Oral History Off the Record ― Toward an Ethnography of Practice

Most discussions of oral history method are rooted in abstract ideas about what interviewing should be and should achieve. However, interviews are ultimately personal interactions between human beings, and as such they rarely conform to a methodological ideal. Nonetheless, oral history's complex, capricious nature is rarely addressed by its practitioners when they share their work with the world. The struggles and negotiations interviewers face while conducting interviews - ethical, political, personal - either go unacknowledged or are discussed only with trusted colleagues in informal settings. This groundbreaking collection shows that a full account of oral history methodology must include honest and rigorous analyses of actual practice, allowing us to embrace the uncertainties and remarkable opportunities that define a human-centered methodology. Here, fourteen practitioners draw connections between vastly different areas of study, including Holocaust memories, work with Aboriginal communities, Islamic studies, immigration, and conflict studies. All are united by the shared experience of encountering complex individuals with messy, difficult, and ultimately illuminating stories to tell.

Anna Sheftel is Assistant Professor of Conflict Studies at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, Canada. She has done oral history projects with Bosnians and Holocaust survivors, and her research interests focus on the utility of post-conflict memory and the strategies that people use to make sense of their violent pasts.

Stacey Zembrzycki is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Concordia University. A modern Canadian oral and public historian of ethnic and immigrant experience, she is the author of Sharing Authority with Baba: Wrestling with Memories of Community (2014) and its accompanying website: www.sudburyukrainians.ca.