FACULTY

Professor Joseph Nagy (English)

Professor Timothy Tangherlini (Scandinavian/EALC)

COURSES

Cross-listed between English and Scandinavian, these courses will be taught by Professors Nagy and Tangherlini. Qualified graduate students from other departments as well as undergraduates will be encouraged to enroll.

New courses on oral tradition studies to be introduced in 2002-2003 include:

English M205A/Scandinavian M271, Study of Oral Tradition

English M205B/Scandinavian M272 , Collecting Oral Tradition

English M205C/Scandinavian M273, Seminar in Oral Tradition Studies

** NEW COURSE IN SPRING '02 **

East Asian 281A-B:
Field Methods for the Study of
East Asian Oral Traditions

Course Objectives: The course describes and evaluates the various modern approaches to collecting and documenting oral tradition as text, performance, and socio-cultural event. It also provides students with "hands-on" experience in fieldwork and archiving methods. Approaches ranging from written transcription and textualization to audio and video presentation are to be considered. Other issues to be covered include the relationship between collector and tradition-bearer, ethical considerations in fieldwork, the role of the Instructional Review Board for the protection of human subjects, the recording of linguistic and meta-linguistic aspects of oral tradition, strategies for preserving the "dynamic" of oral tradition, and the complex relations among text, performance, and literature. Students in the course are required to develop and carry out a project in collecting oral tradition. Work during the quarter consists in both the study of the theory of fieldwork as well as short, directed fieldwork projects, highlighting particular concerns in the collection and archiving of recorded field materials.

Course Requirements: All students will be required to attend all seminar sessions, and actively take part in discussions (20%). Students will be expected to keep two sets of journals during the course of the seminar: a "critical response journal" (10%) in which they reflect on the assigned weekly readings, and a "field journal" (10%) in which they record their fieldwork. Students will be expected to make two presentations of critical readings relevant to their particular area of East Asian interest during the quarter (20%). Students will also undertake weekly "exercises" related to the development of a fieldwork project-all of these projects will focus on East Asian cultures or traditions (40%). Students will devise, carry out and archive a substantial fieldwork project during the subsequent quarter.

For more information, please contact Professor Timothy Tangherlini (EALC/Scandinavian) at tango@humnet.ucla.edu.