Thursday, 10 February, 2011 at 2 p.m. Ellis Library Colonnade: Curators Professor John Miles Foley will present a talk entitled Albert Lord and the Study of Oral Traditions. This presentation honors the landmark achievements of Albert Bates Lord, one of the founders of the field of studies in oral tradition, and celebrates the generous donation of his and Mary Louise Lord’s personal libraries by their sons Nathan and Mark Lord to the University of Missouri. The discussion will trace the roots of Lord’s research and scholarship in contemporary anthropology and philology, as well as discuss the spread of this comparative approach to more than 150 language traditions from the ancient world to the present day. Audio examples of Lord’s fieldwork collections in the Former Yugoslavia will illustrate the talk.
Jim Cogswell will welcome, introduce, and thank the Lord family for this important donation to the University and the University Libraries. A showing of some of the more important items donated by the Lord family will be held in 401 Ellis Library, the Reading Room of Special Collections, immediately after the Professor Foley’s talk.