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 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 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,” […]
In the latest installment of our recurring series focused on oral history and self care, Tanya Finchum, of Oklahoma State University’s Oklahoma Oral History Research Program, reflects on her experiences conducting oral histories when the stories hit close to home and how our emotions and individual pasts impact our work. See Tanya’s earlier post, exploring […]
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 […]
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 […]
During these strange, difficult times, it’s an apt opportunity to reflect on how conducting oral history interviews can trigger our own memories and emotions. In this second installment of our conversation on self care and oral history, seasoned interviewer Tanya Finchum of the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University shares some of […]
Frances Davey and Joanna Salapska-Gelleri answered a few of our questions about their OHR article, “’We Hung around the Radio with Great Interest’: Accessing Childhood Recollections of World War II through Interdisciplinarity” published in the brand new issue, 47.1. Tell us about the Childhood Narratives of World War II on the Home Front project. Childhood […]
