Oral History Off the Record


Book Description

Because oral history interviews are personal interactions between human beings, they rarely conform to a methodological ideal. These reflections from oral historians provide honest and rigorous analyses of actual oral history practice that address the complexities of a human-centered methodology.




Oral History and Photography


Book Description

This book collects original research essays to explore the diverse uses of photographs and photography in oral history, from the use of photos as memory triggers to their deployment in the telling of life stories. The book's contributors include both oral historians and photography scholars and critics.




Remembering 1916


Book Description

The year 1916 witnessed two events that would profoundly shape both politics and commemoration in Ireland over the course of the following century. Although the Easter Rising and the Battle of the Somme were important historical events in their own right, their significance also lay in how they came to be understood as iconic moments in the emergence of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach drawing on history, politics, anthropology and cultural studies, this volume explores how the memory of these two foundational events has been constructed, mythologised and revised over the course of the past century. The aim is not merely to understand how the Rising and the Somme came to exert a central place in how the past is viewed in Ireland, but to explore wider questions about the relationship between history, commemoration and memory.




Speaking History


Book Description

This oral history reader, designed to supplement texts on the second half of the U.S. history survey, features the words of ordinary people who describe how they shaped, viewed, and remembered American history.




Oral History, Community, and Displacement


Book Description

This book uses oral history methodology to record stories of people who experienced the brunt of racist forced removals in the city of Cape Town, South Africa. Through life stories and community case studies, it traces the human impact of this disruptive, often violent feature of apartheid's social engineering.




Displaced


Book Description

Although displacement is often associated with conflict zones, millions of people are resettled yearly in the name of development and progress. They endure social and cultural disruption as well as economic upheaval, and their voices are rarely heard. This groundbreaking volume collects oral histories that reveal the challenges they face, such as the loss of cultural identity, shifting social roles, and fractured family relationships. Though full of regret and loss, these accounts reveal incredible resourcefulness and resilience in the face of profound change. Together, they form a crucial reminder of development's often devastating human cost.




Second Wind


Book Description

This book uses both oral and conventional historical methods to describe and analyze the history of lung transplantation in the US. While drawing on accounts from doctors and other specialists, it primarily focuses on the experiences of patients and explores themes of uncertainty, timing, identity, coping, and quality of life.




Bringing Desegregation Home


Book Description

This study collects the oral histories of residents of a single county in North Carolina who lived through the consequences of desegregation, examining the complex social and historical constructions of racial difference in education.




An Oral History of the Portuguese Colonial War


Book Description

This oral history of ex-combatants of the Portuguese colonial war places the reader face-to-face with the men who were conscripted to fight the last and bloodiest of the West’s colonial wars in Africa, namely in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau (then Portuguese Guinea), between 1961 and 1974. At the forefront of this work are the lived experiences of a wide range of Portuguese veterans, framed by broader insights about the post-war public memory of this event in Portugal. Moving away from stereotypical and polarized images of these ex-combatants, An Oral History of the Portuguese Colonial War: Conscripted Generation explores the memories and consequences of this war for these veterans and their society. Seeking to understand why Portuguese ex-combatants often feel neglected and historically unrecognised, this book presents a thorough portrait of a continually shifting – and at times paradoxical –individual and collective remembrance process.




Postmemories of Terror


Book Description

Postmemories of Terror focuses on how young Argentineans remember the traumatic events of the military dictatorship (1976-83). This fascinating work is based on oral histories with sixty-three young people who were too young to be directly victimized or politically active during this period. All were born during or after the terror and possessed an entirely mediated knowledge of it. Susana Kaiser explores how the post-dictatorship generation was reconstructing this past from three main sources: inter-generational dialogue, education and the communication media. These conversations discuss selected and recurrent themes like societal fears and silences, remembering and forgetting, historical explanations and accountability. Together they contribute to our understanding of how communities deal with the legacy of terror.




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