International Oral History Association
(Published each four months)
Number 5, December,
1999
Starting in early October, the IOHA web-site address was changed to: http://www.bcn.es/tjussana/ioha. We Spanish members of IOHA hope that we can keep up the level of information and broaden the range of contents. We thank you, and urge you to let us have comments or questions related to the web-page, sending these to the following e-mail address: ahcbhafo@trivium.gh.ub.es or by conventional mail to: Sta. Lucia, 1.08002 Barcelona, Spain.
World of Words
Listening to the Voices of the Black Clergy
(University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, 30th June to 3rd of July, 1999). Organised by the Oral History Project of the University of Natal's School of Theology, and entitled "Listening To Their Voices: The Black Clergy under Colonialism and Apartheid" FROM MOUTH TO PAGE, the international conference took place from the 30th of June to the 3rd of July 1999, with the aim presenting and discussing the research project on the black clergy under apartheid in Natal, which, since 1996, has been directed by Philip Denis, Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Natal, and author of the book The Casspir and the Cross: Voices of Black Clergy in the Natal Midlands (1999). The congress included contributions by specialists in oral sources and in literature, psychologists, theologians, historians and archive keepers regarding memory, orality and history. A special section was devoted to the history of the black clergy, in South Africa and in Southern African countries such as Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia. The bulk of this research was based on oral-history testimonials. More than 100 people from various countries attended, and there were 24 presentations. The forthcoming research project of the School of Theology will focus on black women's Christian organisations in KwaZulu-Natal.
Face to Face
XIth International Oral History Conference
(Istambul, Turkey, 15th - 19th of June, 2000). The web-site address of the XIth Conference is: http://www.IOHA11.boun.edu.tr. All information regarding enrolment procedures and fees, presentations, addresses and deadlines for submission of abstracts, the University of Bogacizi, where the Conference is to be held, tourist visits, etc., can be found at this address. With regard to accommodation, the organisers offer plentiful, detailed information, with photos, about the various hotels available, whose rates, generally, are around 70 dollars for a single room, and 80 dollars for a double one. Furthermore, the list of hotels contains two higher-class ones. Hotel reservations should be confirmed by depositing 25% of the total cost in the bank account assigned for the purpose, before the 1st of March, 2000.
At the beginning of a new millennium, The Ninth Annual Wilma E. Grote Symposium for the Advancement of Women (March 26-28, 2000, Morehead State University, Morehead, KY) will take stock of women's issues and advancements in a variety of areas. We invite scholars, students, and other interested individuals to submit papers, panels, creative productions, and roundtable discussions that center on the theme of the symposium, "Coming of Age." This theme is open to multiple interpretations, including the following: The Future of Feminism; Women and Issues of Aging and Health; After the Glass Ceiling?; Women's Values in the Corporate World and Global Economy; "Girl Power": The Third Wave?; Women's Rights as Human Rights in the 21st Century; Women's Future in Math, Science, and Technology; Women's Prospects in the non-Western world; Appalachian Women: Economic and Social Empowerment. All proposals must include five copies of a one-page abstract of your paper, panel, creative production, or roundtable that includes its relation to the symposium theme; a cover sheet that includes a title, presenter's(s') name(s), address(es) (including e-mail), phone number(s), and a brief biographical sketch of each participant, and a description of any audiovisual, multimedia, or other equipment needed. PROPOSALS MUST BE POSTMARKED BY DEC. 28 AND SENT TO: Grote Symposium, Susan A. Eacker, Coordinator, UPO 993, Morehead State University, Morehead, KY 40351, Telephone: (606) 783-2015, FAX: (606) 783-5047. FOR UPDATES ON FEATURED SPEAKERS, VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT: http://www.morehead-st.edu/womensymposium/
From Mouth to Page
The magazine History, Anthropology and Oral Sources announces its 22nd issue, corresponding to the second half of 1999, which, under the heading "EQUALITY = PARITY?", contains the following articles: "The women's complaint", by Joan.W.Scott; "Do Women Represent Women?", by Jane Mainsbridge; "Parity: Why Not?", by Françoise Gaspard; "The Third Way and Gender Parity", by Anna Coote, "Women and the New Labour Movement", by Harriet Harman, "Sex Workers in Madison Wisconsin", by Kirsten Pullen; "The Sexuality of Women Workers in Manhattan (1900 - 1920), by Val Marie Johnson; "Commentary to K.Pullen and V.M. Johnson", by Jessica Natahanson; "The Supermodel as Cultural Emblem", by Patricia Soley Beltrán; "Hunger in the Collective Memory", by Irene Bandhauer-Schöffman; "An Austrian Soldier in the Wehrmacht", by Ela Hornung; "Stroll Through the City and National Project", by Peter Billing and roger Johansson; "A Narrative-Democracy Project", by Tereza Burmeister; "Memory and Landscape", by Jaqueline Bishop.
The book Orality, text and history: For reading oral history, by Alberto Lins Caldas was published recently (Ediçöes Loyola, Sao Paulo, 1999, 132 pp). The book aims at analysing how oral history has become a discipline with little awareness of its discourse, and what a discourse basically is. Oral history contributes both to a revision of the human sciences, and to a knowledge of itself, analysing and proposing other paradigms. The aim is to provide bases for an oral history which is aware of its commitment to change, and is capable of restructuring the task of the historian. The book is divided into two large sections. The first section constitutes a critique of knowledge, of the naturalisation and universalisation of Western paradigms, proposing a hermeneutics of the present as means to debate and resistance. In the second section, the author outlines the dialogue of this hermeneutics with oral history, based especially on the work of José Carlos Seba Bom Meihy, thus combining theories, methods and procedures which seek a greater autonomy of reflection about oral history. Among the book's chapter's are: Time and Memory; The Time of Oral History; Memory; Textual Psychology, Oral History, Fiction and Reality; Recording, Interview, Transcription, Interpretation and Reading.
News from the Brazilian Oral History Association
Founded in 1994, this association has distinguished itself as one of the most dynamic associations at country level, bringing together a considerable number of researchers who use oral-history methodology. Due to the enormous size of the country, the BOHA is divided into five regions (North, South, Northwest, Southwest, Center-West), all of which are very active and constantly expanding. During the past year (1998-1999), the five regions held encounters which brought together local researchers, with the participation of international and Brazilian specialists in forums and mini-courses. These meetings were attended by between 200 and 300 researchers, and featured the presentation and discussion of works presenting the results of the research carried out by the researchers from the various working groups. The next national meeting of the BOHA will be held in Belo Horizonte on the 24th and 36th of November, and its central theme will be that of Oral History and Language, tackled in two round tables - the first devoted to Oral History and Memory, and the second to Narratives and Oral History. The Association has kept very busy in the publications field, publishing two issues of the magazine BOHA Oral History, which brings together important Brazilian contributions, as well as divulging international works, translated into Portuguese. Finally, it is worth emphasising the high quality of the BOHA's Bulletin , a publication very well-received by researchers, whose thousand copies quickly run out. For further information, please contact Olga Rodrigues de Moraes von Simson, President of the Brazilian Oral History Association, at: cmemoria@turing.unicamp.br.
The Encyclopedia of Life Writing
In Autumn 2000 Fitzroy Dearborn will publish the Encyclopedia of Life Writing, the first large-scale reference work to tackle this subject area. The Encyclopedia will contain 800-plus large-format, double-column pages, and will include some 600 entries on the various forms of auto/biographical writing that constitute the field now known as "life writing". The Encyclopedia will include entries on genres and sub-genres, national/ regional/language traditions, important auto/biographical writers, as well as articles on related areas such as oral history, anthropology, and testimonies. As the interdisciplinary and broadly inclusive term "life writing" suggests, the intent of this project is to explore not only autobiography and biography, but also letters, diaries, memoirs, family histories, case histories, and other ways in which individual lives have been recorded. The entries will look at life writing from Classical times to the present, and will devote entries to its principal manifestations from around the world in addition to analysing English-language traditions. The Encyclopedia is aimed at all those studying, researching, or teaching any aspect of life writing, as well as the general reader with an interest in exploring the subject. The full list of the book's 650 entries, as well as a regularly updated list of unassigned entries, can be on the website: http://www.fitzroydearborn.com/london/lifew.htm. The editor, Margaretta Jolly, currently teaches literature and life history at the University of Sussex, Brighton, England. Her published work focuses on the aesthetics of letter-writing, particularly in relation to class and gender. She is also a fellow of the Mass-Observation Archive, based at Sussex, which collects writing by volunteer diarists about everyday life. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers has editorial and marketing offices in London and Chicago, and specializes in academic-quality reference books for libraries. (Full information on the publishers may be found on FDP's main website at http://www.fitzroydearborn.com)
Brazilian Exile Between 1964 & 1979
Denise Rollemberg's doctoral thesis, entitled "Exile: Between Roots and Radars", has been published by Record Publishers and the Livraría do Museu de Brasil. This work reconstructs then history of Brazilian exile between 1964 and 1979, based on the exiles accounts of their own lives. The author posits an interpretation of exile as an attempt to eliminate a whole generate of peoples' militants who questioned the status quo created by the 1964 'coup d´état'. The book reconstructs the feeling of loss of roots and loss which attach to the experience of exile, but, at the same time, it studies the lessons and enrichment attendant on that very experience. The tour proposed by the author begins with the departures from Brazil and the arrivals in the host country. Adaptation to strange environments, work, study, and the militancy and solidarity arising from the exiles' political endeavours are all analysed, and, finally, part of the research deals with the return to Brazil, after the declaration of amnesty, reviewing and interpreting the impact on the returnees of re-entry to the realities of Brazilian society.
Put it in Writing
A New Oral History Group in Peru
At the 'Pontífica Universidad Católica del Perú', an oral history group -GHOPUCP- has been set up, as a result of the initiative of a group of young historians from our university who are interested in the methodology of oral history. It is a matter of an interdisciplinary center dedicated to learning, research and dissemination, which brings together researchers interested in oral-history methodology. Initially, GHOPUCP has been formed by five members from the History Department -Roisida Aguilar, Isaac Cazoria, Carlos Chávez, Javier Gómez, and Rosa Troncoso- who profess a profound interest in developing oral history in their country, all the more so given that their academic center is at the forefront of this type of research. In 1995, they carried out the first research using oral-history methodology, with the project entitled "The Peruvian 'Tarapaquennos': Testimonials od Their History", which produced over 230 hours of audio- and 10 hours of video-recordings of interviews with 46 'Tarapaquennos'. The second project underway is about the history of their university: "Testimonials which cast light on the future", which began in May of 1998, and, to date, gas recorded 333 hours of interviews with 132 subjects. Their aims are, among other things, to encourage a multidisciplinary research space, which hinges principally around oral history; to go on a with a line of research involving the creation of oral sources; to develop the methodology of oral history, via a permanent forum for theoretical discussions; to further contact with like-minded centers and researchers in other countries. For further information: Rosa Troncoso (rtronco@pucp.edu.pe) Carlos Chávez (cchavez@pucp.edu.pe) or Isaac Cazoria (icazorl@pucp.edu.pe).
Central Memory Project, Universidad Nacional de Salta (ARGENTINA)
A group of teachers
and students of the Faculty of Humanities of the 'Universidad Nacional
de Salta' is organising a memory center, based on the production
of interviews related to
problems in the area
of work, histories of neighbourhoods, etc, supported by lectures and research
projects at the university. The group would like to receive information
about: study material related to these themes, congresses, exchange
possibilities, possibilities of scholarships or research financing, the
setting up of oral-history archives. They hope to hear from members, in
order to continue conversing on this topic of common interest. Mariangela
Aguilar: maguilar@unas.edu.ar.
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