Oral History Interviews Research Articles

Minor Architectures of the Plantationocene: A Colonial Family Romance

This article unfolds environmental stories of a plantation house and grounds on the Seychelles archipelago by reclaiming the importance of the minor architectures that support and resist its imperial hold. The Seychelles, first colonised by the French, then ceded to the British, claimed independence in 1976, before a coup d’état brought about a single party state that maintained power for fifteen years. Using feminist autotheory and field philosophy as its primary methodologies, the article draws on oral history interviews with Seychellois cultural workers, family archives, and spatial memories passed down through the generations of a former plantation owning family. Thinking with the scholarship of decolonial feminist scholar and activist Françoise Vérges, a colonial family romance is satirically told of the blind spots and lacunae articulating spatial memories of colonial architectures. How can alternative spatial and environmental narratives be foregrounded that seek emancipation and resist power when it becomes most oppressive?

“We need to talk”: Recovering conversations from the archive

Dialogue is a prominent feature of creative non-fiction used to reveal character, anchor narratives in a context and present different perspectives. But how can conversation be recovered if your subject has passed from living memory? I faced this challenge in my creative biography of Catherine Helen Spence – Australia’s first female novelist and first woman political candidate. Her public and private lives were complex and many-faceted, which became clear from a close reading of her archival record, containing letters and recollections by friends and family, and her vast literary legacy. Building on Paul John Eakin’s theory – that our lives become stories through our “relational others” – I chose to tell Spence’s life from the perspectives of those around her. I imagined oral history interviews with them, listened for their speech patterns and applied Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of heteroglossia – many voices in a text – to my investigation. Conversation is frequently cited as a signpost of fictionality, but it can also lend a sense of verisimilitude and empathy. My depiction of Spence demonstrates how life writing at the confluence of history and fiction can illuminate archival evidence to reveal character and present different perspectives of a complex life.

Early Iterations of Bisexual Activism in Toronto, Ontario: A Historical Examination of Bykes and the Ontario Bisexual Network

This article seeks to illuminate the activities of historical bisexual community groups in Toronto in the late twentieth century, a peak era of bisexual activism in Ontario. The city’s first bisexual women’s group, Bykes, was founded in 1983, and the first mixed gender group, the Ontario Bisexual Network, was established later in 1989. While the former was influenced by radical lesbian separatist politics in 1970s and 1980s Toronto, the latter demonstrated the need to amplify bisexual concerns across the gender spectrum, in addition to serving a growing membership within the burgeoning bisexual community in the city. In order to contextualize the significance of these bisexual community groups, the following research questions are addressed: what were the objectives of Toronto’s early bisexual community groups and how did activists accomplish them? How did bisexual people in these groups situate themselves in Toronto’s gay and lesbian landscape? What were the main tenets of bisexual community building in the city? Through analyses of oral history interviews and archival materials, we can observe that bisexual activists involved in Toronto’s first community groups participated in creating meeting spaces for each other and engaging in public advocacy that revolved primarily around visibility, education, and community care.

Oral history in geographischer Forschung: Emotionen und Verlust in Erfahrungsgeschichten ehemaliger Werftarbeiter:innen erforschen

Abstract. This article presents a spatially sensitive approach to the narratives of transformation processes, employing oral history to explore the connection between loss, emotions, and memory in the context of changing shipyard work in East Germany since 1989. The former place of work, the shipyard, serves as a central place where loss, emotions and memory condense. The method of oral history enables the subjective narration of past experiences and forms the basis for recording and analyzing narratives of experiences. Empirically, the article draws on oral history interviews with former shipyard workers to gain deeper insights into their memories, experiences and the emotional impact of the loss or impending loss of their jobs. This research contributes to understanding the social and emotional effects of transformation processes, emphasizing the importance of oral history in incorporating the subjective experiences of those affected in geographical research.

Oral history methods can reveal drivers of landscape transformation: Understanding land‐use legacies with local and traditional knowledge in Central Europe

Abstract Ecosystems and landscapes shaped by the intricate relationship between people and their natural environment embody the impact of many different past land‐use practices and historical events. However, in some regions, classical historical records of landscape change do not exist or are insufficiently detailed. Local communities' ecological memory can play an important role in filling this gap by reconstructing the socio‐ecologically relevant indirect drivers and their interactions, as well as identifying vegetation characteristics that are legacies of previous land‐use practices. We studied a rapidly transforming cultural landscape in Transylvania (Romania) by conducting 144 oral history interviews covering the last 70 years (before, during and after collective farming). The interviews revealed complex interactions of indirect drivers. Country‐scale political and economic changes affected the landscape with crop outflow during the collective system (1962–1989), resulting in labour outflow to cities from the 1960s. The latter reduced the time and attention devoted to haymaking and affected population ageing. Together with other drivers, this demographic change led to a major transformation of the traditional landscape by the 2010s. We identified 47 vegetation characteristics as land‐use legacies related to grasslands and classified them into general legacy types. Our results support that there was an opportunity to innovatively revive the traditional cultural landscape after the fall of communism, when local knowledge, and willingness to manage the landscape were still present, but financial assets and government support were lacking. The indirect driver interactions led to the abandonment of traditional hay meadow management, resulting in a homogenising landscape with simplified land use dominated by sheep grazing and increasingly dependent on agricultural subsidies. We found that many vegetation characteristics of the studied species‐rich grasslands are only legacies of former land‐use activities, still known by locals but no longer applied. By creating knowledge partnerships, we can still learn about the past management and the functioning of such biodiversity‐rich cultural landscapes from the people who actively maintained them. We argue that this type of knowledge is essential to revive and adapt practices for protecting and managing species‐rich habitats across European cultural landscapes and for supporting the planning of appropriate conservation management and subsidy schemes. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

THE TYBEE ISLAND, GEORGIA BLACK HISTORY TRAIL: A COMMUNITY APPROACH to BLACK GEOGRAPHIES

ABSTRACT Tybee Island, Georgia, was a colonial borderland between Spanish and British America before evolving into a middle-class, seaside resort in the 1800s. It continued as a popular vacation spot in the twentieth century. However, research has highlighted the island’s troubling history of racial segregation, particularly surrounding events like the Orange Crush Beach Party. Previous studies also underscored the Historical Society ignoring the island’s Black history in its exhibits. Building on this, a collaborative project emerged in 2021 involving a Georgia Southern University faculty member and undergraduate student, Tybee MLK Human Rights Organization, and Tybee Island Historical Society. The goal was to create a Black History Trail highlighting a rich yet ignored Black history and culture on the island and addressing the exclusion of Tybee’s Black population from museums and markers. This project integrates community geography, focusing on resolving problems like social exclusion, and exploring spatialities of Black life, social oppressions, and resistance. Utilizing archival research, oral history interviews, and ArcGIS, the project developed a 13-stop virtual tour using ESRI Story Maps. We conclude our paper by highlighting the lessons learned during the trail’s development, the multitude of ways the trail embodies the theory of Black geographies in practice, and the broader challenges in honoring Tybee’s Black geographies. Keywords: community geography, Black geographies, Tybee Island, tourism, memory

Reclaiming Agency Through Conversation: Life Narrative Interviews of German-speaking Jews in Israel

abstract: During the 1990s and 2000s, various authors published collections of oral interviews with Israeli Jews who had been born in German-speaking countries, known as Yekkes . The use of oral testimonies for systematic historical research presents several methodological challenges. However, the Yekke interviews provide a captivating glimpse into a world that no longer exists. This paper explores whether and how historians can use such collections in their work. These oral history interviews, I argue, offer a rare perspective on how Yekkes negotiate their belonging and loyalty between Germany and Israel, between Germanness and Israeliness.

Coming Out for Community, Coming Out for the Cause

Abstract This article focuses on the life experience and political activism of Palestinian American lesbian activist Huda Jadallah as a representative example of how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT/queer) Arab Americans came out to both queer communities and Arab American communities in the 1980s and 1990s. The author argues that this dual outness was utilized as a strategy through which to accomplish three interrelated aims: to build a queer Arab American community, utilize that community as a starting point from which to challenge anti-Arab racism within queer communities, and challenge homophobia in Arab American communities. Based on an oral history interview with Jadallah, in conjunction with analysis of Jadallah’s personal ephemera collection, this article takes a queer archiving methodological approach to consider how outness as strategy may also be utilized with regard to queer Arab American archiving and history.

Asking About the ‘Unspeakable’: Joan Ringelheim and Early Research on Sexual Violence and Same-Sex Practices among Women During the Holocaust

ABSTRACT This article examines feminist scholar Joan Ringelheim’s inquiry about sexual violence and same-sex practices among women during the Holocaust. Drawing on her unpublished manuscript, drafts of conference papers, correspondence, and grassroots oral history interviews in addition to her published work, this article examines how Ringelheim’s analysis of these two topics changed over time. Between the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, Ringelheim worked in a variety of professional roles as a philosophy professor, independent scholar, and an employee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In each of these positions, she initiated conversations with survivors, scholars, feminist activists, and museum workers, and contributed to innovative conceptual frameworks about these issues that influenced scholarship for decades. Her work was met with both support and considerable hostility. To understand why this was the case, this article historicizes Ringelheim’s efforts within contemporary contexts, including American Jewish debates about the Jewish family, feminist debates about sexuality and women’s history, and the rise of Holocaust consciousness in the United States. My contention is that as Ringelheim asked questions about sexuality during the Holocaust, she had to not only begin to disentangle decades of compounded silencing and mythologization, but she also needed to navigate various forms of pushback related to these debates.

Community nostalgia and transgenerational trauma: reconciling dichotomies from women’s oral history of West Belfast, 1975–1995*

ABSTRACT This essay utilises a series of oral history interviews conducted with women in West Belfast to consider the role of community nostalgia and transgenerational trauma within the post-accord landscape. It argues that nostalgia should not be dismissed as an unreliable assessor of historic communality and instead highlights its importance in understanding post-conflict community atomisation. Equally, it advocates for an understanding that nostalgic sentiments can co-exist alongside traumatic recollections and understandings of generational traumas. The simultaneous expression of these dichotomous feelings reveals the intricacies of women’s collective remembrance, and the continued impact of historic traumas on present-day communities in West Belfast.

Clandestine guiding to the Franco-Spanish border during the Holocaust: the work, accomplices and solidarity-focused resistance

ABSTRACT Guides who led Jews clandestinely across national borders played an important role in their rescue during the Holocaust. Yet we know little about their work, from their perspective. This is the subject explored in this article, which focuses on five guides, also known as passeurs, who helped Jews and non-Jews escape from France to Spain across the Pyrenees between 1940 and 1943. They were antifascist activists, farmers and a Christian brother. The sources analysed include oral history interviews, diaries, memoirs, accounts and letters by and about the guides; the letters and accounts of Jewish refugees; official correspondence and reports by French government officials near the border; and records of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. Passeurs’ work consisted of both guiding and preparatory work, which was extensive. The guides had one or more accomplices, their circle of helpers constituting a resistance cell. Resistance like the passeurs’, in which individuals engage so as to help others, may be called ‘solidarity-focused resistance.’ It is also a form of transnational resistance, a concept that should be broadened to include assisting the persecuted in their efforts to cross international borders.

Muslims in Interwar Vienna: The Making and Failing of a Community

This article explores the making of a unified Muslim community in interwar Austria and its ultimate failure. It argues that while the Islamischer Kulturbund Wien represented a visionary idea which aimed at establishing a Muslim community, rooted in both faith and Austrian society, it ultimately remained the dream of only a select few individuals. The association succeeded in strategically positioning itself as the representative body of Muslims in Austria; however, due to a lack of commitment from its members and the rise of fascism in Austria, this early attempt to establish a unified Muslim community in Austria eventually failed. By incorporating unofficial sources in various languages, including private letters, oral history interviews, and newspapers, alongside official archival material, the article amplifies the voice, perspective and agency of key Muslim figures involved, allowing for a more fully developed understanding of the internal and external dynamics of Muslim activism in interwar Vienna.

Advocacy through storytelling: challenging eating disorders and eating disorders stigma

BackgroundAlthough eating disorders (EDs) are among the most stigmatised mental illnesses, a number of individuals break past this stigma and engage in ED advocacy by sharing their recovery stories. Little is known, however, about the role of such advocacy in their healing journeys.MethodsTo bridge this gap, the authors examined the role of autobiographical oral storytelling in the ED recovery of adult advocates. Autobiographical oral history interviews were carried out with adult advocates (n = 16) recovering from EDs. The data were analysed using a mixture of actantial and thematic analyses. Authors also used activity theory to categorise how storytelling was translated into concrete social actions. Results were then interpreted through frameworks of embodiment and the intersectionality of identity.ResultsAdvocates chose to share their ED stories as a way to embody resilience and make meaning from their ED experiences. Beyond personal gains, the social benefits of sharing their stories included raising hope and openness to converse further with audiences, advocating for greater ED resources (e.g., ED literacy among school staff), and offering new training initiatives for healthcare professionals. The ties between storytelling and the unique aspects of one’s identity are also discussed.ConclusionsEngaging in advocacy through storytelling can positively affect both the advocates and the audiences with whom they connect. Future studies, informed by feminist biopsychosocial frameworks, can examine storytelling as a therapeutic intervention. Such frameworks serve as alternatives to biomedical models of EDs and mental illnesses. They also emphasise the need for broader changes that destabilise oppressive body cultures and display how storytelling can help mobilise change.

Heritage Education as a Tool of Social, Ethnic, and Religious Cohesion in Iraq: Empirical Insights

ABSTRACT While the politicization of cultural heritage in Iraq is widely covered by research, little attention is dedicated to how exactly heritage education has been implemented, the knowledge gap this article aims to address. Focusing on the methods employed to educate an average citizen in cultural heritage (how) rather than on the motivation behind them (why), the article unveils novel empirical data drawn from 25 oral history interviews with Iraqi heritage-sector stakeholders demonstrating several important findings. First, a profound gap emerges between cultural awareness levels in pre-1990 and contemporary Iraqi society. Second, the data allows us to identify 12 categories of pre-1990 heritage education strategies, nearly all of which are currently missing or slowly being revived. Third, the respondents disclose a strong reliance on heritage education potential for raising cultural awareness in the sectarianism-torn society. Finally, the article suggests a holistic and inclusive heritage education methodology as a tool of social, ethnic, and religious cohesion in Iraq.

Becoming a Rescuer in the Pyrenees: Border Guides Who took Jews from France to Franco’s Spain (1940–1943)

Abstract During the Holocaust, thousands of Jews in France fled Europe via Franco’s Spain. When leaving France, refugees who lacked the required travel documents avoided police and customs officers at the Franco-Spanish border by walking over the Pyrenees. Guides (passeurs) led them through the mountains to the border, choosing trails and times that would make encounters with police patrols less likely. Most charged large sums of money, but some worked without payment. This article explores why the latter group engaged in this dangerous form of rescue, by examining how they became border guides. It focuses on two French farmers, a French Christian brother at a sanatorium, and an antifascist activist from Germany. The sources analyzed include the memoirs, unpublished accounts, diaries, letters and oral history interviews of the guides, their work associates, and the refugees; as well as official correspondence between French police and government officials in the Pyrenees region, and the archival records of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. The author’s primary research finding is that the border guides considered in this study undertook the dangerous task of guiding refugees because they had had a series of experiences and had engaged in a series of actions that made it more feasible for them to do so when asked. Their values and understanding of their work also help explain why they became guides. Reflections on the implications of this research for our comprehension of bystanders’ actions conclude the article.

“You’ve Got Me Feeling Emotions”: Affective Norms of Deliberation in the Philippine lgbtqia+ Rights Movement

Abstract In contentious politics and deliberation, emotions function as rhetorical resources to substantiate claims and as evaluative criteria to assess social ties among actors. For social movements, then, emotions are vital in framing demands and sustaining collective participation. Grounded on accounts gathered from Filipinx lgbtqia+ rights movement through oral history interviews and analyzed through narrative and thematic approaches, this article illustrates the role of emotions when adherents deliberate with various interlocutors. I argue that advocates utilize affective ties to expand access to deliberative institutions and to sustain discussions of their claims. I also submit that specific ideologies motivate the idealization of particular affective norms when activists engage specific interlocutors. Hence, emotions figure in the movement both as framing tools and deliberative norms that need to be deliberated as well.

The preservation of high-definition video data at the USC Digital Repository: The Television Academy Foundation’s Interviews Collection

This paper presents a comprehensive case study examining a large-scale video migration project carried out by the USC Digital Repository involving oral history interviews from the Television Academy Foundation, captured in high-definition video (HDV). Unlike the more-widely compatible MiniDV format, HDV poses unique challenges due to its distinct format standard, rendering many open source toolsets geared towards capturing DV content incompatible. Consequently, this leaves archivists to rely on unsupported, proprietary tools, exacerbating the complexities inherent in large-scale migrations. Before presenting the troubleshooting process, this paper provides an overview of The Foundation’s Interviews collection, which includes over 900 interviews spanning over 3,000 hours of catalogued and publicly accessible first-hand accounts of television industry pioneers and professionals. Subsequently, the paper delves into the technical intricacies of the HDV format and the challenges of migrating data from HDV. It examines the strategies considered for identifying and addressing corrupt data, alongside implemented solutions aimed at balancing data authenticity with usability in the face of inevitable corruption occurrences throughout the collection. This study not only sheds light on the challenges inherent in preserving HDV content but also offers guidance for future endeavours seeking to safeguard valuable cultural and historical materials in similar formats.

The Emergence of Anthroposophical Curative Education in Israel

Abstract This paper tracks anthroposophical social initiatives in Israel in the mid-20th century. It follows the migration of people involved in the anthroposophical movement, the transfer of anthroposophical ideas and the transnational translation of social work knowledge and practice from Europe to Mandatory Palestine and Israel. Archival material was collected from official, institutional, and private archives in Israel, Switzerland, Britain, and Germany and some data was obtained through oral history interviews. Transnational correspondence between anthroposophists in Palestine, later Israel, and those in Europe and Britain up to the late 1960s reveals efforts to tackle the newly founded state’s most burning struggles to adjust, realize, and embed an anthroposophical care practice. The paper suggests that the transnational translation of anthroposophical curative education played a significant role in the reception of anthroposophy in Israel through a process in which European cultural aspects of anthroposophy were adjusted, and its universal human aspects were prioritized.

Hearing Victims’ Voices: The Asbestos Story in the Archive

This paper is developed from a keynote presentation to the Hazardous Heritage Conference, Antwerp, 23 to 24 October 2023. It aims to contribute to the ongoing conversation around toxic heritage in museums and archives. It focuses on the ways that the asbestos story has been archived and curated at the UK’s largest aggregation of asbestos-related archives at the Archives and Special Collections, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland. Particular attention is placed on the University’s asbestos-related oral history interviews and the potential of oral history as “intangible heritage.” The focus here is on the community behind the heritage. I discuss how the witness stories of workers exposed to asbestos, their family members and activists and advocacy groups help us to better understand the toxic heritage of asbestos and the impact of the asbestos disaster.

“A Secret in Plain Sight”: Origin Stories From the Amy Morris Homans Cotillion

The story of the Amy Morris Homans Cotillion is little known outside the circles of those who founded and attended the event. In this article, we detail the origins of the Cotillion from its inception in 1982 to its final iteration in 2014. This underground social event provided a safe space for women to connect and create a lesbian community of joyful sisterhood with long-lasting professional and personal relationships. At its peak, the Cotillion gathered hundreds of women, inviting them to drink, dance, and dream of a better world. We place the Cotillion in the context of the historical development of women’s physical education and the field of kinesiology and use oral-history interviews with women who founded, organized, and regularly attended the Cotillion to create a narrative of the origins of this event.