Loading...
Creator
Vigo, José A., 1950-1987
Call number
Sc MIRS Vigo 1989-11
Physical description
17 audio_recordings
Language
English; Anglophone Creoles, English, Haitian Creole, Patois, and Spanish.
Preferred Citation
José Vigo audio collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division, The New York Public Library
Sponsor
An anonymous donor funded preliminary processing for this collection. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation supported a research library-wide grant for the digitization, and funded the Schomburg for the description and production of the finding aid as part of The Next Century of Black Studies Project.
Repository
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division
Access to materials
Appointment preferred: Request an in-person research appointment.

José Angel Vigo taught Afro-American studies, anthropology, and Puerto Rican history and culture at Yale, Wes­leyan, and Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ties. The José Vigo audio collection consists of seventeen audio recordings related to Vigo's career in the field of sociolinguistics.

Biographical/historical information

José Angel Vigo taught Afro-American studies, anthropology, and Puerto Rican history and culture at Yale, Wes­leyan, and Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ties. Born in Puerto Rico, Vigo migrated to New York as a teenager. He graduated from Hunter College in 1978 with a Bachelor of Arts in Language and Culture Studies. In 1980, he was awarded a Masters in Philosophy degree from Yale University. From 1982 through 1983, Vigo con­ducted field­work in Samaná, Dominican Republic, research­ing the Cre­ole lan­guage and trav­el­ing fre­quently between the Domini­can Repub­lic and his hometown in Puerto Rico. At the time of his death in 1987 due to an AIDS-related illness, he was working towards his Ph.D. in anthropology from Yale University. Although it was never completed, his dissertation, "Language Maintenance and Ethnicity: A Sociolinguistic Study of Samaná, Dominican Republic" was meant to exam­ine the processes of lan­guage shift among the descen­dants of a nineteenth-century colony of American freed slaves. The audio recordings in this collection are likely research materials collected by Vigo.

Scope and arrangement

The collection consists of seventeen audio recordings. They are arranged chronologically. Since the collection's original formats are audio cassettes, many of the items contain two or more parts, one for each side of the cassette. The titles are derived from the content of the recordings and labels on the original formats. They include music, folktales, language courses, interviews, and lectures on topics of sociolinguistics in the Caribbean collected by Vigo, who doesn't appear on any of the recordings. Unless otherwise indicated, the items are in English.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Mercedes Vigo, February 1989.

Processing information

Collection inventoried by Liavon Yurevich. Collection processed and described by Ornella U. Baganizi, archivist; and Shola Lynch, curator. Finding aid published in 2024.

Separated material

See the Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division for the José Vigo papers, Sc MG 374.

See the Photographs and Prints Division for photographs.

Related Material

Central American English edited by John Holm, with contributions by Geneviève Escure ... [et al.]., JFE 83-4561.

Using the collection

Location

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division
515 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY 10037-1801
Third Floor

Access to materials

Appointment preferred: Request an in-person research appointment.