H-208 Oral History

(2) LEARNING OUTCOMES

Learning outcomes: Students are expected to familiarize with the basic theoretical and methodological tools of oral history and to organize their own project bases on oral testimonies. Furthermore they are expected to acquire knowledge of the peculiarity of oral history and understand the concept and function of memory as a source of knowledge about the past. More specifically are expected to:
• Understand oral testimonies as sources of knowledge about the past
• Specify the peculiarities of oral testimony as a historical source
• Apply oral history methodology to their own research
• Use testimony as a source and be able to evaluate their evidence
• Create and implement an oral history project
The course is an introduction to the major theoretical question and to the methodology of oral history. It deals with questions such as: Is oral history a different kind of history? What kind of documents are the oral sources? Why oral history constitutes a challenge for the historian of the recent past? Which aspects of human history are illuminated by oral sources? The course introduces students to the practice of oral history, to the planning of interviews and their interpretation and finally to learning how to plan an oral history project. The learning of these skills is combined with familiarization with paradigmatic texts of oral history that apply oral history methodology.
The course aims at familiarizing students with the theoretical and methodological approaches of oral history through specific historical paradigms, such as the history of the Shoah, the civil war in Greece and in Spain, the South African apartheid, etc. Furthermore, it aims to provide students with the skills of doing an oral history project in all stages: collecting, recording, interpreting, classifying, and indexing testimonies.

General Competences: Respect for difference and multiculturalism
Criticism and self-criticism
Working independently
Team work
Showing social, professional and ethical responsibility and sensitivity to gender, and ethnic and religious difference
Production of free, creative and inductive thinking
Development of democratic consciousness

(3) SYLLABUS

1. Introduction
• What is oral history
• Oral history as evidence
• Oral history as a source of knowledge about the past
• Relationship between history and memory
2. The use of oral testimony as a source for acquiring knowledge of the past
3. The social role of oral history
4. Oral history as a discrete historical field and source. Planning an oral history project.
5. The interview: the relationship between researcher and informant
6. The formation of cultural identities in the field of labour history
7. The specificity of oral history as compared to other discourses about the self
8. Memory, history, testimony
9. Subjectivity and intersubjectivity
10. Testimony and subjectivity in the history of migration
11. The importance of affect for the formation of subjectivity
12. Interpreting oral testimonies and the writing of history
13. After the interview: transcribing, creating data bases, moral issues.

(4) TEACHING and LEARNING METHODS – EVALUATION

(5) ATTACHED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Suggested bibliography:

Related academic journals:

• Oral History
• Oral History Review