Friday, May 25, 2007

Storytelling and Oral Tradition Graduate Course Notice

This year I (Karl Franklin) am again offering a graduate course (August 20 to September 17) on oral tradition and literature (storytelling) at the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics (GIAL) in Dallas, TX. It provides insight into why storytelling is so important in oral cultures and what it has to offer in literate cultures as well. Although illustrations are given from Biblical storytelling sources, the course is designed to encourage fieldworkers to understand and document oral histories, genealogies and folklore through stories, which include parables, proverbs, songs and other genres. The course runs for two hours a day and is divided into information processing in the first hour and practice in the second. There is also a fairly heavy reading schedule. My background is in linguistics and anthropology (Papua New Guinea for almost 35 years), but it is only in the last few years that I have worked on storytelling. - Karl Franklin

No comments: