Isola 2010 - Mombasa, Kenya, 15 - 20 July 2010. Click the conference link for details.

Welcome to the official web site of the International Society for the Oral Literatures of Africa (ISOLA). The International Society for the Oral Literatures of Africa (ISOLA) is an association of scholars from all over the world who are interested in exploring the rich oral traditions of Africa and the African Diaspora from as many disciplinary perspectives as possible.

The Society was established in 1991 in London and it draws its international membership from experts and students involved in the exploration of the oral traditions of Africa and the African Diaspora. The Society’s members engage in the fullest spectrum of research with respect to African oral traditions, be it performance, literary, linguistic, comparative, theoretical or metatheoretical studies.

Members are encouraged to report on their restorative, archival, and field research while establishing multi-disciplinary networks. To this end, the Society organizes regular scholarly conferences. The international character of ISOLA is demonstrated not only by the diversity of its membership, but also by the distribution of the sites of our conferences. Our meetings have been held in London, UK (1991); Legon, Ghana (1995); Cape Town, South Africa (1998); Chambery, France (2002); Banjul, Gambia (2004); and, Trinidad and Tobago (2006).

Our eighth conference will take place in Mombasa, Kenya (2010). See the Call for papers and more information about the conference. We identify with the initiatives of UNESCO towards the preservation of the world’s “intangible heritage,” and we are in the process of establishing a stable cooperative relationship with the organization. Our main languages of discussion and communication are English and French.