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 […]
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 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,” […]
Our new issue 48.2 focused on ethics in oral history features Liz Strong’s article, “Shifting Focus: Interviewers Share Advice on Protecting Themselves from Harm,” about distinct challenges faced by oral historians in their work. She outlines key structures of support to address such challenges, concluding with ways to apply those structures during project design, while […]
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 […]
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 […]
