This week, Benjamin Dangl finalizes his two-part post about the Taller de Historia Oral Andina and how a small group of Indigenous Bolivian activists have been using oral history to decolonize their collective past since 1983. In case you missed it, find his first post on the Andean Oral History Workshop here. By Benjamin Dangl […]
In the first of two installments, Benjamin Dangl writes about the Taller de Historia Oral Andina and how a small group of Indigenous Bolivian activists have been using oral history to decolonize their collective past since 1983. By Benjamin Dangl At the top of a winding street in La Paz, Bolivia, heading up from the […]
OHR‘s Special Issue on Ethics is finally here. We will hear from several of our contributing authors over the next months, as they reflect on aspects of their oral history practice as it relate to ethics. This week, Mary Rizzo, author of “Who Speaks for Baltimore: The Invisibility of Whiteness and the Ethics of Oral […]
On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, Rebecca Brenner Graham reminds us how oral history can validate and preserve individual traumas from such a harrowing time. By Rebecca Brenner Graham The September 11, 2001 attacks occurred twenty years ago. Five years ago, I conducted a series of oral history […]
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, Peipei Qiu discusses her book Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves. Allison K. Tracy-Taylor’s review of Chinese Comfort Women is available online and in OHR […]
We’ve asked authors of books that are going to be reviewed in the upcoming edition of the Oral History Review to answer 5 questions about why we should read them. In our latest installment of the series, Anne Balay discusses her book Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers Michael […]
Our new issue 48.1 features Mia Martin Hobbs’s article, “(Un)Naming: Ethics, Agency, and Anonymity in Oral Histories with Veteran-Narrators,” about the complexities of anonymizing oral histories and their subsequent interpretation, arguing that “(un)naming” changes the nature of consent, and requires careful consideration of power dynamics, especially in our era of digital oral history. We interviewed […]
During this week celebrating Earth Day, it’s an apt time to reflect on how oral historians’ methods can have a positive impact on environmental preservation. Excerpted from freelance oral historian Alex Primm’s forthcoming memoir, Ozark Voices: Oral History from the Heartland, this post explores what could have been if we only stopped to listen. By […]
In this guest post, Sarah O’Brien reflects on the role of oral history within a culture of storytelling through the lens of Ireland’s difficult past involving pregnancy outside of marriage, showing how oral narratives coupled with artistic practices have returned dignity and voice to those who have been silenced by the state. By Sarah O’Brien […]
In our upcoming issue, Alison Chand explores what happens when the same oral history narrator is interviewed on separate occasions by different interviewers. Her findings in “Same Interviewee, Different Interviewer: Researching Intersubjectivity in Studies of the Reserved Occupations in the Second World War” shed light on concepts including memory, composure, and intersubjectivity. In our author […]
