IIAS Masterclass: James J. Fox

Professor James J. Fox who is currently professor of Anthropology in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University has taught at Harvard University, Leiden University, and the University of Chicago. He did his first degree at Harvard University and his doctorate at the University of Oxford. Field research for his doctorate was done among the Rotinese of Eastern Indonesia who maintain a well-developed oral tradition that structures their most important ritual compositions in formal canonical parallelism. While teaching at Harvard University, Professor Fox was prompted by Professor Roman Jakobson to take up the comparative study of parallelism.

Canonical parallelism involves a strict pairing of words and phrases in the production of acceptable poetic compositions and is a characteristic feature of traditions as diverse as those of the Hebrew scriptures, the Finnish Kalevala, the Mayan Popul Vuh and the rituals of the inhabitants of Nias or the Sa'dan Toraja.

Parallelism
Professor Fox has written on parallelism as a 'near-universal' linguistic phenomenon and on manifestations of parallelism in the world's oral traditions in "Roman Jakobson and the Comparative Study of Parallelism" (Roman Jakobson: Echoes of his Scholarship. De Ritter Press, 1977). He has also published extensively on Rotinese parallel poetry and on the dyadic forms of ritual that rely on parallel compositions; and, he has edited a volume, To Speak in Pairs (Cambridge University Press, 1988) on the traditions of parallelism in Eastern Indonesia. He is now working on a monograph dealing with form, formula, and variation in Rotinese oral compositions. This monograph examines a single narrative 'text' as recited by different oral poets as well as by the same poet on different occasions over a period of two decades.
The master classes offered by Professor Fox, based on his Rotinese research, will focus on parallelism as a world-wide phenomena in oral literature, on varieties of canonical parallelism, and on oral composition in traditions of parallelism. An ideal class would include doctoral students doing research on parallelism and ritual oratory in as many different linguistic traditions as possible.

Call for papers
The one-day class will be held at a Research Centre in the Netherlands in the week of April 22-26, 1996. Those invited to apply are doctoral students and recent recipients of the doctorate doing research on parallelism and ritual oratory in as many different linguistic traditions as possible.
Applications are due by 15 March 1996 and should include a cv and a paper on the afore- mentioned topic. Approximately ten candidates will be selected for participation. The official language will be English. It is expected that the papers presented for criticism at this seminar will be published in the form of a volume of essays.

All travel and accommodation expenses will be covered by the IIAS.
All inquiries should be directed to the IIAS office. 





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