Sonya Nevin (Cambridge U. Faculty of Education and University of Warsaw)
The Our Mythical Childhood Survey database contains over 1500 double-peer-reviewed entries on instances of classical antiquity in modern young people’s culture. It covers animation, television and film; toys and computer games; music and other audio; and – predominantly – young people’s literature. There are entries on work from forty-five different countries. Hundreds of authors, musicians, and other creators are represented. The database predominantly features work produced in the twenty and twenty-first centuries, while there are entries on works from as early as the eighteenth-century. Entries cover materials which feature both myth and history, and items which draw explicitly or implicitly on the classical world.
Entries to the Our Mythical Childhood database have been prepared by academics and PhD researchers from the fields of classics or children’s literature studies. Each entry contains a summary of the item, an analysis of its representation and use of the classical world, an author or creator biography, and further reading recommendations. This level of detail makes the database an excellent resource for those researching classical reception and/or children’s literature and culture. Equally, the database makes a superb resource for Higher Education students and school students pursuing project work.
The database also features a unique collection of African oral traditions, developed as part of the Our Mythical Childhood research project. Researchers at the University of Yaoundé I in Cameroon visited numerous and varied communities in order to listen to the oral traditions told by elders and other members of those communities. In a rapidly changing world, this is a timely collection of material that is in danger of disappearing as urbanisation and changes in leisure activities put oral storytelling at risk. This collection began as a record of African myths with classical elements, however it has grown to be a broader collection of traditions with and without classical influence. Each oral tradition entry contains a summary of the story, an analysis, and information on the origin of the tradition and the person who related the oral tradition to the researcher (such as their age, sex, status, tribal affiliation, and the language used to narrate the story). This is a ground-breaking research collection which provides easy, open access to material rarely known outside the communities in which it developed.
In this paper, one of the contributors to the database will demonstrate how to navigate it effectively. A walk-through will demonstrate the various search options and the different features in the entries. There will also be discussion of the numerous ways in which the database can be used and what it can be used for. This demonstration will be of interest to anyone researching or teaching at any level in classical reception, youth culture, children’s literature, oral tradition or African myth. It will also be of interest to those in publishing and those simply looking for something to read, play or recommend. The Our Mythical Childhood Survey database is an Open Access resource which can be found at: http://omc.obta.al.uw.edu.pl/myth-survey