Orality, Memory, Performance Criticism, and Related Disciplines: A Networking Event

SBL 2014: Friday, November 21 from 4:30 to 6:00

An informal gathering to hear reports about progress in promoting orality and related studies. Meet others with common scholarly interests and organize in small groups to discuss developments in key fields: oral culture/ speech arts; social identity/ collective memory; scribes/ scrolls; orality/ literacy; ancient performances; reading/ memory; classical rhetoric, and more. Refreshments available. Small contribution invited at the networking event. To assist us (and to receive pre-event updates), please let us know of your plan to attend: David Rhoads at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Networking by Disciplines. The organization of the networking event will be new this year. In previous years we organized around strategies to promote orality disciplines—through SBL seminars, performances, publications, the website, and so on.

By contrast, this year we will network by disciplines and key fields of study such as oral culture/ speech arts; social identity/ collective memory; scribes/ scrolls; orality/ literacy; ancient performances; reading/ memory; classical rhetoric, and more. Our hope is that we can use this format equally well to promote and extend orality studies by gathering in small groups around similar interests. As such, we will seek to have leaders for these different groups who can identify what has been done in each area, what challenges lie ahead, and how we can foster those developments.

We also hope that networking by subject area may bring others to join us who have not yet participated in this event. To that end, we encourage you to invite friends and colleagues to join us around consideration of these subjects. No need to let us know ahead which group you might like to join.