Scope and Content
The collection documents two years of field research Brenda Beck conducted in the Kongunadu region of Tamil Nadu, India. The interviews were conducted in 1964-1966 as part of her doctoral research in anthropology at Somerville College, Oxford. She was assisted by Sundaram, and for a short period Professor Harold Schiffman, a linguist who recorded a few short stories for Beck. After concluding her research, Beck extended Sundaram's employment and he continued to collect stories for her.
The collection contains interviews about traditional stories, ancient oral epic folk tales, songs and proverbs, caste structures and rituals, along with in-field observations of weddings, burial ceremonies and exorcisms. It also includes hand-drawn maps and an exclusive data set of a house-to-house caste survey which captures information for each household.
The interviews capture the way of life and culture of the different caste members living in the villages. There are supporting transcripts and photographs accompanying the interviews. The transcripts are both in Tamil and English and there are spelling variations of titles throughout the collection.
Unless otherwise indicated, Beck recorded the interviews. In 2005, Beck digitized the audio recordings and created a tape inventory. In 2017 she digitized the transcripts and created a revised inventory.
Beck also digitized the black-and-white negatives between 2009 and 2017.
The flash drive: afc2017/050_cf11 contains all the files from the 10 optical discs. Some of the files have no transcript or no related physical content and these will be described in Series 9. The remaining majority of the files are digital copies of the physical items within the collection. Please note that the digital surrogates have not been matched to their original content. See Archive Index revised for more information.