Oral Tradition Volume 9, Number 2October 1994

About the Authors

Susan Slyomovics

Susan Slyomovics, who teaches in the Comparative Literature Program at Brown University, has carried on extensive fieldwork on Arabic oral performances in the Middle East. She is the author of The Merchant of Art: An Egyptian Hilali Oral Epic Poet in Performance (1987).

Joseph Russo

A Homerist who is also firmly grounded in folklore, especially in the study of Greek proverbs, Joseph Russo serves as Professor of Classics at Haverford College. His many significant contributions include joint editorship of the recent commentary on the Odyssey, published in both Italian and English, and an extensive series of articles elaborating the effect of oral tradition on our understanding of Homeric poetics.

Bruce A. Rosenberg

Professor of American Civilization at Brown University, Bruce Rosenberg has long been a significant force at the intersection of folklore and literature, particularly in medieval studies. His article on Leon Forrest stems from a deep interest in African American oral traditions and folk-preaching, as attested for example by his book Can These Bones Live? (1987).

Pamela Ritch

Richard Bauman

Richard Bauman is Distinguished Professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology and Director of the Folklore Institute at Indiana University, Bloomington. His research centers on oral poetics, genre, and performance. Among his recent publications are Voices of Modernity (2003, with Charles L. Briggs) and A World of Others’ Words (2004).

John D. Niles

John D. Niles is Nancy C. Hoefs Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is a specialist in Beowulf and other Old English poetry, and his most recent book is Homo Narrans (1999).

Anne Klein

Professor of Asian Religions at Rice University, Anne Klein researches Indo-Tibetan Buddhist thought and practice as well as comparative and crosscultural work on women and Buddhism. The second edition of her Knowledge and Liberation: Tibetan Buddhist Epistemology (1986) was published in 1999.

Dell Hymes

Dell Hymes, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Virginia, has pioneered the study of ethnopoetics. His numerous and important publications include “In vain I tried to tell you”: Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics (1981), as well as essays in journals and collections ranging from anthropology and linguistics through Native American literature and culture.

A. Nicholas Doane

Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, A. Nicholas Doane specializes in Anglo-Saxon. In addition to the standard editions of the Genesis A and Genesis B poems, he has recently co-edited, with Carol Braun Pasternack, a collection of essays entitled Vox intexta: Orality and Textuality in the Middle Ages (1991).

Teresa Catarella

Teresa Catarella received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego and is associated with the Seminario Menéndez Pidal. Her main interests are the Hispanic and European epic and ballad, and her most recent publication is El romancero gitanoandaluz de Juan José Niño (1993).