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IOHA NEWS

Bulletin of the International Oral History Association
(published twice a year)

Volume 11, Number 1, 2003                

Starting Points

From the Editors

By the time this newsletter is online the South African IOHA conference will be six months past. The southern hemisphere will be basking in the summer sun and we in the north will be deep in winter. Changes in time and season might suggest that what we learned and discussed at the conference will seem far distant. Let's hope not. We’ve included in this issue, under Conference Reports below, a collage of journals and reports from the conference called 'South Africa Journal', which highlights some of the powerful issues raised and some big challenges set by the conference. There were challenges to oral history as it takes up the legacy of understanding the twentieth century in the somewhat troubling context of the twenty-first, as well as challenges to the IOHA in its aim to build its organisation and extend its reputation, from south to south, south to north, east to east, and east to west. Janis Wilton, in her first report as the newly elected president, included below, sketches out the tasks which the new IOHA council has set itself for the next two years.

Sadly, other changes have transpired since Pietermaritzburg. We lost Dora Schwarzstein, who brought Argentina into the international oral history movement and was so deeply committed to the creation of IOHA. We’ll no longer have Dora at our conference tables, but she remains inscribed in our personal and institutional memories as the vibrant intellectual, friend and colleague she was to so many of us.

As your newsletter editors, the lessons we took away from the conference are that we have the opportunity to promote inclusiveness and to ensure that anyone with an interest and involvement in oral history can have a voice through our web pages. Not everyone can get to our conferences, above all costs, but also time and distance as well as work and family commitments make conference going a somewhat exclusive activity, we know. If we can help to compensate by making this newsletter a forum for news and discussion, then we will have achieved something for IOHA members as well as other readers of this newsletter. Keep sending us news of oral history activities, conferences, projects, archives, publications, funding solutions, exhibitions, online and off. The more examples we can provide of oral history activity across the world the more we enrich the oral history community.

Joanna Bornat and Rina Benmayor
Co-editors IOHA newsletter

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Dora Schwarzstein
In Memoriam

On November 6, 2002, the Oral History movement lost Dora Schwarzstein, a dear friend and colleague. A historian by training, Dora became unmistakably linked to the oral history movement in Argentina and worldwide. Dora began incorporating oral sources in her work more than twenty years ago. Her most recent book, Between Franco and Peron: Memory and Identity Among Spanish Republican Exiles in Argentina (Barcelona: Critica, 2001), speaks to her consummate ability to work with multiple levels - oral and written -- of historical reality. She applied this same level of sophistication and skill to other projects, such as the history of the University of Buenos Aires and the many other publications she authored.

Dora became intellectually and passionately committed to the use of testimony in research. She fought strong and hard for academic recognition and legitimacy of oral history, in history and in other fields such as education and archival studies. She was one of the organizers of the National Oral History Meetings in Argentina, a place to discuss and disseminate oral history work. She taught oral history courses and workshops in universities and other institutions, always promoting and defending the richness of oral sources but careful not to idealize them and their use. A sensitive and humane person and always respectful of others, Dora held herself to very high standards of quality and commitment in her work and her points of view.

Many of us in Argentina owe our entry into the field to Dora's book, Oral History (Buenos Aires, CEAL, 1991). That group of articles was key. Many of them, previously unavailable in Spanish, have come to be commonly cited, reflecting Dora's importance in establishing and disseminating oral history as a practice and a critical field. We cut our baby teeth on those readings and we were very fortunate to be able to work with Dora in the Oral History Program. In 1997, she led our team in a bold new educational project, to explore and change the conflictive relationship between "the academy" and "education." This project, formally undertaken by the City of Buenos Aires and the University, trained teachers, professors, and historians to work together in educational institutions. It was a marvelous experience. We learned to work hard, to continually revise our practices and our commitments as social actors, and to collaborate with teachers and students. Dora always called this a University project with teachers, in a spirit of equality in which we have become accustomed to work. Two years ago, she published a handbook for working with oral interviews (An Introduction to Oral History in the Classroom, Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 2001). This book synthesized our experiences in this project, and will become for teachers what her book Oral History has been for researchers.

The last project we worked on together - and which we are continuing - is a series of interviews on state terrorism in Argentina. We expect these interviews to comprise an audio-visual archive for the Open Memory Foundation. To date, the archive includes approximately 300 interviews. This is a critical journey into hell, into a time of struggle, pain, resistance, and will for change in the decadent and wounded Argentina in which we live today. We want to engage the present as historians, a desire that marked the work of the Oral History Program. This engagement of the present remains one of the principal reasons Dora sought to make the use of testimony so widespread in Argentina and around the world. We're able to sustain this emotionally and professionally challenging work because we work collectively, as a team, and this spirit for collaboration was Dora's.

The context in which Dora developed her oral history work was no different from what other oral historians encounter around the world. She would tell us that she'd often get called, half jokingly and half seriously, "the oral lady." She conquered difficulties and skepticism with constant and serious work, resulting in her preeminence today. During her illness, when we would ask her how she was feeling she'd respond with that same strength and persistence. She was our teacher and friend, and we worked together with her almost until the end. She faced her illness with dignity and incredible will. In her last days, she looked tired, or better, indignant about her fate, but she kept on working.

Our loss is double. It is an academic loss, no doubt, but above all it is a great human loss. Dora approached her whole life with a sense of commitment and responsibility, no matter what the struggle. We benefited from one of her deepest concerns -- training new generations of researchers. It's hard for us to speak of her today without expressing our deep pain. But, rather than indulging our own feelings, we should recognize the magnitude of her efforts. Dora worked like few others, to make a place for Argentinian oral history. She represented us at international conferences and in numerous publications, making the oral history practice in our country known throughout the world. Her work integrated research, archival development, and education. She helped train so many people. They have been writing to us from Patagonia, from the Coast, from Spain and England, expressing their sorrow, their shock, and their appreciation.

Those of us who had the privilege of working with her have much to learn from the way she marshaled irony in the face of adversity. This was her way of stimulating intellectual inquiry challenging assumptions, and keeping to task with commitment and humanity. It's as if she were beside us right now discussing a particular point in a text, exacting clarity in a paragraph, fondly watching children leaving school at the end of the day, or advising us on life decisions. Dora will always be all of these things to us. We lost a great friend, a great scholar, and a great human being, so it's fitting that we invoke these aspects of her life that we had the great fortune to share.

Federico Lorenz
Historical Institute of the City of Buenos Aires

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From the President

South African hospitality, the participation of oral historians from different parts of Africa and from across the world, international exchange, national and international comparisons, a coming together of past, present and future: the XII International Oral History Conference marked another significant step in the development of IOHA. It is exciting and stimulating.

I was honoured - and humbled - to be elected the new President of IOHA at the Association's Biennial General Meeting held during the conference. I acknowledge the strong foundation created by former Presidents, Marieta de Moraes Ferreira and Mercedes Vilanova, and previous Council members. Their work, vision, networks and commitment have seen IOHA acquire its increasingly international membership and inclusiveness, its effective online presence, its ability to co-host international conferences in venues around the world, and its profile as a focus for an international exchange of oral history scholarship, ideas, projects, publications, achievements and struggles.


IOHA Council Members 2002-2004

The Council elected at the Biennial General Meeting during the conference includes a mixture of old and new members. Council members and their national affiliations are:

Top from left to right: Janis Wilton (Australia) President; Funso Afolayan (Nigeria) Council; Gerardo Necoechea (Mexico) Vice President; Joanna Bornat (UK) Council; Rina Benmayor (USA) Vice President; Philippe Denis (South Africa) Council;

Bottom: Calinda Lee (USA)Council; Lluis Ubeda (Spain)Council; Gunhan Danisman (Turkey) Council; Marieta de Moraes Ferreira (Brazil) Past President; Olga von Simson (Brazil) Council.

Not pictured: Anna Green (New Zealand) Secretary; Almut Leh (Germany) Treasurer
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From the IOHA conference organisers

IOHA Conference 2004

One of the decisions made by IOHA members during the conference in South Africa, was the selection of the venue for the 2004 conference. It is an indication of the growing status of IOHA that we faced the difficult choice of selecting between Rome and Barcelona. At one stage, both offers were so attractive that we contemplated whether the conference could be held in two venues!! In the end a choice had to be made. The XIII International Oral History Conference will be held in Rome, in June 2004. It will be hosted by the City of Rome under the guidance and organising skills of Alessandro Portelli backed by the IOHA Conference Committee.


IOHA Council Agenda and Directions 2002-2004

Apart from working towards the 2004 Conference, key items on the agenda for the IOHA Council over the next two years include:


These agenda items are underpinned by shared visions about the broad directions of IOHA. At the core are concerns to ensure that the range and variety of oral history work undertaken across the world are represented in the various forums of IOHA. There are individuals, groups and countries, for example, whose work and achievements sit on the edges of our peripheral international vision. Through ensuring that the conference venue moves around the world, by developing a scholarship fund to assist oral historians to participate in the conferences, by providing different online and print forums, and by continually extending our networks and reaching out to new geographical locations we hope that IOHA and oral history more broadly become increasingly inclusive. We look forward, for example, to seeing many of our African colleagues who participated for the first time at the conference in South Africa, participating again in Rome.

Our agenda also shaped by the acknowledgement that oral history invites sharing between academic and community researchers, between and across disciplines, and through different media and different forms of presentation and use. Folklorists, community artists, museum curators, archivists, writers, sociologists, public historians, health workers and the rest all offer different perspectives on the significance and application of oral history methods and theory. We wish to encourage sharing about different perspectives and the discussion and analysis of common themes. In this area, for example, Words and Silences under the editorship of Gerardo Necoechea and Lluis Ubeda is reverting to an earlier format and adapting and developing it. For the next issue, for example, oral historians from across the world and from a variety of backgrounds are invited to offer short pieces on two themes: oral history research undertaken with explicit or implicit political purposes, and practical issues involved in establishing oral history collections. For more details consult the Call for Papers.

In our endeavours we welcome feedback, suggestions and participation from anyone interested in our agenda and vision. We also welcome suggestions - or offers - for fundraising for the newly established Scholarship Fund.


Acknowledgements

IOHA exists and is thriving due to the hours put in by individuals across the globe. This is a thank you to all concerned with, after the successful XII International Oral History Conference, a special thanks to Philippe Denis and his team in South Africa for organising yet another stimulating gathering of oral historians. If you are not yet an IOHA member, could I encourage you to join. Subscription dues are the main income to support the activities of the Association, and provide you with access to an international network and with the opportunity to contribute in making decisions which affect the shape and activities of the organisation.

Janis Wilton
email: jwilton@metz.une.edu.au


New IOHA Council members

As usual we've asked newly elected members of the International Oral History Association Council to provide brief biographies. Here are the first four we've received:

Funso Afolayan holds a Ph.D. in African History from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Nigeria (1991). In addition to research publications in journals, he is co-author of Yoruba Sacred Kingship: A Power Like That of the Gods (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996). Among the many books in which he has contributions are: Yoruba Historiography (Evanston: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991); Warfare and Diplomacy in Precolonial Nigeria (Evanston: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992); Dilemmas of Democracy in Nigeria (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1997); Culture and Society in Yorubaland (Ibadan: Rex Charles Publications, 1998); War and Peace in Yorubaland (Ibadan: Heinemann, 1998); African Democracy in the Era of Globalization (Joahnnesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1999); Africa: Vol. 1: African History Before 1885 (2000); Economic Liberalization, Democratization and Civil Society in the Developing World (2000); and Makers of Western Culture, 1800-1914 (2000). He has held a number of research and teaching positions, including ones at Obafemi Awolowo University, the Department of Religions, Amherst College, and the Department of History and African and Afro-American Studies Program at Washington University in St. Louis. He currently teaches African and World history at the University of New Hampshire, Durham, where he is an Associate Professor of African History and the African Diaspora.

Calinda N. Lee is an independent scholar living and working in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. She consults for a number of regional history museums and also counts ethnographic research firms among her clients. In addition, she is employed as an adjunct professor of US history for the University of Maryland University College. Her areas of specialization include 20th century Afro-Americana, US Women's History, and oral historical methodologies. Research interests include the dynamics of class and race within the context of gendered identity construction and comparative 20th century urban histories. Dr. Lee earned a M.A. and Ph.D. in American Studies from Emory University and holds a Master's Degree in United States History from New York University.

Gerardo Necoechea Gracia. I was born in 1954, in Mexico City. I was lucky to be involved in the student movement of1968, although quite young then. A couple of years later I traveled to Boston, Massachusetts, partly out of curiosity about the antiwar movement in the US. In 1978 I moved to New York City and entered the graduate program in history at the City University of New York, because I wanted to study with Herbert Gutman, whose work I admired. Then, in 1983, I moved back to Mexico, lived in different parts of the country, and finally returned to Mexico City. I got a job at the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, joined the Seminar on Working Class History, and began teaching at the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia. For almost twenty years now I have enjoyed work and raising two kids.
I did my first oral history interview in 1975 or 76. I had no idea of what I was doing then but luckily my interviewee was a veteran union organizer and Communist Party member who enjoyed talking. Years later I wrote, together with Mario Camarena and Teresa Morales, a short book on oral history technique and method, which we used for teaching peasants, as part of a community museums project. So I guess I've been working with oral history on and off for quite a number of years. And oral history has been generous to me, as I've traveled about, meeting great people and carrying out fascinating research projects. Right now I'm finishing a book which combines edited life histories with essays on how such individual stories throw a different light on class, gender and ethnicity in 20thcentury Mexican history.

H. H. Gunhan Danisman was born in Mersin, Turkey, in 1943. He received his B.A. Degree in Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture of the Middle East Technical University in Ankara in 1965, and became an assistant at the newly established Department of Restoration at the same Faculty. He was sent by this department to the University of London for graduate work, and at London he received an M.Phil degree in Arts in 1968, a Diploma in the Conservation of Historical Monuments in 1969, and a Ph.D in History of Technology in 1976. During the interim periods, he worked as a conservation architect at the Historic Buildings Division of the Greater London Council for several years.
Returning to Turkey in March 1977 he joined the Department of Humanities at the Bogazici University in Istanbul as an assistant professor and served in this capacity until the end of 1982, lecturing on the history of Architecture, the history of Urbanism and the history of Technology. Between 1983 and 1990, he worked as a project manager for international construction firms in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and was responsible for the completion of five different building projects. Back in Istanbul once again due to the Gulf War, he worked privately as an architect and served as the chief executive for an educational foundation for several years, re-joining the staff at the Department of History at the Bogazici University as a full-time member in 1998. In his present capacity as an Associate Professor of History of Technology at this department he has published numerous articles in learned journals and is the co-author or editor of several books.In June 2000, H. H. Gunhan Danisman was the coordinator of the XI International Oral History Conference at Istanbul which was organized jointly between the IOHA and the Bogazici University.

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The World of Words

Future Conferences and Meetings

CRITICAL MOMENTS: RE-MEMBERING COMMUNITY AND SELF.
28-30 March 2003. The Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts Conference, The Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

Historically and culturally, individuals and collectives have experienced certain events and transitions as particularly momentous, destructive, or re-invigorating 'critical moments.' Why are some events and transitions deemed more significant than others? How have local and international critical moments such as genocide, revolution, protest, war, colonialism, immigration waves, and industrial, technological and labor developments affected individual and group identities? What formats, frameworks or trajectories are there for the re-membering life-changing events and transitions? Can we mark major paradigmatic shifts in theory and activism in terms of such moments?

We are soliciting papers, presentations, panels, and creative projects that address the issue of re-membering self and community in the face of or in response to 'critical moments', in the past or present. Such projects can be focused on local or global events and perspectives, and may address 'critical moments' on international, national, communal, or personal levels. We welcome presentations rooted within a particular discipline or interdisciplinary in nature.

Some general and specific topics that might be addressed: Interweavings and Creation of Memory, Culture and History, Local and Global Perspectives on Cultural Identity and Memory Diaspora, Displacement and Identity, Continuity and Change, Narrative & Representation, Reconciliation and Trauma, Grief Activism (developments of coalitions, groups, or organizations in response to critical moments), Patriotism in Moments of Change, Space, Place, Landscape, Architecture, The Role of Economics, The Role of the Media (the press, TV, radio, film, and the, Internet) Responses within the Academy and Public Scholarship.

For more information, go to:
http://www.emory.edu/COLLEGE/ILA/ila.html

Direct questions via email to:
CMsubmissions@learnlink.emory.edu

Visit our website at:
http://www.emory.edu/COLLEGE/ila/events/criticalmoments/index.html


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HUMOUR AS SELF-DEFINITION.
26-28 March 2003 , Université de Bourgogne, France.

This conference will address the question of humour in life writing and, more particularly, the use of humour as self-construction. It is one of a series of conferences devoted to life writing that have been held at the University of Burgundy since 1997. It will also aim to consider the notion of humour as part of a common cultural heritage. Papers will thus be welcome both on individual works and on texts or works representing a community. Can humour be considered as a form of heritage? How does humour enable a person or a group of people to build or transmit a heritage?

Papers will concern texts belonging to the category of life writing (diaries, letters, notebooks), but part of the conference will be reserved for papers concerned with the public representation of the self in all art forms. The conference aims at a multi-disciplinary approach to the subject. Papers will therefore be welcome from a wide range of specialists. Given the nature of the subject, proposals demonstrating a certain originality of approach will not be inappropriate.

If you are interested in this conference contact Sylvie Crinquand, UFR langues et communication, 2, bd Gabriel, 21000 Dijon. France Sylvie.Crinquand@u-bourgogne.fr .


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TRANSITIONS.
15-16 June, 2003. Joint conference of the Oral History Society and the Scottish Oral History Group, University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

The theme of the conference is 'Transitions,' which should be interpreted in the broadest of ways. Transitions in working patterns, in industry especially the oil industry given the conference location , the impact of incoming cultures, changes in health care and attitudes to wellbeing, and, controversially, changes in oral history itself.

Aberdeen is a lovely city for a conference. All sessions will be held in lecture theatres and rooms within the medieval campus and college bounds. Within the UK, it is easy and cheap to reach Aberdeen by either rail or plane and accommodation can be arranged on. Mark this weekend in your diary and we look forward to welcoming here next year.

One suggestion to make this conference a little bit different is to have an exhibition and display of the history of oral history. Suggestions for participants in this session are very welcome. There will be a call for papers in the autumn but if anyone is interested in contributing please contact Lesley Diack, Department of History, Crombie Annexe, Meston Walk, Aberdeen, AB24 3FX, tel 01224 273885 or email h.l.diack@abdn.ac.uk


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NARRATIVE, IDEOLOGY AND MYTH.
26-28 June, 2003, The Second Tampere Conference on Narrative, Tampere, Finland

Over the last three decades, the concept of narrative has successfully traveled from humanities to social, psychological and political studies - and to many other disciplines. Whatever this 'narrative turn' has engendered, it has not managed to produce any consensus of the ideological nature of narrativity. In recent critical literature, narratives have often been studied from the perspective of power, persuasion and ideology. In contrast, empirical narrative work in women's studies, health studies and sociology in general, typically understands narratives and storytelling as a form of emancipation, or 'giving a voice' to otherwise silenced groups.

This conference wants to find non-essentialist ways of discussing narrative, narrativity and storytelling. Different theories of narrative typically have one sort of narrative - be it historiography, oral life story, myth, novel, or film - as their point of departure. We would like to address the issue of social, cultural and political circulation of narratives, and study the different forms narrativity can take within social action.

We would like to address the issue of myth and persuasive, seductive narratives: the whole potentially 'murky side' of narrative. At the same time, we want to recognize the continuous need to hear and study narratives that are not yet heard. We want to raise the issue of narrative as a new way of theorizing and discussing social and political theory. 'Myth' as a persuasive, core narrative can thus be hidden in a social or political theory, in news release, personal life story, or appear as an explicitly discussed theme within fictional narrative. At the same time, we would like to question the whole opposition between the clarity of the concept and the 'darkness of the myth'. Is it possible to rethink our cultural and political belongings in a form of a constantly re-narrated story, as a founding myth without an origin? Can we - as critical scholars - for instance, investigate the relationship between 'nation' and 'narration' in a way that does not link us to a sort of cultural inevitability?

We invite all kind of narrative work that embarks on addressing these various faces of narrative. In particular, we look for papers that combine theoretical and empirical work on narrative, papers that have a genuinely interdisciplinary approach to the subject, and papers that try to find narrative forms of theorizing.

To apply, please send a 300-350 word abstract (as a message, not as an attached file) to: Tarja.Aaltonen@uta.fi and Matti.Hyvarinen@vip.fi. The deadline for applications (papers and panels): March 1, 2003.

The conference is organised by the University of Tampere. Research Institute for Social Sciences, the Finnish Network of Narrative Studies, the Politics and the Arts Group (Standing Group of the European Consortium for Political Research)

For more information contact: Dr. Matti Hyvarinen, Research Institute for Social Sciences (YTY), FIN-33014 University of Tampere, Finland. Tel: +358-3-2156 999 (0ffice) +358-3-260 9663 (Home): +358-3-2156 502 (fax) http://www.uta.fi/~ytmahy/. See also http://www.uta.fi/conference/PAG.


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XVI INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON LATIN AMERICAN INDIAN LITERATURES.
July 9-12, 2003, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Sponsored by: LAILA/ALILA (Latin American Indian Literatures Association/Asociación de Literaturas Indígenas Latinoamericanas), Centro Argentino de Etnología Americana - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas Area Transdepartamental de Folklore - Instituto Universitario Nacional del Arte.

The conference will focus on indigenous literatures and topics likely to be included are: orality, memory, myth, rituals, history, narrative and identity, chronicles and codices as narrative, indigenista literature, cosmology, natural and spiritual medicinal practices, African-Indigeneous traditions, mysticism, religious syncretism, archaeology, and the arts.

For more information contact:

Anatilde Idoyaga Molina, Coordinadora L.A./Europa: XVI Simposio Internacional 2002 LAILA/ALILA. Centro Argentino de Etnología Americana, Avenida de Mayo 1437 1 "A" (1085), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Tel/Fax: (54-11) 381-1821, Email: caea@sinectis.com.ar

Or James Barnhart-Park, U.S. Coordinator: 2003 XVI Internacional Symposium LAILA/ALILA, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures College, 2400 Chew Street, Allentown, PA 18104
Tel: (484) 664-3349; Fax: (484) 664-3536; email: jbarnhart@muhlenberg.edu


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'FROM ALL QUARTERS'
4-7 September, 2003, Oral History Association of Australia National Conference, Guildford Western Australia.

'From All Quarters' signifies inclusivity, encompassing delegates and presenters from all geographical areas; presentations covering all topics with an oral history component; delegates at all levels of expertise and experience. Papers and workshops will range over the whole field of oral history theory and practice. Examples might include:

For more information contact:

Margaret Hamilton, 10 Regelia Turn, Ellen Brook, WA 6069, tel/fax (08) 9296 9306, email guy12mar@ellenbrook.net, or Jan McCahon, 14 Letsom Way, Langford WA 6147. Tel: (08) 9470 4026, fax (08) 9470 4802, email: emailjan@iprimus.com.au.


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CREATING COMMUNITIES: CULTURES, NEIGHBORHOODS, INSTITUTIONS.
8-12 October, 2003. Oral History Association Annual Meeting, Bethesda, Maryland, Washington DC, USA.

The Oral History Association invites proposals for papers and presentation for its 2003 annual meeting to be held October 8-12, 2003 at the Hyatt Regency, Bethesda, Maryland. The meeting theme is 'Creating Communities: Cultures, Neighborhoods, Institutions.' The conference will be held in the Washington, D.C. area, a place where people of many different races and ethnic backgrounds live and work.

The conference will explore the diversity of community life, the social, political and economic forces that impact the creation and continuity of community, and the forms in which individuals have created communities. What is the lasting influence of the community to its members? How have communities changed to protect cultural identity while bringing inclusion and diversity to the history of community building? Through what means have individuals constituted communities through informal networks as well as within and through formal institutions? How have these communities mobilized to affect the worlds around them? Finally, as oral history practitioners, how do we reflect the meaning in oral history and give it back to the communities that partner in such projects?

For more information consult the OHA website: www.dickinson.edu/oha

For additional information, please contact the 2003 Program Chair:

Roger Horowitz, OHA Program Chair, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, DE, 302-658-2400, ext. 244, rh@UDel.Edu


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INHABITING MULTIPLE WORLDS: AUTO/BIOGRAPHY IN AN (ANTI)GLOBAL AGE.
15-20 March 2004. Fourth International Auto/Biography Association (IABA) Conference, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, 15-20 March 2004

What implications are there for life-writing in an age that is at once increasingly global and anti-global? In which locality, nationality, race, ethnicity and creed are becoming less important in some places and yet strongly resurgent in others? Many contemporary auto/biographers write of inhabiting multiple worlds, of living between different cultures, languages, ideologies, discourses, localities, domains, or dimensions of experience. Their narratives are often intersected by multiple allegiances, to here and there, past and present, actual and imagined, traditional and modern, centre and periphery, descent and consent. What does this signify? That living in multicultural societies and with rapid intercontinental travel, global media, education and communications, individuals are tending less and less to configure their identities simply within the confines of nation, locality, gender, ethnicity, or race? At the same time, there are signs that identity seems to be enacted by some writers as resistance to such things as linguistic and cultural homogenisation, immigration, multiculturalism, secularisation and economic transnationalism. Are we seeing the end of 'identity politics' or its transformation? The beginning of 'global culture' or the beginning of its end?

We welcome any topics or suggestions for panels that seem relevant to the overall theme. The following are a few suggestions:

Conference website at www.cuhk.edu.hk/eng

For more information contact: David Parker, Professor and Chair, Department of English, Acting Director, English Language Teaching Unit, Room 338 Fung King Hey Building, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin NT, Hong Kong

Phone: (852) 2609 7001/7006; fax: (852) 2603 5270;
http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/eng/


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FIFTH EUROPEAN SOCIAL SCIENCE HISTORY CONFERENCE.
24 - 27 March 2004, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.

The ESSHC aims at bringing together scholars interested in explaining historical phenomena using the methods of the social sciences. The Conference is characterized by a lively exchange in many small groups, rather than by formal plenary sessions. The Conference welcomes papers and sessions on any topic and any historical period. It is organised in a large number of networks: Africa, Antiquity, Asia, Criminal Justice, Culture, Economics, Education and Childhood, Elites, Ethnicity and Migration, Family and Demography, Geography, Health, History and Computing, Labour, Latin America, Middle Ages, Nations and Nationalism, Oral History, Politics, Religion, Rural, Sexuality, Social Inequality, Technology, Theory, Urban, Women and Gender, World History.

The Conference fee will be Euro 160 for participants who pay in advance, Euro 200 for participants who pay at the conference. One-day attendance will be Euro 80 for participants who pay in advance, and Euro 100 for participants who pay at the conference. The deadline for sending in a pre-registration form and abstract is 1 April 2003. The Fifth European Social Science History Conference is organised by the International Institute of Social History and the Humboldt University.

Further information and an electronic pre-registration form for the Conference can be obtained from the Conference Internet site at: http://www.iisg.nl/esshc or from the conference secretariat: European Social Science History Conference 2004, c/o International Institute of Social History, Cruquiusweg 31, 1019 AT Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Telephone: +31.20.66 858 66; Fax: +31.20.66 541 81; Email: esshc@iisg.nl


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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Next spring, Chinese scholars in Beijing and Hong Kong, interested in qualitative research and oral history, will be invited to come together to learn more about what oral history has to offer and about the International Association and its 2004 conference in Rome. Those people in China who want to stay informed about these plans can contact the editor of the Journal of Social Sciences Abroad (CASS), or Tineke E. Jansen (tejwrld@xs4all.nl), who will be residing in Beijing until Summer, 2003.


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Face to Face

Conference and Association reports

BRAZIL

At its VI National Conference the Brazilian Oral History Association (ABHO) elected a new directorate for the 2002-2004 period. The meeting entitled 'Time and Narrative' was held at Saõ Paulo University from 28 to 31 May 2002. Verena Alberti (CPDOC) was elected ABHO president during the meeting's final assembly. The new president released a cast of proposals for the 2002-2004 period which includes among others: 1) Increasing ABHO's role in the Brazilian scientific community; 2) Publicising ABHO as a reference for research and other projects for those who seek an intoduction to oral history; 3) Giving support to members' projects; 4) Consolidating ABHO's work in the different Brazilian regions; 5) Strengthening ABHO relationship with IOHA.

Marco Aurelio Santana
ABHO secretary - abho@bridge.com.br




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SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNALS

The Power of Oral History - Memory, Healing, Development'. XIIth International Oral History Conference, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. June 24-28, 2002.

From Tineke Jansen's report, written for the Journal Social Sciences Abroad of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, July/August 2002. Tineke is currently residing in Beijing and serving as an informal IOHA liaison to Chinese scholars:

Part of the power of oral history is its ability to keep many people, including its own scholars inquisitive. Amidst South Africa's thriving post-apartheid society, 'The Power of Oral History - Memory, Healing, Development,' was a well-chosen theme.

It brought delegates from the so-called 'South', including Nigeria, Kenya, Gabon, Cameroon, Botswana, Malaysia, Thailand, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and of course South Africa, to dialogue with oral historians from the US, UK, Canada, Italy, Spain, and Germany. Balancing the international character of the conference and the significance of local contexts, panels discussed issues of war, famine, political repression, land claims, religion, teaching and learning, gender, ethnicity, and migration. Plenary sessions were dedicated to the latest technological developments (the use of digital media and its impact on research and oral history writing), to African identities, memory and trauma.

A case in point of oral history's interdisciplinary potential around the theme of memory and trauma was sociologist Dr. Parita Mukta's presentation (University of Warwick). She recorded family history and memories across four generations in an Indian family from the Gujarat province. She found that 'hunger' emerged as central in the life stories. For, 'while it is correct that hunger arises out of an unequal structuring of the socio-economic structures, the memory of hunger sits in a very different realm indeed. Neither can "hunger" be captured within the all-encompassing term of "culture" (nor in an analysis of the play of cultural signifiers) for there is a dense material-personal-bodily-emotional-psychic force to this phenomenon which requires very serious attention. Dr. Mukta made one of the strongest cases for the use of oral sources as a means for understanding history and re-interpreting political and social phenomena. Her paper suggested that one might be more critical of public policy discourses which tend to subsume people's experiences under broad notions of development or alleviation of poverty.

This conference also highlighted IOHA's attempts to make links among countries in 'the South'. Many delegates from Africa (for whom travel to conferences is economically difficult) expressed appreciation for the opportunity to gain insight, for example, into Brazilians' experiences during that country's dictatorship, or to learn more about the Jewish diaspora. In her conclusion, Dr. Liz Gunner of the University of Natal stated that the conference had been successful in highlighting the important bridging role oral history can play in a divided society such as post-apartheid South Africa. With IOHA's global perspective still in the bud, this is a major challenge. Given the strengthening of European borders, and the isolationist tendencies in the US, oral historians will be challenged to build bridges in ever more dividing world.

From Don Ritchie's remarks at the closing plenary. Don is a past president of the U.S. Oral History Association and oral historian for the United States Senate:

…Delegates from nearly thirty countries are represented here in Pietermaritzburg, including those from eight nations in Africa…. It is fitting that this first IOHA meeting in Africa offered such a diverse portrait of oral history on the African continent, and much insight into the wide variation of African identities. The success of this meeting should encourage IOHA to consider future meeting sites elsewhere in Africa.

…The IOHA's global migration has been reflected in the rich diversity of presentations at this conference…. Individually, we work in different countries and different disciplines, interviewing different people for different purposes, and yet this meeting reminds us again of the strong commonalities in oral history.

The inadequacy of written documentation and traditional archives in times of sweeping change, as has occurred in post-Apartheid South Africa, has accelerated the need-and even the demand-for oral history. The democratic impulses of oral history have also convinced many practitioners, in the words of one speaker, that it 'time to hand the mike to the people.' Several of the presenters described projects that are training people in their communities, especially younger people, to collect interviews themselves.

…Still another commonality is the ability of oral history to confound rather than to confirm our assumptions. Those whom we interview constantly confront us with unexpected viewpoints. They can look us in the eye and tell us that we are wrong. The value of the interviews comes not from resisting such confounding information, but from listening to it, learning from it, evaluating it, and interpreting it. For instance, the interviewer who naturally assumed that return migrants-those who had immigrated to a new nation, failed, and returned home-would harbor bitter disappointments, was confronted with a series of positive memories about youthful adventures, regardless of the outcome, that as a group phenomena clearly represented something more than nostalgia. Interviews with Jamaican immigrants in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain similarly confront previous assumptions and stereotypes of the immigrant experience. Our Brazilian colleagues in particular are doing some fascinating studies of Portuguese migration, by comparing the experiences of immigrants to Portuguese-speaking Brazil and to non-Portuguese speaking countries such as Germany. Their interviews have recorded the profoundly dissimilar reactions of second and third generations of Portuguese immigrants to their new homelands, and their ties to the old country. Perhaps the most vivid memory I will take from this conference is that of a slide showing the monument that one immigrant, Manoel Giesteira, erected to commemorate his family and other immigrants on a hillside back in Portugal, demonstrating the powerful yearning of those who have left not to have their experiences forgotten. Rather than settling all of the scholarly issues about immigration and emigration, these studies in many ways are making the historical narrative far more complex, and much more interesting.

…For all the problems that the digital revolution poses, the Internet is drawing the global community closer together. Just as the IOHA depends on e-mail for its operations between meetings, the rest of us have access to an array of web sites where we can benefit from the wide variety of oral history around the globe. Presentations at this meeting amply demonstrated the creative use of the Internet for teaching, research, and the dissemination of oral history archives. …One caution of globalization is the inequality of resources between different regions. We must take care not to define oral history practices in such a way that privileges those who can afford the most sophisticated equipment. But it was encouraging to learn that all 54 nations in Africa now have access to the web, which offers hope that we can perpetuate dialogues begun here even as the IOHA moves to other continents.

…Finally, the array of oral history initiatives here in South Africa deserve special commendation. Several presentations focused on health issues and the therapeutic value of oral history, and the University of Natal, recognizing that the AIDS crisis is leaving a staggering number of orphans, has established the Memory Box Project, in which ailing parents record their life stories, from which children can better cope with the loss of parents, retain their family identities, and develop more resilience. Here in South Africa, where memory is a critical component of healing and reconciliation, a creative oral history program is underway to interview the leadership of the African National Congress. At Robben Island, former political prisoners are conducting oral histories with other former political prisoners. The University of Cape Town has recently launched a Centre for Popular Memory. These projects reflect a new awakening of oral history consciousness among government officials as well as among academic colleagues who previously neglected oral sources. The shift in that direction may be made even more amply clear in 2004 when the IOHA meets in Rome-an ancient city that is just discovering its more recent past. We can look forward to following these developments at our next reunion in Rome.

From Indiana University participant Jim Lane's "My South African Adventure:"

Monday, June 24: First day of the conference. Breakfasted with…Gunhan Danisman,…Paul Thompson…Humphrey from Pretoria, and Maori New Zealander Rachael. At the plenary session a Kwa-Zulu Natal official in full regalia welcomed us, and the university president made several references to the conference theme, "The Power of Oral History: Memory, Healing and Development" (non-practitioners are often our most elegant champions)…. Gave conference organizer Philippe my secretary Ginger's e-mail address in case Angie gives birth like happened two years ago with James. Philippe's smile reminds Kate of a young Jerry Lewis, whose movies had me in stitches as a kid…

Tuesday, June 25: Last evening's entertainment included a Zulu storyteller, topless teenage dancers, and a syncopated, soulful choir dressed to the nines. After an omelet, pancakes, and Maxwell House instant coffee, I learned about South African "Memory Boxes" for families of AIDS victims. A UCLA archivist related how four transcribers recreated the same interview quite differently (one reason I do all mine). Paul Thompson and Jamaican-Canadian Elaine Bauer analyzed "Mixed Relationships and Multicultural Identities." White Southerners called the phenomenon miscegenation; Hawaiians labeled their offspring cosmopolitan…. Such couplings are, I believe, the hope of the future. An intriguing paper by Alistair Thomson dealt with English returnees. Most recalled adventures in Australia as "the time of their lives." Could the same be said for Eastern Europeans who labored 72 hours a week in the steel mills of Gary, Indiana? Doubtful. Ran into Nigerian Funso [Afolayan] , whom I got to know while sailing down the Bosphorus two Junes ago with 2000 IOHA conference participants. Following an inspired pitch by Alessandro Portelli, members voted to meet next in Rome (great; I've never been to Italy although runner-up Barcelona would have been cool)….

Wednesday, June 26: A presentation on South Africa's Reconciliation project brought tears to my eyes. Affable breakfast companion William Schneider reported on an exciting Alaskan multi-media project…. Gunhan [Danisman] spoke engagingly about interviewing Bogazici U[niversity, Istambul] colleagues. … At a game preserve we gawked at giraffes, zebras, wildebeests, wart hogs, rhinos, and ostriches (including two getting it on)…. Submerged hippos made fantastic noises. No elephants unfortunately. Brazilians and I celebrated the team's World Cup 1-0 semifinal victory (it was on the radio)….

Thursday, June 27: At breakfast a Zimbabwean scholar claimed Mobutu had no choice but to accede to squatter demands. Wish former IUN colleague Rhiman Rotz were alive to get his reaction. He listened to Zimbabwe radio over the Internet. Perused my "Hospital Strike" paper one final time to make absolutely certain it came in under 20 minutes….

[Photos by Rina Benmayor]


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UNITED STATES

"Global Linkages: The Internationalization of Everyday Life," Annual Meeting of the Oral History Association, San Diego, California, October 23-27, 2002.

The Oral History Association's 2002 annual meeting was held in San Diego, California. The city's location near the U.S.-Mexican border, its racially diverse population, and its history as a military base all made it a highly appropriate setting for the conference's theme of "Global Linkages: The Internationalization of Everyday Life." Panels, events, performances, and tours were all designed to expand on those larger concerns.

Among the meeting's special events was a luncheon keynote address by Dr. George Lipsitz, professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego. His talk "Don't Cry for Me, Ike and Tina: Transnational Networks and Local Experiences" deftly set the stage for the conference and brought its themes into focus.

Themes of ethnic identity and racial oppression were the subject of two evening performances. Early on in the conference, members gathered to listen to the Latina Feminist Group's reading from Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios, a recently published collection of group members' own stories, poems, and memoirs. The selections offered rich, moving accounts of the participants' struggles as Latinas in the academy and in their personal lives and of the cultural connections and feminist beliefs that had sustained them. At the final Saturday night banquet, Marcos Martinez, a San Diego-based performer and associate professor of theater at California State University, San Marcos, staged his one-man show Holy Dirt, a piece which described a young Chicano's coming of age with humor and verve and offered a poignant take on issues of racial, political, and professional identity.

Because documentary films currently represent some of the most intriguing and influential uses of interview material, films figured prominently in conference presentations and in a plenary session. Plenary participants included Paul Espinosa, who specializes in documentary and dramatic films focusing on the U.S.-Mexico border region; Haskell Wexler, award-winning cinematographer and most recently director of Bus Rider's Union; and Garrett Scott, director of Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story, which deals with the decline of a white middle-class suburb since the end of the Cold War and touches on larger questions of U.S. military and foreign policy.

Conference panels dealt with a variety of issues relating to transnational migration, borders, diversity, and other issues pertinent to the theme of globalization. One session of particular note was the panel "Oral History and September 11: Bringing Coherence to Catastrophe," which reported on the Columbia University Oral History Research Office's project documenting responses to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Among the many workshops, the one most relevant to the conference theme was the one on community history, which focused on the Japanese American National Museum's Boyle Heights Project, an effort aimed at documenting the history of a multiethnic community in downtown Los Angeles.

Finally, a wide range of tours allowed conference participants to visit sites which illuminated the issues and history of Southern California and the Mexican/U.S. border region. The "Across the Mexican Border" tour took participants on a guided tour of Tijuana and dealt with issues involving the border and class disparities within the cityof Tijuana. Other tours included a visit to Chicano Park, a park established by community resistance to development in the 1970s and the site of numerous murals celebrating Chicano themes, and a tour to the Pala Indian Reservation and Mission San Luis Rey, which was established by the Franciscans in 1816.

As a whole, the 2002 annual conference was intended to give participants a sense of a particular region and the issues confronting it and to help them to see the way those issues were linked to national and global trends which affect and must concern us all. Conference presenters brought the fruits of their research to the meeting and articulated their viewpoints with feeling and flair.

Teresa Barnett and Jane Collings
Program Co-Chairs


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From Page to Mouth

New Projects

CZECH REPUBLIC

Miroslav Vanik writes:

The structural, political and social changes in November 1989 have opened new areas, ways and possibilities for Czech historians. Research on the "Normalization" period has become one of the main tasks of Czech historiography. For this reason, the Institute of Contemporary History has included the history of "Normalization" (1969 - 1989) among its research projects. It is true, however, that almost all this work has been done using "traditional" historical methods, based on archives and sources; the methods of oral history have rarely been used in Czech historiography even in the last decade of the past century, in contrast with other Western and Central European countries. The only major historical work in the Czech Republic based on oral history methods was the project "Students during the fall of the Communist Regime - Biographical Interviews". The result of this project was the 860 page book A Hundred Student Revolutions (M. Otáhal and M. Vanik). (M. Ot·hal - M. VanÏk, Sto studentsk˝ch revolucÌ. Studenti v obdobÌ p·du komunismu v "eskoslovensku: éivotopisn· vypr·vÏnÌ. [A Hundred Students Revolutions. Students during fall of the Communism in Czechoslovakia. Biographical Interviews], Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, Prague 1999, 860 pp.)

The Oral History Center at the Institute of Contemporary History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic was established on the 1 January 2000 as a platform to apply oral history methods to Czech historiography. For the first two years of its existence the Oral History Center directed by Miroslav Vanik has been struggling to equip the Center with modern technology commensurable with technology owned by similar institutions abroad. The Center also serves as an archive or deposit for all the records heretofore collected by projects that have - in part or generally - used oral history methods. Hundreds of cassettes have been collected from various projects. Another important task of the Center is to gather and preserve information about individual collections of interviews deposited in Czech universities, museums and private archives.

The Center wants to create appropriate and good conditions for publishing its own series of studies and works based on oral history methods. A planned series "Voices of the Past" should bring students (but not only them) a good opportunity to present their preliminary work on contemporary history. The main aim in this field of the Center´s activity is to develop a study of the theoretical problems and practical questions of oral history methods use, as well as to make lecture notes on oral history for the use of university students.

The Center tries hard to teach students in methodology, and to choose potential collaborators among them. The closest collaboration has already been established with history students at the Faculty of Arts, Palacky University, Olomouc, and with students at the Faculty of Humanities of the Charles University in Prague. The interest of universities and research centers in the practical use of oral history methods led to a paper delivered by M. Vanik at the Fourth Congress of Historians in Hradec Kralove in 1999.

The Center has also established contacts and various forms of collaboration with similarly oriented institutes abroad. The closest collaboration commenced in the recent years with the Center for Slavic, Eurasian & East European Studies (Honors Program), and the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and its Southern Oral History Program. In 2000 M. Vanik was on a four-month fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was concerned with the topic of oral history.

The Center has also established collaboration with the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Postdam, and takes part in a joint project with the Institut für Geschichttwissenschaften Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, on past and present political elites. The Center is in contact with the Milan äimeËka Foundation in Bratislava, and with other research centers in Slovakia. One of the large, financially and technologically most demanding tasks of the Center is to work up and deposit collected material (interviews). This is why the Center welcomes every opportunity to collaborate with the National Library on a joint project. The project, the main aim of which is to process out and open the recorded interviews, has been supported by a grant, given in 2001 by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. From July 2002 the Center has been a member of the International Oral History Association.

The essential task and aim of the Center is to pursue and exercise its own research program, whose main purpose is to analyze and explain certain historic events with the aid of oral history methods. The core of such research is not only in collecting recorded and transcribed material but also, and above all, in its interpretation. Therefore, the Center applied for a grant on the research project "Political Elites and Dissidents in the 'Normalization' Years. Biographical Interviews." The project has been funded for three years (2002 - 2004) by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic. Some independent projects ("Political Prisoners in the Period of the Communist Regime in Czechoslovakia", "Czechoslovak Émigrés in the Second half of the 20th Century", and "Break up of the Czechoslovak State in 1992") are in various stages of preparation.

The relevance of all the projects mentioned above resides in the fact that these projects are aimed at so-called "endangered groups", for a considerable number of potential narrators are old or elderly. The research team believes it highly appropriate therefore to concentrate scholarly attention without delay on these groups that represent an important and irreplaceable source for understanding recent Czech history.

Miroslav Vanik
Head of the Center of Oral History ICH - www.coh.usd.cas.cz


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CZECH REPUBLIC

The current project of the Center of Oral History of the Institute of Contemporary history CAS concerning political elites and dissidents in the 'Normalization' years follows up on the first project 'Students during the fall of the Communism regime: Biographical Interviews' (M. Otáhal - M. Vaněk, Sto studentských revolucí. Studenti v období pádu komunismu. Životopisná vyprávění [A Hundred Student Revolutions: Students during the fall of Communism. Biographical interviews.], Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, Prague 1999, 860p).

It will be concentrated on the investigation of society, and the changes in opinions and attitudes of individual strata of the population towards the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, during the 1970s - 1980s. Considering the state of research, the most important thing at this phase is to concentrate on the political elite and the dissidents who are sometimes labeled counter-elites. The results of the project would be an important contribution to the analysis of the nature of the 'Normalization' regime.

From a historical point of view, defining and explaining the term elite is not an easy task. In the pre-war period we recognized a particular group of distinguished, outstanding personalities, who had earned their place in the nation´s history in the fields of politics, economics, academia, culture, and sociology. The democratic tradition of the Czechoslovak Republic allowed the ranks of the elites to be open, yet at the same time 'the elite of the nation' praised the lifework of an individual. The Nazi occupation literally destroyed a large part of the traditional Czech elites, and subsequently the Communist regime destroyed their natural continuity as well as the very meaning of the term itself.

On the other hand, a historian cannot exclude from the rank the important regime opponents whose names have been generally known in society and who had been doing their best to re-establish a civil society in Czechoslovakia.

The narrators selected from the aforementioned groups will be asked to tell their life stories. The research is aimed at such problems, as the changes in the post of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and, especially, the principles of the exercise of Communist power; the relationship between the Communist Party and Czechoslovak state institutions; mutual relations between Party functionaries; decision-making; and also their private lives and ways of life. In the case of the dissidents, the research will study their mutual relations; the creation of the strategy and programs of various dissident groups; and changes in their relationship towards the regime. The oral history methods allow to 'read' a personal, subjective experience of history.

One of the aims of the project is to obtain a more precise knowledge about the everyday lives of the narrators. At the same time, biographical narration can contribute also to answering a number of more general questions, for instance the way in which political elites emerged in Communist Czechoslovakia, and who (and why) became part of them. The topic could also answer, what led dissidents to set themselves in opposition to the Communism.

The success of the project will depend mainly on the selection of narrators. The researchers will make use of the lists and statistics of the Communist nomenclature, as well as of the 'snowballing' approach. In choosing the subjects for biographical narration, their status in the Communist apparatus will not play a decisive role. It is true, however, that priority will rightly be given to functionaries at the lower levels. This approach will also be applied to the dissidents. In this area, research activity will be directed towards the biographies of 'rank-and-file' and 'regional' dissidents. The task will be made easier because of the previous research of the Center oriented to ward younger opposition groups (resulting in an edited collection entitled Islands of Freedom).

The research team is well aware that some of potential interviewees might not be willing to cooperate. This is why the anticipated number of narrators approached, will probably be much larger than the number of those actually interviewed.

In spite of all these problems and difficulties, there is real hope that the project will bring broader knowledge of the period examined, as well as of the development of oral history method itself.

Miroslav Vanik
Head of the Center of Oral History ICH - www.coh.usd.cas.cz


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DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

The Oral History of Diseases Archives Project (OHDAP) is research initiated by scholars from the University of Lubumbashi (Democratic Republic of Congo) following the request of participants to the workshop: "Sickness and Disability". This workshop was part of the twelfth International Oral History Conference organized in Pietmaritzburg, South Africa, in June 2002. This research aims at collecting most different oral data which can enable the writing of the history of diseases, sick people, people's health as well as beliefs and creeds to be considered as the outcome of the first.

The research is about collecting available data so as to get a bank of data on medical and sanitary situations of Africans. In this way, pertinent themes may be analysed on the basis of these very data. Using oral sources in the study of the history of Congo or Central Africa is not a new phenomenon. They were used for the first time by Jan Vansina in the decade 1960-1970 when he used the Oral tradition to study the political history of Central African pre-colonial societies. After him, historians and Africanists interested in such a theme have since then used them. (Jan Vansina (1960), 'Recording the Oral History of the Bakuba', Journal of African History, I,1 pp.45-54,I,2, pp.257-270; (1961; De la tradition orale. Essai de la méthode historique, Tervuren; Jan VANSINA (1985), Oral tradition as history, London).


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MEXICO

Dr Rosa Martha Romo Betrán writes about her new project, ' A cultural history of the psychology career in the University of Guadalajara: foundational spaces' .

She explains that the objective of this work is 'to reconstruct some of the 'foundational myths' related to the career of psychology at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico. The testimonies recollected by means of qualitative field work in a now finished research project, were of a group of 15 professors who represent leadership positions and are founders of the psychology course studies in the history of the Institution.

This line of academic work was constructed and modified by the perception of these key professionals in the educational institution in question here. An inclusive approach made it possible with the presence of the voices of the 'common man', the subject that arrives to us from the past. and gives life and movement to the institutional and personal histories. These histories result from a permanent process of creation.

From the perspective of cultural history, I returned to first hand testimonies which were complemented with file data, with the purpose of arming the 'institutional novel'. In this way, we can understand how access to culture begins when an individual becomes the narrator, when that person defines the common place of speech and the autonomous space of its development. The trivial, far from being the 'Other' suffers transformation in the very space that the subject occupies, in such a way that the access to culture takes place in the narrative of the 'ordinary man', the landing point of a passage.

I also incorporated my informants' idea of passage; the path the professors take from the time of their graduation from college or postgraduate studies to their incorporation into the University of Guadalajara; that is, their entire institutional life. This process requires first hand stores, with the intention of recuperating the collective memory which is fundamentally active memory. This is the memory that the researcher uses to create the stories and reconstruct particular histories and meaning.

Dr Beltran is: Profesora investigadora, Universidad de Guadalajara (UdeG), Profesora titular Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO), México. Her email address is: rosam100@hotmail.com, rosamrb@avantel.net.



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UNITED KINGDOM

Padmini Broomfield writes with news of a project which is seeking to preserve the heritage of the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua

'Over 3 weeks in May - June 2002, oral historians Cynara Davies and Padmini Broomfield from Southampton Oral History Unit, travelled to the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua to deliver oral history training workshops at URACCAN (University of the Autonomous Region of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua). The project was initiated when a Sociology lecturer from URACCAN visited the Oral History Unit and, deeply inspired by the unit's community based work, suggested developing links for future co-operation.'

'The Oral History Unit, Southampton City Council has been recording life stories of local people since 1983 and currently holds over 700 life story recordings and related photographs documenting the social history of Southampton. See www.southampton.gov.uk/leisure/oralhistory'

'URACCAN was founded in 1995 with the mission to "to develop the human resources of the autonomous region, enable its people to take control of their own economic resources, and rescue, revitalise and maintain their cultures and languages."

'The Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua is home to 6 different indigenous and ethnic groups - Rama, Sumu, Miskitu, Creole, Garifuna and Mestizo, all with rich oral traditions and languages, some of which are in danger of being lost forever. URACCAN had identified the need for more historical research by the region's own people as important to strengthen the ethnic and cultural identity of each group and to encourage mutual understanding between them. Oral history was seen as the ideal process with which to achieve this. There have been some attempts to develop oral history in the region, but these have not been sustained due to a perceived need for training.

'We presented a series of 4-day training workshops at the Bilwi and Bluefields campuses of URACCAN. A total of 40 people, including university lecturers, students, school teachers and local community workers, participated in 4 stimulating sessions, which resulted in several projects planned to document the languages, traditions and cultures of the region.

'The sessions incorporated oral history methodology and involved exploring the practical and ethical issues of the interview process; interactive exercises in listening and interviewing skills; practical experience and feedback. The discussions were lively and interesting and highlighted the various issues that might come up while working in a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual society. The advantages of a flexible approach in life story interviews were compared with questionnaire-based interviews on specific topics. The participants recorded short practice interviews with local residents and met again to discuss issues arising in the actual interview situation.

'The groups also brainstormed ideas for future oral history projects. Potential topics suggested included documenting the history of the various companies that thrived in the region such as the timber, banana, mining; the traditions and culture of the Sumu, Miskitu, Rama and Garifuna communities; the Creole language; and local people's experiences during the war. A project recording the history of Bluefields which celebrates its 100th anniversary as a city has been initiated, with further plans to establish a museum for the city.

'The participants then identified activities and products that could result from the interviews. In addition to recording memories, they planned to collect old photographs and objects that could be used in exhibitions, publications, and to set up a museum. Increasing access to the material was seen as important and they suggested community venues where the work could be shared with the community. Other planned projects include encouraging young people to acknowledge their heritage and take pride in their identity; developing educational materials on Atlantic Coast history; use of dance and music of the region to involve young people in the activities; and complementing and extending the significant efforts at introducing bilingual education in the different communities.

'Previous attempts at collecting oral testimony had been made by individual academics and there was now a need to collect the material in a systematic and organised archive, which would form a useful resource of the history of the region. Project co-ordinators were identified in each of the two campuses to act as a link person for the various projects taking place.

'Feedback from the participants was extremely positive and we propose to provide on-going support to help establish a long-term future for the oral history projects:

"The training was dynamic … we were allowed to participate by sharing our experiences. I'm sure we'll be able to do a good job with the preparation they've given us. We're grateful for your support otherwise we wouldn't know where to start." (Erna Walters, Bluefields)

"It was inspiring to think of ways we could document all the experiences of the population here, like the war and burning of Waspan, but also the small personal side of history which is often more interesting than dates and events." (Helen Duffy, Bilwi)

'Since returning to the UK we have been informed that URACCAN are in the process of cascading the training to several communities in outlying areas in response to local demands. The British Embassy in Managua and Oxfam have expressed an interest in the project and are offering support for the next stage.'

For more information contact: Padmini Broomfield, Community History Officer, Southampton City Council,
email: p.broomfield@southampton.gov.uk.



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Archive Stories

SOUTH AFRICA

The Centre for Popular Memory (CPM) in Cape Town, South Africa has an archive of over 1000 hours of audio. It involves 15 years worth of interviews with people telling their stories. We have a number of collections from life stories, to forced removals during apartheid in SA, to health and HIV, Trauma and Violence, Immigrants coming to South Africa and peoples stories around popular culture, politics and contemporary life. Over the last year and a half we have been finding ways to use and create access to our collections and the centre digitally and via the WWW. We have updated and expanded our website and set up a mirror site in the US, for quicker access from abroad.

Through a partnership with the Matrix centre we have acquired the technology to create digital copies of our audio and have been building a meta data repository for this digital information. While the development of digital solutions and accessibility is one way to increase traffic to our archive, we are also concentrating on using technology to increase the presence of people's stories outside of the archive walls. We have just completed another year of training in oral history interviewing skills and dissemination processes. This year we have included an audio-visual exhibition as part of the intern-training programme. This has meant that's interviewee's stories are used to construct a full visual (and aural) exhibition, which allows us to not only 'give back' to interviewee's, but provides a forum for further discussion, acknowledges the value of people's stories and provides differing views on history in South Africa. The CPM is also creating a publication around space, memory and culture in Cape Town. The book, as with all dissemination projects at the CPM, uses oral history interviews as its core. For us digitisation and archiving are ways to preserve, but also celebrate the living history of our country and the people that live within it.

Renate Meyer
Audio Visual Archivist, Centre for Popular Memory
www.popularmemory.org - www.uct.ac.za/depts/cfpm



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From Mouth to Page

Journals

ORAL HISTORY - Vol 30, no 2, 2002

ARTICLES:
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No Place Like Home: Recording The Struggle For Housing And Work Under Apartheid. Peter Kellett, Mary Mothwa and Mark Napier.
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Recapturing Distant Caribbean Childhoods And Communities: The Shaping Of Memory In The Testimonies Of Jamaican Migrants In Britain And North America. Paul Thompson and Elaine Bauer.
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A Passage To England: Oral Tradition And Popular Culture Among Early Punjabi Settlers In Britain. Darshan S Tatla.
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Listen To Me! A Question Of Ownership. Noël Menuge with Sue Quinn and Sue Westell.
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Collecting Personal Accounts Of The Lewes Floods Of October 2000 And Their Aftermath. Joy Preston.

PUBLIC HISTORY
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Conflicting Histories: Approaching The Ethnic History Of Ireland. Anthony D Buckley.

FUNDING
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Talking About Technology: One Experience Of Heritage Lottery Funding. Frances Cambrook.

TECHNOLOGY
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'All Or Nothing': Current And Future Recording Technologies For Oral History. Peter Copeland and Barry Fox with Rob Perks.

Oral History Society website: http://www.oralhistory.org.uk



HISTORIA, ANTROPOLOGÍA Y FUENTES ORALES - NÚM. 27 (2002)
Appearance and Commitment

Sta. Llúcia, 1. 08002 Barcelona. España.
E-mail: ahcbhafo@trivium.gh.ub.es. web: www.hayfo.com

EDITORIAL

SYMBOLIC INVERSIONS
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"Sound and Light" at the Acropolis in Athens. Elizabeth Marlowe
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European Tourists at the Top End in the North of Australia. Helen Andreoni
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Patrimony, Memory, and Experience in Cappadocia. Hazel Tucker

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Memory and Orality among the "Night Ladies." Maria Jose Bezerra

LEADERSHIP AND SOLITUDE
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Maria Jose Sirera Oliag, Historian and Labor Leader. Mercedes Vilanova
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Cristian Commitment and Militancy of the Left. Francisco Martinez Hoyos
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Controversial Letters: The De-Cloistering of Maria Jose Sierra. Ma. Julia de Eguillor
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Travelers of Heaven in Brazil. Antonio Torres Montenegro
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The Mysterious Working Class. Sven B. Ek

ARCHIVES
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Critique of the Stereotyped and Antidemocratic Models of Collective Memory. R. Schulmaister
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Oral Sources in the Archives: Challenges and Problems. Dora Scwarzstein


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Websites

www.studsterkel.org/

Produced by the Chicago Historical Society, this website looks at the life and work of Studs Terkel, one of the world's most important oral historians. Organized into galleries that are largely centered around the extensive interviews that Studs did for his books, Division Street, Hard Times, The Good War, Race and Talking to Myself. Each gallery contains dozens of audio clips of these interviews. The website also contains a multimedia interview with Studs Terkel, featuring him talking about his books, writing oral history, and documenting everyday life in the United States.



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Put it in Writing

WORDS AND SILENCES

Annual Journal in English and Spanish of the International Oral History Association

Call for Papers for 2003 Issue:

Words and Silences, the annual journal of the International Oral History Association (http://www.ioha.fgr.br), is seeking short articles for its 2003 issue.

The next edition of Words and Silences will be thematic, on the subject of politics and oral history. We are seeking, as on previous occasions, short, original and reflexive contributions. Many of us have undertaken research with explicit political purposes, or at least with an implicit political intention. We would like to receive short pieces which describe the experience and reflect upon achievements and failures, compare expectations to results, confront questions of ethics and objectivity, asses if oral history enriched the political perspective. In other words, short texts analyzing any of the many aspects involved in the relationship between oral history and politics.

We are also adding a new section on practical problems concerning research, publication and conservation of oral sources. For the next issue we would like to receive contributions dealing with difficulties and solutions arising while creating or organizing an oral history collection.

The essays may be written in English or Spanish (or both, which would save us translation work) and should not exceed 500 words and references, if necessary, should be included in the text (author, title, publisher and date) and not as footnotes.

Please email your contribution as an attachment in Word or RTF format to: gnecoechea.deh@deh.inah.gob.mx

The DEADLINE for receipt of contributions is 20 DECEMBER 2002.

Please pass this request on to other oral historians.



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IOHA Newsletter Guidelines and Deadlines:

Copy is preferred as Microsoft Word attachment. Footnotes included in items should be included only in parentheses and not formatted.

Images and illustrations should be scanned at 72dpi, and sent in jpg or pic formats.

Send via e-mail to both co-editors:

    Joanna Bornat: j.bornat@open.ac.uk
    Rina Benmayor: Rina_Benmayor@csumb.edu

Maximum Length:
    · Future conferences, meetings, and other announcements - 250 words
    · Conference reports - 500 words
    · Archive News - 500 words
    · New Projects - 1000 words

Deadlines:
    · October 15 - posted to website in January.
    · April 15 - posted to website in June


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IOHA Membership Details

The International Oral History Association (IOHA) was formally constituted in June 1996 at the IXth International Oral History Conference in Goteborg, Sweden. The Association provides a forum for oral historians around the world, in order to foster international communication and cooperation and a better understanding of the nature and value of oral history. Benefits of membership include:

  • concessionary rates for the biennial international oral history conferences
  • copies of Words and Silences, the annual, bilingual (English and Spanish) Journal of the IOHA (containing oral history articles, an index of oral history journals from around the world, special items and commentaries on oral history issues)
  • access to the IOHA home page on the world wide web
  • access to IOHA News, the on-line newsletter of the Association
  • voting rights at the Association's General Meetings and Council elections
  • active participation in the international community of oral historians.

Membership is open to any individual or institution supporting the aims and objectives of the Association. The Association is governed by a Council elected at the General Meeting of the biennial international oral history conference. The President of the Association is Marieta de Moraes Ferreira from Brazil and current Council members come from Australia, Brazil, England, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, Sudan, Turkey and the United States.

For membership forms, go to Membership on the IOHA website. For enquiries e-mail the Association's treasurer, Almut Leh (almut.leh@fernuni-hagen.de).

Fees for two-year membership (July 2000 - June 2002)
    · Individuals: 46 Euros
    · Institutions: 92 Euros
    · Students: 23 Euros




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