Research, Training & Collaboration : Publications

Occasional Papers

In June 2010, the project launched its Occasional Paper series with the publication of Faroese skjaldur: An endangered oral tradition of the North Atlantic by Dr Stephen Pax Leonard, a Research Fellow at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge. Click here to download the PDF file (980 kb), or here to read the abstract and view the record on DSpace.

The Occasional Paper series was established to support the immediate dissemination of research findings and methodological considerations in the collection of oral literature. A longer paper which will serve as a practical introduction to ethnographic film making is in production and other contributions are under review. Hosted online as a free download in PDF format, and available through a print-on-demand service, these papers will allow scholars and local researchers to disseminate data sets and analyses through a streamlined peer-review process. Published by the World Oral Literature Project, the series is broad in scope and not limited to grantees. We welcome expressions of interest from any researcher seeking to publish their work, by email to Dr Mark Turin at mt10003@cam.ac.uk.

Special Issue of Language Documentation and Description

Language Documentation and Description is the Working Papers series of the Endangered Languages Academic Programme (ELAP) at SOAS. The series editor, Peter Austin, has proposed that staff at the World Oral Literature Project guest edit a special issue of the journal based on presentations held at our workshop in December 2009. We are delighted by this partnership, and look forward to seeing the issue to press in 2010.

Oral Literature Corpus

The World Oral Literature Project will support the establishment of an Oral Literature Corpus to preserve and promote the oral literatures of indigenous people by publishing materials on endangered traditions in innovative ways. Lying at the intersection of anthropology and linguistics, the study of oral genres is an exciting and developing field, but one with few publishing outlets. Until recently, prohibitive publishing costs made the dissemination of such unique literary traditions unthinkable, but with print-on-demand technology combined with online delivery of multimedia content, it is possible for oral literatures to reach a wider audience. While there is a growing community of scholars involved in the documentation of traditional oral literatures and ethnolinguistic practices, no up-to-date handbook of methodologies for the collection and analysis of such narratives exists. We would like to solicit contributions for a handbook dealing with field techniques and post-field analysis to support researchers engaged in oral literature collection and documentation projects. The World Oral Literature Project is committed to supporting the publication and dissemination of transcribed narrative works which have been collected, analysed and glossed by ethnographers, field linguists or local researchers. The project team is in advanced discussions with the Cambridge-based Open Book Publishers with a view to a establishing a series.