The World Oral Literature Project is an urgent global initiative to document and make accessible endangered oral literatures before they disappear without record. Directed by Dr Mark Turin and affiliated to the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the project began in January 2009.
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Primary objective
For many communities around the world, the transmission of oral literature from one generation to the next lies at the heart of cultural practice. These creative works—which include ritual texts, curative chants, epic poems, musical genres, folk tales, creation tales, songs, myths, legends, word games, life histories or historical narratives—are increasingly endangered. Globalisation and rapid socio-economic change exert complex pressures on smaller communities, often eroding expressive diversity and transforming culture through assimilation to more dominant ways of life. As vehicles for the transmission of unique cultural knowledge, local languages encode oral traditions that become threatened when elders die and livelihoods are disrupted. Of the world’s over 6,000 living languages, around half will cease to be used as spoken vernaculars by the end of this century.
The World Oral Literature Project has been established to support local communities and committed fieldworkers engaged in the collection and preservation of oral literature by providing funding for original research, alongside training in fieldwork and digital archiving methods.
Work underway
The first two funded projects have been successfully completed, and four other projects have been awarded grants by the Review Board for fieldwork to be conducted later this year.
Board members
The Executive Board of the World Oral Literature Project is chaired by Professor Alan Macfarlane, FBA. Board members include Charity Appell McNabb, Dr Laura P. Appell-Warren, Professor Amity A. Doolittle, Sir Charles Chadwyck-Healey, Stefan Kosciuszko and Professor Nicholas Thomas. The World Oral Literature Project Advisory Board is an international network of experts who have agreed to give the Executive Board meaningful help on a regular basis in many different areas for an initial term of three years. Members do not have voting authority, nor do they bear legal fiduciary responsibility.
2009 Workshop
On 15-16 December 2009, the World Oral Literature Project held its first annual workshop, with a focus on Asia and the Pacific, at CRASSH, University of Cambridge. It brought together established scholars, early career researchers and graduate students with indigenous researchers, museum curators, archivists and audio-visual experts to discuss strategies for collecting, recording, preserving and disseminating oral literatures and endangered narrative traditions. To see the workshop report, click here
Press coverage
Between 25 and 27 August, 2009, the World Oral Literature Project received widespread international media coverage, in the Guardian, the MailOnline, the Telegraph, the Irish Examiner, La Jornada, Cambridge News, TeleText, Yahoo, AFP, Liverpool Daily Post, ResourceShelf, and Vesti. Radio interviews on 25 August with BBC Radio Ulster: Talk Back (5.7 MB, MP3 file), and on 26 August with BBC Radio Wales: Good Morning Wales (2.5 MB, MP3 file) and BBC Radio Guernsey: Gary Burgess (4.7 MB, MP3 file). The University of Cambridge Office of External Affairs and Communications released a press statement about the project on 27 August 2009.
See also
External links
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