James Scanlon-Canegata

Broadly, my research is driven by an interest in the intersection of the sonic experience (music, vocality, voice, and language) and inscription in the formation of text and literary canon. Focusing on the compilation and editing process in early vernacular texts, my dissertation project looks at how linguistic and acoustic soundscapes and performance contexts were navigated and inscribed in music books (fuhon) and literary compilations of vernacular song (uta) circa the late Nara (710-784) and early-mid Heian periods (794-1185).

I approach the question of language, sonority, and text through my ongoing research concentrating on the vicissitudes of kayo “oral ballads” through history, including its development as a written genre of vernacular song in the earliest texts, which my dissertation covers, and its stages of reception from the medieval to Postwar minzokugaku “ethnography” and literary kayo studies.

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