Multimedia Slavic Folklore Database
Natalie Kononenko, Slavic Languages and Literatures
2000 TTI Fellow
Email: nkm@Virginia.EDU
Project website: (under construction)
Course website: http://faculty.virginia.edu/kononenko
Folklore is inherently multifaceted. It includes oral culture such as stories and songs, social culture such as calendary rituals and weddings, and material culture such as housing and clothing. To truly understand folklore, students need to see and hear, as well as read. Photographs of village life, images showing the steps of a traditional wedding, recordings of laments, legends, historical songs, accompanied by photographs of their performers, give a much fuller experience of folklore than even the best descriptions can provide. Through her project, Natalie Kononenko will make Slavic folklore materials more accessible by digitizing and organizing materials she has collected, and making them available on the web to students in her folklore courses as well as other classes and to scholars. A secondary benefit of this project is the preservation of Prof. Kononenko's extensive image archive and of old photographs and taped folk performances.
The Multimedia Slavic Folklore Database will contain images of East Slavic villages, folk art, calendary and life-cycle rituals, and performers, as well as sound files and texts both in the original language and in translation. These materials can then be used as teaching tools in Slavic folklore courses, Russian and other Slavic language courses, and courses in literature, culture, history, and government. Having a searchable database presents unprecedented research possibilities and might encourage other scholars to contribute to this database or start their own. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of this project is that having authentic folklore materials in digitized form extends the opportunity for research to those who cannot readily travel to the field or to archives, such as undergraduate students.