Syllabus
1) Introduction: oral history origins
2) What makes oral history different?
3) Representations of self
4) Subjectivity and intersubjectivity
5) Memory and memory studies
6) Narrative in oral history
7) Performance
8) Power and emancipation
9) Trauma and ethics10) OH reading: Alessandro Portelli: Uchronic dreams11) OH reading: Alistair Thomson: ANZAC memories12) OH reading: Lynn Abrams: Liberating the female self13) Semestral written test - 1st term
Annotation
Oral history is often seen primarily as a practice, as a research method, consisting of recording and analysing memories. However, OH rather represents an elaborate interdisciplinary paradigm of historiography, situated at the intersection of new cultural history, historical anthropology and memory studies.
Its main aim is to explore the culturally modulated ways in which people understand themselves in history, how they construct their historical subjectivity (identity) through their recorded narratives. The course will introduce students to the theoretical basis of the current dominant post-positivist oral history brand, typical of Euro-American academia.
At the end of the semester, we will take a seminar reading of several key oral history texts.