This is a past event
Recent developments in oral history: from witnessing to composure
Oral history has become enormously important in the last forty years, for going beyond the document to tap the history of groups hitherto absent from the archive. It has recovered histories, among others, of women, of black people, of the poor and the dispossessed. It has brought to light previously unrecorded experiences, of, for example, capture and incarceration, sex life and sexuality, and work in all its aspects. It has been used not only by academics across disciplines, but in schools and hospitals, prisons and community centres.
Oral history has, however, changed its focus since the 1970s. It is still an important method for recovering neglected histories, but whereas once oral historians aspired to collect objective data from eye witnesses, practitioners now increasingly regard the methodology as an autobiographical practice centred on the subjectivity of the narrator. As the representative sample loosened its grip, the need to understand how subjectivity is constituted in an interview became more urgent. Oral history demanded revision of the historical agenda in the 1970s; the changes in its orientation now challenge how history itself is conceptualized. This lecture explores the implications of the shift, drawing on two projects on British women in the Second World War for illustration.
- Speaker
- Professor Penny Summerfield
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