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Social Science Cultural

Orality and Literacy

Reflections across Disciplines

edited by Keith Thor Carlson, Kristina Fagan & Natalia Khanenko-Friesen

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2011
Category
Cultural, Social History, Essays
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780802098269
    Publish Date
    Apr 2011
    List Price
    $75.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781487527686
    Publish Date
    Oct 2020
    List Price
    $45.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442669239
    Publish Date
    Apr 2011
    List Price
    $73.00

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Description

Orality and Literacy investigates the interactions of the oral and the literate through close studies of particular cultures at specific historical moments. Rejecting the 'great-divide' theory of orality and literacy as separate and opposite to one another, the contributors posit that whatever meanings the two concepts have are products of their ever-changing relationships to one another.

Through topics as diverse as Aboriginal Canadian societies, Ukrainian-Canadian narratives, and communities in ancient Greece, Medieval Europe, and twentieth-century Asia, these cross-disciplinary essays reveal the powerful ways in which cultural assumptions, such as those about truth, disclosure, performance, privacy, and ethics, can affect a society's uses of and approaches to both the written and the oral. The fresh perspectives in Orality and Literacy reinvigorate the subject, illuminating complex interrelationships rather than relying on universal generalizations about how literacy and orality function.

About the authors

Keith Thor Carlson is a professor of History at the University of the Fraser Valley where he holds a Tier One Canada Research Chair in Indigenous and Community-Engaged History.

Keith Thor Carlson's profile page

Kristina Fagan is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Saskatchewan.

Kristina Fagan's profile page

Natalia Khanenko-Friesen is an associate professor of cultural anthropology and the head of the Department of Religion and Culture at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan.

Natalia Khanenko-Friesen's profile page