Oral History Collection Research Articles

Pier 21: A History by Steven Schwinghamer and Jan Raska

Reviewed by: Pier 21: A History by Steven Schwinghamer and Jan Raska Lisa Chilton Schwinghamer, Steven and Jan Raska – Pier 21: A History. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2020. 277 p. For historians of Canadian immigration, Pier 21 holds a position of literal and symbolic importance. During the nineteenth century, transatlantic migration directly into Canada was largely channelled through the immigration facilities at the port at the City of Québec, and to a lesser degree at Saint John, New Brunswick. From the early twentieth century, Halifax became an increasingly important entry point, first at Pier 2 and then at Pier 21. Between 1928 and 1971, the purpose-built immigration facilities at Pier 21, Halifax, processed nearly one million newcomers, and for a period after the Second World War, the facility processed more immigrants than any other Canadian point of entry. Whereas other buildings that served for a time as major immigrant-processing locations no longer exist, the structure designed and built at Pier 21 to manage the flow of people moving between ship and land is still intact. It is for this reason that Pier 21 became the site of the Canadian Museum of Immigration in 2009. The space that served for decades as Canada’s primary institutional representation of managed migration now contains a carefully curated, politically sensitive exploration of the nation’s relationship with that history. Pier 21: A History might be considered the textual embodiment of Pier 21, the national museum. Written by Steven Schwinghamer and Jan Raska, two of the museum’s staff historians, Pier 21 provides a richly detailed study of this important institution. Like the museum itself, the book foregrounds individuals’ stories to tell the larger history. Schwinghamer and Raska draw upon the extensive collection of oral histories and written personal reflections available to them at the museum to draw out a wide variety of perspectives: they have tried to give voice to people of all ages, ethnicities, political orientations, and reasons for being at Pier 21 in this book. Pier 21 was designed to process migrants, but one of the first things we learn in this book is that mobilization for war meant that for many years the people who made use of the immigration port buildings were military and military-adjacent personnel, whose relationships with this space were likely to be radically different from those of newcomers. Moreover, as the authors note in their introduction, the diversity of experiences recalled by the immigrants, and the different perspectives and attitudes of the many employees and volunteers who also recounted their observations, might suggest that there were, in fact, many different spaces through which these people moved, with some being warm, friendly, and thoroughly welcoming, and others cold, inhospitable, and even threatening. As a federal gateway institution, Pier 21 [End Page 704] served both to convey the idea that Canada was a desirable place to settle, and to ensure that “undesirables” would be kept out. The experiences of individuals and groups of immigrants, and how these people emotionally responded to their experiences, are at the heart of Pier 21. But the book is also about the development and evolution of the institution as a physical structure. Schwinghamer and Raska lay out a detailed history of the design, construction, and repurposing of the pier’s built environment over time. As with most institutional histories, the narrative reveals that the Pier 21 project was undermined by inadequate funding, fraught politics, and unfortunate circumstances. Schwinghamer and Raska argue that from its earliest conception, Pier 21 was marked by the fact that big business—especially associated with the major transportation companies—was a more influential force in the determination of the institution’s placement and design than any other consideration, including the expert opinion of the government agency leadership that was tasked with managing immigration. It’s a compelling argument, and one that brings into focus the extent to which considerations other than the needs of the immigrants or the frontline immigration agents were prioritized by people holding political power. Economic arguments and political connections tended to set the terms, with sometimes disappointing outcomes for those who would actually use the constructed space. Finally, while...

Preserving a Pandemic with Zoom: The National Nordic Museum’s COVID-19 Oral History Project

In April 2020, the National Nordic Museum (NNM) in Seattle launched an oral history initiative titled “A Pandemic Preserved: The COVID-19 Crisis in the Nordic Countries and the Pacific Northwest.” Utilizing the video conferencing platform Zoom, the NNM has collected the stories of individuals impacted by the coronavirus in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Washington state, the first reported epicenter in the United States. Augmenting an existing collection of more than 900 oral history interviews, “A Pandemic Preserved” privileges current perspectives of ongoing events over retrospection. With the consent of the participants, the recordings are made accessible to researchers through the Museum’s collection management system (CMS), as well as promoted periodically to a general audience through social media channels to foster online engagement during closure. This article will examine the project’s scope, execution, products, dissemination to academic and general audiences, and relation to the NNM’s existing oral history collection. It will also consider how a project that captures response to a global health crisis realizes the Museum’s collecting goals in comparative and area studies.

Oral History and Football Practice in Brazil: From an Emerging Methodology and Field of Study to a Critical Review of the ‘Country of Football’ from the 1970s to the 2010s

During the late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century, local players and clubs claimed urban spaces for the practice of ‘futebol de várzea’ (amateur football) in several Brazilian cities, including the state capital of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte. Case studies of these processes reveal new aspects of the Brazilian sports universe. A collection of oral histories from players and clubs illuminate a more diverse array of approaches to the community dimensions of Brazilian football culture when compared to the international image of the nation in scholarship on ‘the country of football’. This study uses sources and methods from oral history innovations as it developed in Brazil as well as contextualizing the introduction and evolution of football studies in the country from the 1970s when the field was not recognized by academia to the contemporary period when research on the topic has produced significant qualitative and quantitative studies recognized by scholars in many disciplines.

These Stories Must Be Told: Preliminary Observations by a Black Scholar Practitioner on Silences in the Archive

As a scholar practitioner, a trained philosophical theologian, Methodist clergywoman, and social enterprise founder who is conducting oral histories as part of my doctoral internship in the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute, my scholarly lens and methodological skills are being defined as I interrogate the COVID-19 archive. In this article I attempt to offer some preliminary reflections on my oral history curation focused on how Black and brown artists and activists, primarily based in Indianapolis, IN, frame their lived experiences of death, dying, mourning, and bereavement in the wake of COVID-19 utilizing critical archival practices: those practices that take seriously the methods of critical race theory, critical gender theory, Womanist, mujerista, and feminist methodologies, to name a few. The COVID-19 archive is a collection of oral histories, stories and artifacts depicting the times in which we are living, through the lenses of storytellers grappling with the pandemics of systemic racism, COVID-19, distrust in government, and various relics representing the idea of the United States of America in 2020, as such, I conclude with a brief exploration of how art emerges as both an outlet for creators and a mode of illumination for consumers.

Reexamining Threat Perception in Early Cold War Japan

This article discusses whether Japanese military and political elites perceived the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (PRC) as threats during the Cold War. Realist scholars have argued that Japan's security alliance with the United States and the global balance of power were such that most Japanese officials did not perceive either of the Communist giants as a serious military threat. Reaching a similar conclusion but for starkly different reasons, constructivist scholars have argued that cultural, normative, and identity factors explain why Japanese elites did not perceive the Soviet Union or China as militarily threatening. Neither of these arguments holds up. Archival data and oral history collections from Japan's Self-Defense Force and National Diet Library reveal that Japan's defense establishment and political leaders perceived both the Soviet Union and the PRC as extremely threatening and that these perceptions fluctuated in intensity over time, across sectors, and among actors. Psychological factors, including affect, behavioral tendencies, and cognitive beliefs (the ABC model), may better explain why Japanese judged the intensity and source of perceived threats in the manner that they did. These findings underscore why threat perception in the international system is best evaluated by aggregating individual judgments and their distribution among larger groups.

“Scrap-Heap Storiesˮ: Oral Narratives of Labour and Loss in Scottish Mining and Manufacturing

This article is an attempt to comprehend deindustrialisation and the impact of plant downsizing and closures in Scotland since the 1970s through listening to the voices of workers and reflecting on their ways of telling, whilst making some observations on how an oral history methodology can add to our understanding. It draws upon a rich bounty of oral history projects and collections undertaken in Scotland over recent decades. The lush description and often intense articulated emotion help us as academic “outsidersˮ to better understand how lives were profoundly affected by plant closures, getting us beyond statistical body counts and overly sentimentalised and nostalgic representations of industrial work to more nuanced understandings of the meanings and impacts of job loss. In recalling their lived experience of plant run-downs and closures, narrators are informing and interpreting; projecting a sense of self in the process and drawing meaning from their working lives. My argument here is that we need to listen attentively and learn from those who bore witness and try to make sense of these diverse, different and sometimes contradictory stories. We should take cognisance of silences and transgressing voices as well as dominant, hegemonic narratives if we are to deepen the conversation and understand the complex but profound impacts that deindustrialisation had on traditional working-class communities in Scotland, as well as elsewhere.

A New Collection and Home for Oral History at the National Museum and Art Gallery of Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT As part of the refurbishment of the National Museum and Art Gallery of Papua New Guinea, in 2018, a new gallery opened featuring oral history. The first exhibition in the gallery incorporates an oral history collection focusing on the Papuan Guinean experience during World War II.

Elitism in critical emancipatory paradigm: national archival oral history collection in Zimbabwe and South Africa

Using the critical emancipatory paradigm grounded on the power elite theory that addresses issues of oppression and power relations, the paper was able to show, among other issues, how African nationalism created leaders who were against societal plurality, which takes diversity into consideration and celebrates it. Also the critical emancipatory paradigm along the power elite theory made it understandable that those who are oppressed would always find a way of expressing themselves and try to shape the world they want to live in. For example, in addressing the decimation of their self-identity by those in power, the minority groups in Zimbabwe and South Africa are seen forming ‘dissident’ community archives parallel to the so-called mainstream national official archives such as National Archives of Zimbabwe and National Archives and Records Services of South Africa which are presided over by ‘ruling political party government bureaucrats’ pushing the agenda of their elite leaders who are obsessed with ‘only’ preserving their history and ignoring the histories of the minority groups, as the paper revealed. This phenomenon in this paper was considered through national mainstream archives and selected community oral history methodologies. The paper concludes that even in critical emancipation, there is elitism as those in power will always push their own agendas. In decolonising the archives through a collection of oral histories, archival institutions in both countries have further perpetuated the marginalisation of minority groups by covering only stories of elite members of society.

California Historical Intensity Mapping Project (CHIMP): A Consistently Reinterpreted Dataset of Seismic Intensities for the Past 162 Yr and Implications for Seismic Hazard Maps

AbstractHistorical seismic intensity data are useful for myriad reasons, including assessment of the performance of probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA) models and corresponding hazard maps by comparing their predictions to a dataset of historically observed intensities in the region. To assess PSHA models for California, a long and consistently interpreted intensity record is needed. For this purpose, the California Historical Intensity Mapping Project (CHIMP) has compiled a dataset that combines and reinterprets intensity information that has been stored in disparate and sometimes hard-to-access locations. The CHIMP dataset also includes new observations of intensity from archival research and oral history collection. Version 1 of the dataset includes 46,502 intensity observations for 62 earthquakes with estimated magnitudes ranging from 4.7 to 7.9. The 162 yr of shaking data show observed shaking lower than expected from seismic hazard models. This discrepancy is reduced, but persists, if historical intensity data for the largest earthquakes are smoothed to reduce the effects of spatial undersampling. Possible reasons for this discrepancy include other limitations of the CHIMP dataset, the hazard models, and the possibility that California seismicity throughout the historical period has been lower than the long-term average. Some of these issues may also explain similar discrepancies observed for Italy and Japan.

Mapping Oral Histories: Augmenting Digital Audio Collections with GIS

The paper will focus on a project at Kent State University using a local oral history digital collection. The project displays the potential of how the application of an additional layer of geospatial information into an existing digital collection can improve user access and provide alternate methods to browse material (geographically). Transcriptions from the May 4 oral history collection at Kent State University were analyzed and tagged at any point there was a mention of one of the location points of interest. A new website was created where oral histories could be browsed using a historical map from the time period (spring 1970). This paper will outline the project and provide some initial steps for other institutions to begin such a project.

Access to Collections: Challenges of Physical and Digital – Assessing Digitization Decisions

The paper will focus on a project at Kent State University using a local oral history digital collection. The project displays the potential of how the application of an additional layer of geospatial information into an existing digital collection can improve user access and provide alternate methods to browse material (geographically). Transcriptions from the May 4 oral history collection at Kent State University were analyzed and tagged at any point there was a mention of one of the location points of interest. A new website was created where oral histories could be browsed using a historical map from the time period (spring 1970). This paper will outline the project and provide some initial steps for other institutions to begin such a project.

Public Intimacy and Kinship in the Korean Adoption Community

Abstract Korean children represent the largest group of international, transracial adoptees in the United States, and the majority of these children enter white families. Since the 1980s, adoptive families and children have become engaged with one another through culture (or heritage) camps, local and national adoption organizations, adoption agency postadoption services, adoption list-serves, and adoption-related Facebook groups. The emergence of an adult adoptee community coincided with these connections between adoptive parents and their children. Yet these communities—adoptive parents and adult adoptees—do not exist in isolation from one another. To better understand how the two communities operate in concert and conversation together, this essay examines the role of the annual Korean Adoption Conference (KAC)—operated by a national organization dedicated to supporting the Korean adoption community—in the lives of Korean adult adoptees and the adoptive parents of Korean children. Drawing from survey data of adult Korean adoptees and adoptive parents of Korean adoptees and a collection of oral histories of those involved in the KAC as attendees, speakers, and/or leaders, this article explores the implications of forging community across the adoption constellation. By placing these voices in conversation with one another, this essay contributes to new knowledges concerning the value of listening and learning from one another as a mechanism to engender change in mainstream conversations and debates concerning adoption. I elucidate how the KAC is a site for adoptees and their adoptive families to contest what it means to be in community or kinship with one another through the development of public intimacies. In doing so, I explore what it means to cultivate an intentional space for adoptees and adoptive parents to engage one another and disentangle assumptions that there is a monolithic adoptee or adoptive parent experience.

About the Archives of American Art

Previous article FreeAbout the Archives of American ArtPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreFounded in 1954, the Archives of American Art fosters advanced research through the accumulation and dissemination of primary sources, unequaled in historical depth and breadth, that document more than 200 years of our nation’s artists and art communities. The Archives provides access to these materials through its exhibitions and publications. An international leader in the digitization of archival collections, the Archives also makes nearly 3 million digital images freely available online. The oral history collection includes more than 2,400 audio interviews, the largest accumulation of first-person accounts of the American art world. For more information, visit the Archives’ website at http://www.aaa.si.edu.endpapers. Cannupa Hanska Luger, Mirror Shield Project, Oceti Sakowin camp, Standing Rock, ND, December 3, 2016 (detail). Photograph by Scott Olson/Getty Images. Previous article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Archives of American Art Journal Volume 59, Number 1Spring 2020 Sponsored by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/709272 © 2020 by The Smithsonian Institution. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Silent Warriors, Incredible Courage: The Declassified Stories of Cold War Reconnaissance Flights and the Men Who Flew Them. by Wolfgang W. E. Samuel, Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 2019. 291 pp.

<i>Silent Warriors, Incredible Courage: The Declassified Stories of Cold War Reconnaissance Flights and the Men Who Flew Them</i>. by Wolfgang W. E. Samuel, Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 2019. 291 pp.

Democratizing Museum Practice Through Oral History, Digital Storytelling, and Collaborative Ethical Work

The museum as an institution can trace its origins to the colonization process. Many are still undemocratic and exclusionary institutions by nature. This article explores how digital collections, digital storytelling, and ethical guidelines for museum professionals working with historically marginalized communities can contribute to democratize museum practice and theory. Making use of two case studies: 1) the creation of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ (CMHR) oral history collection; and 2) the planning of the Swedish Museum of Movements’ (MoM) ethical guidelines – this piece proposes a shift from theory to practice in human rights museology to help institutions be more attuned and responsive to the communities they intend to serve. Both case studies demonstrate that implementing human rights museology in national museums is not an easy task and still faces multiple challenges. Yet, they also indicate that this concept can be more productively informed through practices developed by the marginalized groups which have been historically excluded from taking part in the decision-making processes in museums.

Women Warriors in Southeast Asia ed. by Vina A. Lanzona and Frederik Rettig

Reviewed by: Women Warriors in Southeast Asia ed. by Vina A. Lanzona and Frederik Rettig Lysa Hong Women Warriors in Southeast Asia, edited by Vina A. Lanzona and Frederik Rettig. Routledge, 2020, 332 pp, ISBN 9781138829350 With women warriors in Southeast Asia as its subject, this edited volume would immediately interest those keen to welcome new dimensions to the histories of the region and the societies and polities within it, a defining feature of which is now recognised as being the relatively egalitarian male-female relations before the colonial era. The 13 essays take the reader on an ‘almost 1,500-year-long journey’ with chronological demarcations: the ancient and early modern, the modern period, and the Security Sector Reform of the United Nations in Cambodia and East Timor. The gallery of women warriors start in the 6th century with a historical Nan Yue woman warrior who pacified her people into accepting Chinese rule (Geoff Wade), and ends in East Timor, where Jacqueline A Siapno has documented former combatant women denied funded medical care living with bullet wounds still lodged in their bodies. The chapters on the whole impress with their meticulous research. Some have debuted as conference panels organised by the editors in 2006. Others have already been published or are drawn from lengthier works. The intervening years could have led the editors to develop ideas and concepts on how women warriors could be studied, be it the reading of source materials or [End Page 241] exploring the conditions of the everyday life as warrior women, a critical term used in Barbara W Andaya’s concluding chapter. However, they have chosen to “engage with empirical issues first in order to build a solid base before moving on the more theoretical/discursive conceptual approaches”. The primacy given to the ‘empirical’ may account for some chapters reading like ‘factual’ accounts. According to her, Ann Kumar’s two 1980 articles on the prajurit estri covering the religious, social and economic life of the Javanese court, and the political dealings with the Dutch in the late 18th century remains her most popular work. Her chapter is an account based on the diary entries of a high-born warrior on the “extremely protracted chess game” played by three rulers of Javanese royal houses and the Dutch. We thus learn that the prajurit estri was also an accomplished political commentator. Readers should delve into the 1980 articles to understand the enduring popularity of her earlier articles. The emphasis on the ‘facts’ but not their production, circulation and contestation with other narratives leaves us with a handy introductory history book with room for students to critique the chapters and also to read them intertextually in terms of methodology, framework and analysis. In the Introduction, the editors paired chapters to highlight cross-country comparative possibilities. Pairing the Rani of Jhansi regiment (Tobias Rettig) with the women in the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) (Agnes Khoo) as ethnic minorities however is problematic. The Indian National Army was purely out to liberate India from British rule while the MCP joined the British to fight the Japanese. It was outlawed again after the war and fought to liberate Malaya from colonialism, laying down arms only in 1989. Agnes Khoo’s 2007 collection of oral histories with MCP women could be read alongside Vina A Lanzona’s on women in the Huk rebellion (1942–1956) on love and sex as life-stories. Teofista Valerio married her commander when she joined the Communist Party of the Philippines in World War II, without expectations that they would live as a ‘normal couple’. They were separated for decades, mainly serving long prison sentences. She heard that he had remarried and had four children but was relieved and proud to learn that she was the only woman he ever married, though he was “really married to the revolution.” Women Warriors in Southeast Asia alerts us to how much more work needs to be done on the subject. Lysa Hong Independent Scholar Copyright © 2020 Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society

“LATVIA WILL ALWAYS BE MY HOME”: LATVIAN EMIGRANTS IN SWEDEN AFTER 1991 IN THE LATVIAN NATIONAL ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

Latvians are one of the most mobile European nations. Latvian migration to Sweden has a long history. After the II World War, more than 4,000 people moved from Latvia to Sweden, fleeing Soviet power. The second wave of immigration to Sweden began with the restoration of Latvian independence in 1991 and continues to this day. Both of these waves of migration are documented in the Latvian National Oral History collection. This article analyzes life-story interviews with expatriates in Sweden after the restoration of independence and explores how the migrants themselves describe their experiences in their new home country, their reflections on Latvians, Latvianness, and the preservation of national identity in emigration.

Manitoba Law Journal: Indigenous Jurists and Policy-Makers from Manitoba: A Collection of Oral Histories

In this volume of the Manitoba Law Journal, eleven influential Indigenous jurists and law-makers with a connection to Manitoba look back on their life and their times, which have seen drastic change in the way the Canadian legal system recognizes the rights of Indigenous peoples. This issue has interviews of a variety prominent individuals including: Brian Bowman, Paul Chartrand, Harold Cochrane, Phil Fontaine, Joan Jack, Diane M Kelly, Jack London, Sacha Paul, Murray Sinclair, Jean Teillet and Jennifer Wood.

Archiving AV materials FAIR: An Oral History collection in the repository DANS-EASY

It is crucial for both the research community and the public that AV materials are archived in a FAIR manner. This paper is about AV materials contained in DANS’s EASY repository, and their depositing and archiving according to the FAIR principles. Using an Oral History collection in EASY as use case,, it is explored to what extent the FAIR principles are followed and where their implementation is challenging. Moreover, tools currently developed to help assess the FAIRness of datasets before or after deposition are introduced.

The Memory Revolution Meets the Digital Age

This essay analyzes iremember.ru – an open-access oral history collection containing more than 2,500 interviews with Soviet veterans of the Second World War. Launched in 2000 as a small grassroots project, it soon received state backing and grew into a vital element of Russia’s contemporary memory landscape. The essay examines the origins of this project and its value as a historical source; just as well, it explores its evolution and the curious role it plays in contemporary Russian memorial culture. Bringing together history, memory studies, and the study of contemporary politics, the essay argues that iremember.ru provides important insights into both the Soviet experience of the Second World War and the forces that shape political discourse in Russia today.