Shared: Oral and Public History – serie

Drawing on a collaborative research project, this book provides an alternative model for how oral and public histories should be recorded and curated.

When hundreds of people displaced by mass violence volunteered to tell their stories to the Montreal Life Stories project, they challenged long-held beliefs about how oral stories should be recorded, collected, and shared.Using the Montreal Life Stories project as an example of collective storytelling, Oral History at the Crossroads rejects the idea that there must be "critical distance" between researchers and their subjects. Instead, it provides an alternative model to traditional research practice, one where community members "share authority" as equal partners in a project. More than a hundred photographs illustrate the experiences of those who participated in the project and highlight the intersections between oral history, digital media, and performance.A sustained reflection on collaborative research, Oral History at the Crossroads has methodological and ethical implications for scholars. And, as a contemporary model for curating oral and public history, it pushes the field in new directions.

Dreams of steady employment in the mining sector led thousands of Ukrainian immigrants to northern Ontario in the early 1900s. As a child, Stacey Zembrzycki listened to her baba's stories about Sudbury's small but polarized Ukrainian community and what it was like growing up ethnic during the Depression.According to Baba grew out of those stories, out of a fledgling historian's desire to capture the experiences of her grandparents' generation on paper. Eighty-two interviews conducted by Stacey and her grandmother laid the groundwork for this insightful and personal social history of Sudbury's Ukrainian community. The interviews also brought to light the challenges of doing oral history, particularly as Stacey lost authority to her Baba, wrestled it back, and eventually came to share it.By disclosing the hard work that goes into making communities partners in research, Zembrzycki offers a new paradigm for writing oral history and for studying the politics of memory.

Dreams of steady employment in the mining sector led thousands of Ukrainian immigrants to northern Ontario in the early 1900s. As a child, Stacey Zembrzycki listened to her baba's stories about Sudbury's small but polarized Ukrainian community and what it was like growing up ethnic during the Depression.According to Baba grew out of those stories, out of a fledgling historian's desire to capture the experiences of her grandparents' generation on paper. Eighty-two interviews conducted by Stacey and her grandmother laid the groundwork for this insightful and personal social history of Sudbury's Ukrainian community. The interviews also brought to light the challenges of doing oral history, particularly as Stacey lost authority to her Baba, wrestled it back, and eventually came to share it.By disclosing the hard work that goes into making communities partners in research, Zembrzycki offers a new paradigm for writing oral history and for studying the politics of memory.

Survivors of terrible events are often portrayed as unsung heroes or tragic victims but rarely as complex human beings whose lives extend beyond the stories they have told. Beyond Testimony and Trauma considers other ways to engage with survivors and their accounts based on insights gained from long-term oral history projects in a variety of contexts, including factory closures, industrial injury, eugenics and forced sterilization, the Holocaust, genocide in Rwanda and Cambodia, Argentinian torture camps, the Yugoslav Wars, and Jewish emigration from the Maghreb.The contributors, all innovators in the field of oral history, include Henry Greenspan who provides reflections from forty years of listening to Holocaust survivors as well as an insightful afterword. They demonstrate that – through deep listening, long-term relationship building, and collaborative research design – it is possible to move beyond the problematic aspects of "testimony" to shine light on the more nuanced lives of survivors of mass violence. In the process, they offer alternative approaches to the collection of oral history that will shake the foundations of current historiographical practice.

Survivors of terrible events are often portrayed as unsung heroes or tragic victims but rarely as complex human beings whose lives extend beyond the stories they have told. Beyond Testimony and Trauma considers other ways to engage with survivors and their accounts based on insights gained from long-term oral history projects in a variety of contexts, including factory closures, industrial injury, eugenics and forced sterilization, the Holocaust, genocide in Rwanda and Cambodia, Argentinian torture camps, the Yugoslav Wars, and Jewish emigration from the Maghreb.The contributors, all innovators in the field of oral history, include Henry Greenspan who provides reflections from forty years of listening to Holocaust survivors as well as an insightful afterword. They demonstrate that – through deep listening, long-term relationship building, and collaborative research design – it is possible to move beyond the problematic aspects of "testimony" to shine light on the more nuanced lives of survivors of mass violence. In the process, they offer alternative approaches to the collection of oral history that will shake the foundations of current historiographical practice.

This vibrant biography of Griffintown, an inner-city Montreal neighbourhood, brings to life the history of Irish identity in the legendary enclave. As Irish immigration dwindled by the late nineteenth century, Irish culture in the city became diasporic, reflecting an imagined homeland. Focusing on the power of memory to shape community, Matthew Barlow finds that, despite sociopolitical pressures and a declining population, the spirit of this ethnic quarter was nurtured by the men and women who grew up there. Today, as Griffintown attracts renewed interest from developers, this textured analysis reveals how public memory defines our urban centres.