Martin Orwin

Martin Orwin is Lecturer in Somali and Amharic at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. His research interests lie in the field of language use in poetry, particularly meter. He is also involved in the translation of Somali and Amharic poetry into English.

James Burns

James Burns is Assistant Professor of Music (Ethnomusicology) at Binghamton University. His research spans the music, languages, religions, and literatures of Africa and the Diaspora. He has conducted over five years of ongoing fieldwork in Ghana, Togo, and Benin with Ewe-Fon, Akan, and Dagbamba (Dagomba) ethnic groups. He has compiled a CD of Ewe dance-drumming entitled Ewe Drumming from Ghana: “The Soup which is Sweet Draws the Chairs in Closer” (2005) and is himself a performer of African and Afro-Caribbean traditional music.

Wilt Idema

Wilt L. Idema obtained his Ph.D. at Leiden University (Netherlands) in 1974, and has published widely, both in Dutch and in English, on traditional Chinese drama, vernacular fiction, and storytelling. Since 2000 he has taught as Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard. His most recent publications include The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China (with Beata Grant; 2004), and Boeddha, hemel en hel. Boeddhisistische verhalen uit Dunhuang (2004).

Andrew Lo

Andrew Lo is Senior Lecturer in Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. His research interests are Chinese literature of the Ming-Qing periods and the cultural life of Chinese literati, especially games. Recent publications include articles on the history of various Chinese games in Asian Games: The Art of Contest (2004, ed. by Colin Mackenzie and Irving Finkel).