Archiving Orality and Connecting with Communities: World Oral Literature Project 2010 Workshop

Description

Conveners

Dr Mark Turin and Imogen Gunn (World Oral Literature Project, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge)

 

 

This workshop explores key issues around the dissemination of oral literature through traditional and digital media. Funding agencies, including our own Supplemental Grants Programme, now encourage fieldworkers to return copies of their work to source communities, in addition to requiring researchers to deposit their collections in institutional repositories. But thanks to ever greater digital connectivity, wider internet access and affordable multimedia recording technologies, the locus of dissemination and engagement has grown beyond that of researcher and research subject to include a diverse constituency of global users, such as migrant workers, indigenous scholars, policymakers and journalists, to name but a few.

Building on discussions around orality and textuality, presenters will discuss some of the following issues:

·      What kinds of political repercussions may result from studying marginalized languages or from working with the custodians of endangered oral traditions?

·      How can online tools help ensure responsible access to sensitive cultural materials?

·      Who should control decisions over how digitized heritage material is to be accessed, curated and understood?

·      How can researchers remain true to the fluidity of performance over time and avoid fossilization in the creation of their digital documents?

·      When archives become primary sites for interaction and discussion rather than static repositories of heritage data, how do relationships between collections and their users change?

We welcome ethnographers, field linguists, community activists, curators, archivists, librarians and our project's own grantees to exchange ideas at this second workshop.

Programme and Registration

Please use the links at the right hand side of the page to view the provisional programme and to book online.  The standard fee is £36 with a reduced fee of £18 for students (includes lunch and refreshments).  The deadline for booking is Monday 6 December 2010. 

The workshop convenors are grateful to CRASSH, the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit (MIASU) and the Department of Social Anthropology for providing logistical and financial support, and for the cooperation of the new NWO Multimedia Research and Documentation of African Oral Genres network.

 

 

   

 

 

Administrative assistance: Michelle Maciejewska (CRASSH)