As 2024 began, Abby, Dave, and Janneken wrapped up their six years serving as editors of the Oral History Review, and Holly Werner -Thomas stepped in to lead the new editorial team. We asked Holly a few questions about what she plans for the next several years. This is a first in a series of posts […]
In OHR’s spring 2023 issue,scholar Estelle B. Freedman shares her findings from a macro-level analysis of oral history databases in order to analyze women’s memories and responses to sexual harassment and violence. Freedman’s research shows the potential of applying digital humanities tools for distance reading to the close reading of intimate details of oral histories. […]
In OHR’s spring 2023 issue, scholar Katherine Waugh analyzes the methodological challenges oral historians face with technological fluctuations. Focusing on the post-pandemic wave of remote interviewing that has expanded oral historians’ ability to conduct interviews, Waugh considers the difficulties that scholars face in “connecting” to narrators in a virtual world. “Failing to Connect? Methodological Reflections on Video-Call […]
We ask authors of books reviewed in Oral History Review to answer 5 questions about why we should read their books. In our latest installment of the series, Michael Patrick Cullinane discusses his book, Remembering Theodore Roosevelt: Reminiscences of His Contemporaries which is reviewed in the latest issue of OHR. Read Rachel B Lane’s review of Remembering Theodore […]
We ask authors of books reviewed in Oral History Review to answer 5 questions about why we should read their books. In our latest installment of the series, Chia Y Vang discusses her books Fly Until You Die: An Oral History of Hmong Pilots in Vietnam War and Prisoner of Wars: A Hmong Fighter Pilot’s […]
In OHR’s spring Issue, scholar Renata Schellenberg analyzes the Blue Book, a document dependent on oral testimonies that reported the abuses that native South West Africans suffered under German colonial hands. Her study provides a new perspective on the Blue Book by critically analyzing the political intentions of the document and the historical circumstances of […]
In our upcoming issue of OHR (49.2), Malin Thor Tureby and Kristin Wagrell discuss crisis documentation methods and the impact of digital and social media in their article, “Crisis Documentation and Oral History: Problematizing Collecting and Preserving Practices in a Digital World.” Here Tureby answers our questions about the Swedish context for oral history and ways to […]
In our upcoming issue of OHR (49.2), Katherine Fobear discusses project design and the incorporation of visual methods into storytelling for LGBTQ refugees in her article, “The Precariousness of Home and Belonging among Queer Refugees: Using Participatory Photography in Oral Histories in Vancouver, British Columbia.” What is it about oral history that makes it […]
In our latest installment of OHR Conversations, our recorded conversations with oral history practitioners and scholars, Myrl Beam & Elspeth H. Brown join OHR co-editor Janneken Smucker to discuss their recent OHR article, “Toward an Ethos of Trans Care in Trans Oral History,” examining the role of oral history within the context of trans visibility. OHR Conversations, […]
In OHR’s spring Issue, sociologist Jakub Mlynář uses conversation analysis to explore the nature of oral history, investigating how all participants—interviewers, interviewees, and later listeners and others users—make sense of the interview with cues such as temporal markers and existing knowledge. His article, “How is Oral History Possible? On Linguistically Universal and Topically Specific Knowledge,” […]
