The Oral Chronicle of the Boorana

CFEE Seminar on Contemporary Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa (2016-2017)

with the Departement of Social Anthropology of Addis Ababa University

1^st session: The Oral Chronicle of the Boorana in Southern Ethiopia, by Chikage OBA-SMIDT (PhD, JSPS Research Fellow at Osaka Prefectural University, Japan)

Friday 4 November 2016, 2:30-4:30.

Venue: Room NCR 119, Addis Ababa University, Sidist Kilo Campus

The Oral Chronicle of the Boorana in Southern Ethiopia, by Chikage OBA-SMIDT (PhD, JSPS Research Fellow at Osaka Prefectural University, Japan)

This book presentation deals with the Boorana people in southern Ethiopia, who do not have a tradition of writing. However, for over 600 years, they have passed down rich and detailed historical narratives, which form a highly elaborated Oral Chronicle. Herein lies a great mystery. How did they share and pass down this history without using any writing system? The purpose of this book is to answer this question. This book documents and discusses the cultural and socio-political mechanisms of constructing and preserving historical memories, and presents a complete text of the Oral Chronicle of the Boorana, based on a rigid comparison of oral sources.

The Speaker

Chikage Oba-Smidt is currently a JSPS Research Fellow at Osaka Prefectural University, Japan. She has completed her PhD in social anthropology at the Graduate University foe Advanced Studies in Osaka, and was an Assistant Professor at Mekelle University, Tigray, Ethiopia. She received the Nagakura Research Incentive Award in 2012 and the Research Award from the Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology in 2015.