Oral Tradition: History & Narrative ((3 Credits))

Catalog description

For most people, it comes as a considerable surprise that writing and texts, the stuff and matter of the modern educational enterprise comprise relatively recent inventions in the overall span of the our species history, the last week of December were we to put them on an annual calendar as John Miles Foley suggests. The rise of studies outside the mainstream of Euro-centric male dominance in the last half century of historical studies has occurred in no small part due to the understanding that oral traditions have been held the history for by far the largest numbers of people of our globe: African, Native American, Pacific peoples, African American, Hispanic, women, and so on, while studies in narrative traditions, lately in writing, have shown a strong oral foundation, even for classics like the Homeric epics and the Bible. Exploring oral history and traditional narrative along with the performance – for orality presumes performance – will provide the substance of this course. This course was previously LIB-640542.