About VOVA

John Foley was a leading international specialist of comparative oral tradition. He set standards for methodological applications and international exchange in areas of collecting and publishing oral traditions. Before his recent death, he was Curators' Professor and William H. Byler Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at the University of Missouri‚ Columbia. In 1985, Dr. Foley founded the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition as well as the Center for International Review, and Oral Tradition. His editorial accomplishments also include three series of books: Lord Studies in Oral Tradition, Voices in Performance and Text, and Poetics of Orality and Literacy. Dr. Foley's personal research work focused on ancient Greek, early medieval English, and South Slavic, the results of which may be found in major works including The Theory of Oral Composition, Traditional Oral Epic, The Singer of Tales in Performance, and How to Read an Oral Poem. Through innovation in field and corpus study as well as a commitment to complimentary methodologies, Dr. Foley has made major advances in our understanding and appreciation of the world's oral traditions. He was a member of the VOVA editorial board.

Emerita, University of Virginia, prominent field scholar of the Sahaptin language, has provided elaborate demonstrations of verse form in oral narratives of a variety of language traditions. She collaborated with her husband, Dell Hymes, in the discovery and development of verse analysis, lending her own unique blend of phonological and rhetorical study as she has worked throughout the years from tape-recordings. In addition to the rich results of her own empirical analyses of formal structure in the body of work that she has collected, Mrs. Hymes has been a leading instructor of this particular methodology. A number of her students and associates continue to pay tribute to her for her diligent guidance to working out the architectural designs of orally composed texts. Mrs. Hymes was a member of the VOVA editorial board.

Saad Sowayan, PhD, is Professor of Anthropology and Folklore at King Saud University. He has published articles in Arabic and English on the oral literature and spoken language of the Arabian nomads. His ongoing fieldwork in Saudi Arabia reaches into the oldest and most longstanding traditions of preliterate Arabic. His major works in English are Nabati Poetry: The Oral Poetry of Arabia (1985) and The Arabian Oral Historical Narrative: An Ethnographic and Linguistic Analysis (1992). Dr Sowayan's publications offer remarkable ethnographic standards of concrete evidence in oral Arabian genres, stylistic features and formal organization. Professor Sowayan was a member of the VOVA Editorial Board.

Walt Wolfram, PhD is William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of English Linguistics at North Carolina State University and director of the North Carolina Language and Life Project. His outstanding work in ethnic dialects and cultural diversity reflects a keen understanding of how language functions in social life. Professor Wolfram has published many works and produced documentaries on American English, African American Englishes, community and school dialects, regional dialects in North Carolina, and language variety in linguistic research. Throughout his works, we find a vital concern with the application of sociolinguistic information to social and educational problems and the dissemination of knowledge about dialects to the public. Professor Wolfram was a member of the VOVA Board of Directors.

Isidore Okpewho, PhD is State University of New York Distinguished Professor of Africana Studies, English, and Comparative Literature at Binghamton University. Originally from Nigeria, Professor Okpewho is an internationally renowned scholar of West African oral traditions and specialist of African and comparative literature. His outstanding collections and descriptions of genres, traditional narratives, and oral transmission, along with the special attention he pays to the individual voices and styles of raconteurs, have established ethnographical and literary standards in the study of oral tradition. Author of four novels, Professor Okpewho is a member of the VOVA Advisory Board.