About the Authors

Assistant Professor of English at Loyola University Chicago, Chiji Akoma conducts research in African and African Diasporic folkloric traditions. His work, including poems, has appeared in Research in African Literatures and World Literature Written in English. His essay on Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease is forthcoming in Emerging Perspectives on Chinua Achebe (Africa World Press).

Thomas A. DuBois is Professor of Scandinavian Studies, Folklore, and Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to an extensive series of articles on subjects as various as Finnish narrative, Saami folklore, and quilting, he has authored the books Finnish Folk Poetry and the Kalevala (1995) and Nordic Religions in the Viking Age (1999).

Joseph Harris is Professor of English and Folklore at Harvard University, where he teaches Old English and Old Norse philology and courses in mythology and folklore theory. Among his recent publications are Prosimetrum: Crosscultural Perspectives on Narrative in Prose and Verse (1997; edited with Karl Reichl), “The Dossier on Byggvir, God and Hero” (1999), and “‘Double scene’ and ‘mise en abîme’ in Beowulfian Narrative” (2000).

John Lindow is Professor in the Department of Scandinavian at the University of California at Berkeley. His research focuses on medieval Scandinavian culture and literature, especially mythology, and on the folklore of the North. His most recent book was Murder and Vengeance Among the Gods: Baldr in Scandinavian Mythology (Folklore Fellows Communications, 262; 1997).

Barry B. Powell is Bascom-Halls Professor of Classics at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, where he teaches Greek poetry, the history of writing, egyptology, and mythology. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Classical Myth, now in its third edition, and Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet (1991). He co- edited A New Companion to Homer (1997) with Ian Morris.

Antonio Scuderi is Assistant Professor of Italian at Truman State University. He has published various articles on Dario Fo in the context of folklore studies and the oral tradition as well as a book, Dario Fo and Popular Performance (1998). He has also edited Dario Fo: Stage, Text, and Tradition (2000).

Matthew Simpson recently completed his Ph.D. thesis on Scottish university culture in the eighteenth century. He is currently making a study of the poet Robert Fergusson and teaching at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Ülo Valk is Professor of Estonian and comparative folklore at the University of Tartu. From 2000-2001 he is a visiting professor of folklore at the University of California at Berkeley. His publications include articles on popular religion, folk demonology, and legends. His monograph on The Black Gentleman: Manifestations of the Devil in Estonian Folk Religion is forthcoming in Folklore Fellows Communications.

Associate Professor of English and Director of The New Mexico Heritage Center at New Mexico State University, Andrew Wiget is also the editor of The Dictionary of Native American Literature (1994) and the author of Native American Literature (1985). His fieldwork focuses on Indian communities in Quebec and in the Southwest, most extensively at Zuni. He is currently working with indigenous people in Western Siberia.