Singers & Tales
in the 21st Century:
The Legacies of Milman Parry
and Albert Lord
December 3 - 5, 2010
Further information about the Symposium can be found on the Milman Parry Collection website, including an email address for registration (free) and information on area hotels.
Unless otherwise noted, all events will take place in the Fong Auditorium, Boylston Hall.
Friday, December 3
9:15-9:30 Registration
9:30-9:45 Opening remarks
9:45-11:15 Formula and Theme
Egbert Bakker, “Homeric Formulas and the Intertextuality Continuum”
Carl Lindahl, “The Porous House Sequence in Appalachian Folktales”
Chao Gejin, “Current Trends in Chinese Folkloristics: A Perspective from
the Localized Application of the Oral-Formulaic Theory”
10:30-10:45 Coffee Break
Coffee and snacks in Ticknor Lounge, Boylston Hall
11:30-12:30 Homer
Minna Skafte Jensen, “Menelaus in the Odyssey: A Study in Patterned Narrative”
Françoise Létoublon, “The Trojan Formulaic Theater”
12:30-2:00 Lunch
Lunch for conference speakers in Warren House
2:00-4:00 Balkan Epics
John Miles Foley, “Oral Epic in Stolac: Collective Tradition and Individual Art”
Mirsad Kunić, “The Death of the Hero Mustaj Bey of the Lika in the Songs of the
Milman Parry Collection”
Ronelle Alexander, “Tracking the Epic Register in South Slavic”
Nicola Scaldaferri / Zymer Neziri, “From the Archive to the Field: New
Research on Albanian Epic Songs”
4:30-5:30 Reception and Exhibition
Amy Lowell Room, Houghton Library, Second Floor
6:00-7:00 Performance by Odhon Bayar
Ticknor Lounge, Boylston Hall
7:30 Dinner for Conference Speakers / Performers
Harvard Faculty Club
Saturday, December 4
9:00-10:30 Comparative Approaches I
Nikolay Grintser, “Common Grief: Weeping Over Hector and Rama”
Olga Levaniouk, “The Dreams of Barchin and Penelope”
Holly Davidson, “The Written Text as a Metaphor for the Integrity of Oral
Composition in Iranian Traditions and Beyond”
10:30-10:45 Coffee Break
Coffee and snacks in Ticknor Lounge, Boylston Hall
10:45-11:45 Comparative Approaches II
Anna Bonifazi / David Elmer, “Visuality in South Slavic and Homeric Epic”
Joseph Nagy, “Snakes of the Heart in Serbian and Irish Heroic Tale”
11:45-12:00 Coffee Break
Coffee and snacks in the Department of the Classics, Boylston Hall 2nd floor
12:00-1:00 Technologies
Peter McMurray, “There Are No Oral Media? Aural and Visual Perceptions of
South Slavic Epic Poetry”
Casey Dué / Mary Ebbott, “Multitext as an Extension of the Theory and
Fieldwork of Parry (and Lord)”
1:00-2:15 Lunch
Lunch for conference speakers in Warren House
2:15-3:15 Memory
David Bouvier, “Formulaic Expressions and Memory in Homer”
Carlo Severi, “Composition in the Mind: Iconography, Orality, and the
Anthropology of Memory”
3:15-3:30 Coffee Break
Coffee and snacks in the Classics Dept., Boylston Hall
3:30-5:00 Music and Performance
John Franklin, “South Slavic Heroic Melody: Towards a New Method of
Analysis”
Dwight Reynolds, “Composition in Performance Arab Style”
Karl Reichl, “The Singing of Tales: The Role of Music in Epic Performance and
in the Edited Text”
5:30-6:30 Performance by Âşık Şeref Taşlıova
Ticknor Lounge, Boylston Hall
8:00 Dinner for Conference Speakers / Performers
Ilex Foundation, 82 Revere St., Boston
Sunday, December 5
9:00-10:30 Scandinavian Traditions
Lars Lönnroth, “Old Norse Texts as Performance”
Gísli Sigurðsson, “The Oral Background of the Eddas and Sagas”
Tom DuBois, “Yearning for Multimedia Before Its Time”
10:30-10:45 Coffee Break
Coffee and snacks in Ticknor Lounge, Boylston Hall
10:45-12:15 Dialogic Approaches
Anna Stavrakopoulou, “Dialogue of the Deaf: Puppeteers vs. Interviewers on
Oral History and Historical Data”
Aida Vidan, “The Ballad of a Lost Sibling: Oral Sources of Croatian Renaissance
Drama”
Lotte Tarkka, “Dialogue of Genres in Kalevala Meter Oral Poetry”
12:15-2:00 Lunch
Lunch for conference speakers in Warren House
2:00-3:00 Epic and Society
Susan Niditch, “Preserving Traditions of ‘Them’ and the Creation of ‘Us’:
Formulaic Language, Historiography, Mythology, and Self-Definition”
Margaret Beissinger, “Transgression, Shame, and the Upholding of Traditional
Society: Incest in Balkan Oral Epic”
3:00-3:30 Closing Remarks