Category: Call for Papers

Announcements from SAA and CFP

Introducing: American Archivist Submissions Window
SAA’s leading publication in the archives field, American Archivist, is introducing a submissions window beginning with issue 88.2 (Fall/Winter 2025). The submissions window for this issue opens January 1 through February 15, 2025. For more information on submitting content, including research articles, case studies, perspectives, book reviews, and book review essays, please visit the American Archivist submissions page.

Submit to a Special Section of American Archivist on User Experience
The American Archivist Editorial Board invites proposal submissions for a Special Section in American Archivist exploring the wide-ranging spectrum of user experience topics and initiatives in the archives field. The goal of this Special Section is to showcase the importance of user experience work to the wider professional community. The deadline for proposals is February 1, 2025.

Read the Latest Review on the Reviews Portal 
In the newest review on the American Archivist Reviews Portal, Cheryl Oestreicher (Boise State University) reviews Heritage, Memory and Identity in Postcolonial Board Games, edited by Michal Mochocki (Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2024). The book includes authors from a variety of disciplines examining game studies through numerous lenses, especially nostalgia and colonialism. Oestreicher writes, “Archivists are acutely aware that an ‘idyllic past’ does not really exist and thus understand the importance of ensuring a more historically accurate record.” Read the full review here. 

CFP: Media Fields Journal, Issue 19: Archival Elements

Call for Papers: Archival Elements
Media Fields Journal, Issue 19

Submission Deadline: October 31, 2024

In 2008, the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) released its 70 th anniversary manifesto reaffirming film’s status as the “optimal archival storage” of the moving image. “Don’t throw film away!” they urged, for unlike its digital successors, film elements tangibly embody traces of their own material history alongside a bygone cultural heritage. “No matter what technologies may emerge,” they write, existing film elements “connect us to the certainties of the past.”

For film archivists, the element is the inert container of audiovisual content subject to archival care and maintenance—the original artifact and source of any material or digital copies to come. Indeed, across scholarly and archival spheres alike, the element has remained the intrinsic foundation of the moving image, its archival preservation, and the theoretical study thereof. Whereas Caroline Frick has considered the ways that “original” media elements become bound up with notions of authenticity, cultural heritage, and nationhood, scholar-practitioners have increasingly turned to what Giovanna Fossati calls film’s “archival life,” a term that seeks to discursively address the expanding myriad of physical and digital spaces required in contemporary preservation. How, Fossati posits, might scholars and archivists alike better account for the ways that film and media are at once preserved, historized and politicized by archival processes? In other words, what might be gained from reflecting seriously on how different kinds of media traverse the archival sphere? What happens when a given audiovisual element also becomes an archival one?

This issue of Media Fields seeks to build on these conversations by examining how the proliferation and mediation of the archive and its elements is productive. Contemporary archival elements are often integrated into processes involving other forms of media, such as database and metadata development, digitization, interactive and public-facing archival digital interfaces, and larger multimedia collections. We ask: what kinds of political, theoretical, and practical connections arise when thinking about and doing the archive in these different spatial ways —traditional, alternative, or otherwise—and how might we better place these approaches in discursive conjunction with one another? Further, what are new ways in which theory (archival and otherwise) might intervene and inform archival practice, and historicizing therein? In turn, what does this mean for the (after)lives of the media themselves?

The Media Fields Editorial Collective at UC Santa Barbara’s Department of Film and Media Studies welcomes submissions that critically engage the connections between space, media, and archival practice. We seek essays of 1500–2500 words, digital art projects, and interviews from scholars and practitioners alike. Potential submission topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Preservation: Precarity and decay, fragility, physicality, ontologies of the film and media archive and its objects, broadly construed
  • Cataloging: Metadata organization, archival etymology, reparative description and taxonomies, hierarchical data structures
  • Collection management: Power and ethics, restitution and social justice, collections policy, community oversight, institutional and/or community-based funding structures
  • Memory: Personal, collective, historical and/or cultural memories, archival modes of erasure, loss, and silence
  • Curation: Accessibility, community engagement, digital interfaces
  • Provenance: Found footage, orphan films, transnational displacement
  • Archival space: Traditional institutions, digital databases, garages, basements

Past Media Fields issues and submission guidelines may be found at mediafieldsjournal.org.

Please email all inquiries and submissions to issue co-editors Kelsey Moore and Hannah Garibaldi at submissions@mediafieldsjournal.org by October 31, 2024.

Contact Email

submissions@mediafieldsjournal.org

URL

http://mediafieldsjournal.org/call-for-submissions/

CFP: Beta Phi Mu Scholars Series Books by Rowman & Littlefield

The Beta Phi Mu Scholars Series, published by Rowman & Littlefield, an imprint of Bloomsbury, welcomes book proposals that advance knowledge in the discipline and profession of library and information science. The following broad topics are suggestions that future authors may wish to undertake, but is by no means an exhaustive list:

  • The economics of information and libraries
  • Innovative service options in different environments
  • Technologies that facilitate librarians’ and information specialists’ work
  • Examination of the dynamics of communities
  • Complexities of decision making
  • Developing professionals to make differences in organizations
  • Research into communication challenges
  • Serving ethnically, culturally, and/or linguistically diverse populations
  • Creating models for the sustenance of leadership in organizations

More information about the series can be found here. To see our most recent publications, please view the Rowman & Littlefield website.

Authors are asked to submit proposals that include the following:

  1. Working title
  2. Expected publication date and anticipated timeline
  3. Estimated length of manuscript
  4. Summary
  5. Outline of chapters
  6. Drafted chapter (if possible)
  7. Explanation of the significance of the manuscript
  8. Resume or vita addressing author’s qualifications

Inquiries, questions, and proposals should be sent directly to the Editor, Andrea Falcone, at bpmseries@gmail.com.

CFP: Markers: Annual Journal of the Association for Gravestone Studies

Call for article submissions for the 2026 issue of Markers, the scholarly journal of the Association for Gravestone Studies. The deadline is November 1, 2024.

The subject matter of Markers is defined as the analytical study of gravemarkers, monuments, tombs, and cemeteries of all types and encompassing all historical periods and geographical regions. Markers is of interest to scholars in public history, anthropology, historical archaeology, art and architectural history, ethnic studies, material culture studies, historic preservation, American studies, folklore and popular culture studies, linguistics, literature, rhetoric, local and regional history, cultural geography, sociology, and related fields. Articles submitted for publication in Markers should be scholarly, analytical, and interpretive, not merely descriptive or entertaining, and should be written in a style appropriate to both a wide academic audience and an audience of interested non-academics.

Questions and submissions to Markers should be sent to Editor Elisabeth Roark, Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at Chatham University, at roark@chatham.edu.  To learn more about the Association for Gravestone Studies, please visit our website at https://www.gravestonestudies.org/.

Contact Information

Dr. Elisabeth Roark, Editor, Professor of Art History and Museum Studies, Chatham University

Contact Email

roark@chatham.edu

URL

https://www.gravestonestudies.org/agspublications/markers

Reissued Call for Artists, Writers, and Academics: “Creative Responses to Holocaust Materialities” – A special issue of Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History

Holocaust Studies has given the editors permission to include creative work for the first time in the journal. 

In this special issue, we aim to further examine the ‘material turn’ of Holocaust studies through the lens of creative practices, which remains an understudied area of this movement. As Marianne Hirsch (2019) notes: “Commemorative artistic practices can themselves function as the connective tissue between divergent but related histories of violence and their transmission across generations. The arts offer a fruitful platform to practise the openness and responsiveness that allow such connections to emerge for the postgenerations”. Our scope includes contemporaneous and non-contemporaneous artistic, cultural, and literary works, established by those with and without a direct connection to this history. We are particularly keen to include contributions from creative writers and artists experimenting with and reflecting critically on their own creative processes, working, for instance, with line, genre, textiles, objects, images, or sound as an ephemeral artefact; and from critics showing how survivors or their descendants have represented the Holocaust through these materialities. One theme might be re-purposing, repackaging or even ‘recycling’ of materials: a material intended for one purpose which has been used or examined for other ends. Another concern might be the role of creativity in the phenomenology of viewing and interpreting historical materialities, or of creativity in the  effort to recover, or reconstruct, lost or stolen objects. A perennial concern is the researcher-artist’s role in relation to the archive.

Abstracts should be no more than 300 words, with a short biography (150 words max). Please send your proposals (or any questions) via email to: holocaustmaterialities@gmail.com by 1st September 2024 (extended submission date). We expect final submission of the journal issue to be in 2025.

If you are submitting creative work, please specify in your abstract how many images and approximate word count for any creative writing you expect to include as part of your final submission .

Normal word count for the journal’s critical essay submissions is 8-12k. For creative work, your final submission should include at least 2K words of critical reflection on your creative practice/contextual information. For the creative element, there is no minimum word count; however, the 12k word limit remains. 

The following approximate guidelines might be useful: 1 image = 250-500 words. 50 lines of poetry = 1,000 words.

Contact Information

Hannah Wilson and Jay Prosser

Contact Email

holocaustmaterialities@gmail.com

CFP: THE MOVING IMAGE – Call for Special Issue 26.1 “Accessibility in moving image archives”

In July of 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) was signed. The intention of the act was to prohibit discrimination based on disability status. This special issue of The Moving Image is situated around the theme of archival accessibility to coincide with the 35th anniversary of the signing of the ADA. Even 35 years later, representation of people with disabilities in moving image archives is low both in the literature and in employment. The goal of this special issue is to reflect on the relationship between disability and moving image archives. How is disability represented in moving image collections? Where has there been growth? What inclusion efforts still need to be made to create accessible moving image archives for users and archivists?

Themes include (but are not limited to):

  • Accessibility barriers in moving image archival education and training
  • Disability representation in community archives vs institutional archives
  • Accessible collections for users
  • Disability representation in collections material
  • (In)accessible archival spaces and universal design
  • Equitable hiring practises
  • Web accessibility
  • Accessible programming and curation
  • Health hazards in moving image archives
  • Archival accessibility “post-Pandemic” and the growth of remote work
  • Moving image archives and mental health
  • Ableism in moving image archives

Note: There is a particular interest in articles written from the perspective of those with lived experience of disability, chronic illness, and/or neurodiversity. 

Types of Submissions:

  • Feature articles: Double-blind peer reviewed research papers, 4,000 – 6,000 words
  • Forum pieces: Shorter, less formal pieces, including interviews and “notes from the field” discussing case studies on single institutions or archivists’ own work, such as specific projects or policy initiatives, 2,000 – 3,000 words
  • Reviews: reviews of recent books, media (e.g., DVDs, Blu-Rays), conferences, film festivals, and exhibitions, 700 – 1,000 words

Submission guidelines

 Please send initial proposals and final submissions to special issue editor Michael Marlatt (marlattm@yorku.ca) and CCjournal editor Devin Orgeron at editor@themovingimage.org.

Proposals are due by October 31, 2024, and should include: (1) a 250-word abstract, (2) four key words, (3) a 100-word bio of the author(s), (4) the type of paper you would like to write (e.g. feature article). Proposal review will be completed by mid-November 2024.

Completed manuscripts will be due for editorial review by May 31, 2025. All manuscripts should be submitted as a Microsoft Word email attachment, double-spaced throughout, using 12-point type with 1-inch margins, following the 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style.

Contact Information

Special issue editor Michael Marlatt can be reached for questions and feedback at marlattm@yorku.ca

Contact Information

Michael Marlatt 

Contact Email

marlattm@yorku.ca

URL

THE MOVING IMAGE – Call for Special Issue 26.1 “Accessibility in moving image archives”

Call for Pitches/Contributions: The Recipes Project Special Edition – “Images as/and Recipes”

We are currently accepting pitches for contributions to our Fall 2024 series on the theme ‘Images as/and Recipes.’

Sometimes seeing is better than telling. With a renewed interest in DIY, recipes are everywhere. Instagram and Pinterest are full of recipes for quince jam, herbal remedies, and step-by-step instructions for dyeing old clothes to update your wardrobe with an eye to being environmentally conscious. Many, if not all, of these recipes are visual. But while sharing recipes on social media is new, using images to share makers’ knowledge is not.

For hundreds of years, images have been used to craft stories around recipes, and these images tell us as much about topics like nationalism or family lore as they do about the intricacies of any given recipe. Turning the physical act of making into a visual record requires interpretation and can often serve more than one goal. Artists often chose to omit descriptive text in their visual renderings, assuming the images can speak for themselves. And as scholars like Pamela Smith, Wendy Wall, and Erin O’Conner have reminded us, recipes are not straightforward records; they are full of assumptions, omissions, and expectations. This series builds on this work by considering how images function for and as recipes.

Because recipes are so flexible, the genre has been used to share food culture, medicinal practices, and craft techniques, but it has also been put to more political or artistic means, like satirical prints from the eighteenth century that portray ‘recipes for Culloden’ or ‘a recipe to be a good wife’ or contemporary artists who have looked to recipes to share both practical recipes for making fried eggs and more conceptual ‘recipes for success.’ Recipes that utilize images can also bring ideas of race, gender, and class to the surface, both supporting and subverting cultural norms. 

Images ‘work’ in ways that are both similar to and diverge from written recipes. How and why authors and artists choose to include images in their recipes or translate their recipes into images can and should be critiqued and analysed. 

We are looking for original research topics as well as pieces on pedagogy and museum and archival collections. We welcome contributions from art historians, material culture scholars, anthropologists, historians, literary scholars, archivists, curators, artists, and those with a professional background in recreation and reconstruction. Please send a brief pitch (2 or 3-sentences) as well as an abbreviated CV to the series editors Alexandra Macdonald (ammacdonald@wm.edu) and Melissa Reynolds (m.reynolds1@tcu.edu) any time before 15 September 2024. The theme is purposefully broadly defined to bring an interdisciplinary group of authors together and we are particularly interested in works that take an innovative approach to the topic. If you have any questions about the theme and how your work could fit within the special issue, please get in touch by email. Accepted proposals will be invited to join the quarterly volume on ‘Images as/and Recipes.’ For full instructions and more detailed information on length and image requirements please see Open Call for Contributors [https://recipes.hypotheses.org/open-call-for-contributors] 

Examples of Potential Topics (not exhaustive): 

  • Recipes and advertising
  • Recipes and satire 
  • Visual storytelling and recipes 
  • Reconstructing recipes (hands-on practice)
  • Craft recipes 
  • Recipes and childhood
  • Recipes and social media 
  • Recipes and the senses
  • Gender, race, and class in recipes
  • Text-image relationships

CFP: Avec Attention: Archives, Archivistes, et Sociétés/ “With Attention: Archives, Archivists, and Societies”

French

Nous vous invi­tons à pren­dre connais­sance de l’appel dans sa glo­ba­lité et des moda­li­tés de réponse en le télé­char­geant.

Les axes de com­mu­ni­ca­tion

1) Quelle place pour les archi­ves dans une économie de l’atten­tion ?
Axe 1.1 : La pro­duc­tion des don­nées et les stra­té­gies qui s’y atta­chent : com­ment assu­rer nos mis­sions afin de docu­men­ter les déci­sions publi­ques et poli­ti­ques qui tou­chent les popu­la­tions ?
Axe 1.2 : Les poli­ti­ques de numé­ri­sa­tion mas­sive et la sura­bon­dance des res­sour­ces acces­si­bles en ligne : quels effets sur l’accès, la recher­che, et sur les pra­ti­ques pro­fes­sion­nel­les ?
Axe 1.3 : Quels modè­les à venir pour l’accès aux don­nées et aux docu­ments numé­ri­sés ?

2) Comment favo­ri­ser l’atten­tion aux archi­ves, quel­les curio­si­tés encou­ra­ger et de la part de qui ?
Axe 2.1 : Les nou­veaux espa­ces de l’atten­tion aux publics
Axe 2.2 : Les nou­veaux dis­po­si­tifs d’atten­tion aux publics
Axe 2.3 : Quelle atten­tion conjointe aux archi­ves ? Quel rôle des archi­vis­tes : média­teur ou pres­crip­teur ?
Axe 2.4 : Archives, droits humains et enjeux de société
Axe 2.5 : Archives et curio­si­tés
Axe 2.6 : Archives et expé­rien­ces esthé­ti­ques

3) Comment l’atten­tion rené­go­cie-t-elle les mis­sions des archi­vis­tes ?
Axe 3.1 : Dans les poli­ti­ques de col­lecte
Axe 3.2 : Dans les poli­ti­ques de clas­se­ment
Axe 3.3 : Dans le déve­lop­pe­ment de poli­ti­ques de conser­va­tion pré­ven­tive conver­gen­tes avec les enjeux envi­ron­ne­men­taux

4) Quels archi­vis­tes pour quel­les atten­tions ?
Axe 4.1 : Quelle(s) iden­tité(s) pro­fes­sion­nel­les(s) pour les archi­vis­tes ?
Axe 4.2 : Quelle éthique et déon­to­lo­gie pour les archi­vis­tes ?
Axe 4.3 : Quelles for­ma­tions et par­cours pro­fes­sion­nels ?
Axe 4.4 : Quel envi­ron­ne­ment pour les archi­vis­tes
Axe 4.5 : Quelle capa­cité avons-nous à col­la­bo­rer, à coo­pé­rer au niveau local, natio­nal et inter­na­tio­nal ?
Axe 4.6 : Comment main­te­nir une dis­po­ni­bi­lité au monde ambiant, com­ment lais­ser œuvre émotions et sen­sa­tions. Existe-t-il un archi­viste flâ­neur ?

Cet appel à communication est ouvert jusqu’au 30 septembre 2024 inclus.

English

We invite you to read the call in its entirety and the response procedures by downloading it .

The communication axes

1) What place for archives in an attention economy?
Axis 1.1: Data production and the strategies associated with it: how can we carry out our missions in order to document public and political decisions that affect populations?
Axis 1.2: Mass digitization policies and the overabundance of resources accessible online: what effects on access, research, and professional practices?
Axis 1.3: What future models for access to digitized data and documents?

2) How to encourage attention to archives, what curiosities to encourage and from whom?
Axis 2.1: New spaces for attention to the public
Axis 2.2: New systems for attention to the public
Axis 2.3: What joint attention to archives? What role for archivists: mediator or prescriber?
Axis 2.4: Archives, human rights and societal issues
Axis 2.5: Archives and curiosities Axis
2.6: Archives and aesthetic experiences

3) How does attention renegotiate the missions of archivists?
Axis 3.1: In collection policies
Axis 3.2: In classification policies Axis
3.3 : In the development of preventive conservation policies convergent with environmental issues

4) Which archivists for which attentions?
Axis 4.1: What professional identity(ies) for archivists?
Axis 4.2: What ethics and professional conduct for archivists?
Axis 4.3: What training and professional paths?
Axis 4.4: What environment for archivists? Axis
4.5: What capacity do we have to collaborate, to cooperate at the local, national and international level? Axis
4.6: How to maintain an availability to the surrounding world, how to let emotions and sensations work. Is there a strolling archivist?

This call for papers is open until September 30, 2024 inclusive.

CF: La Gazette de archives (France)

French

La Gazette des archives est une revue professionnelle scientifique éditée par l’Association des archivistes français (AAF). Découvrez la refonte de la revue à notre webinaire du 25 juin 2024 !

La Gazette des archi­ves est une revue à comité de lec­ture à ambi­tion pro­fes­sion­nelle et aca­dé­mi­que qui pro­meut et contri­bue au déve­lop­pe­ment de la recher­che et de la réflexion en archi­vis­ti­que. Elle s’adresse prio­ri­tai­re­ment aux archi­vis­tes fran­çais et fran­co­pho­nes ainsi qu’à la com­mu­nauté aca­dé­mi­que inter­na­tio­nale des cher­cheurs en archi­vis­ti­que ou qui mènent une réflexion sur des aspects tou­chant à la ges­tion des archi­ves et à leur contexte de pro­duc­tion, à leurs usages ou à leur place dans la société (cher­cheurs en his­toire, scien­ces de l’infor­ma­tion, socio­lo­gie, psy­cho­lo­gie, etc.). Elle a pour objec­tif de publier des tra­vaux ori­gi­naux rela­tifs à la théo­rie et à la pra­ti­que archi­vis­ti­que, de favo­ri­ser le dia­lo­gue entre les dis­ci­pli­nes, entre les champs pro­fes­sion­nels et de contri­buer à la cir­cu­la­tion des connais­san­ces sur les archi­ves à tra­vers le monde.

Participez à notre webi­naire le 25 juin 2024 pour en savoir plus !

Comment écrire dans La Gazette des archi­ves ?

La Gazette des archi­ves publie des numé­ros thé­ma­ti­ques et des varias. Pour les numé­ros thé­ma­ti­ques, un appel à contri­bu­tions est dif­fusé sur la page Internet de la revue et sur les réseaux. Les contri­bu­tions non thé­ma­ti­ques sont accep­tées au fil de l’eau.

La revue com­prend plu­sieurs rubri­ques :
–  Article ori­gi­nal : publi­ca­tion ori­gi­nale pré­sen­tant un propos argu­menté, démon­tré et étayé par une ana­lyse de la lit­té­ra­ture et des sour­ces (archi­ves, enquête…), sus­cep­ti­ble de faire avan­cer la recher­che ou la réflexion sur les archi­ves
–  Pistes et pers­pec­ti­ves : arti­cle qui peut adop­ter un ton plus spé­cu­la­tif et expri­mer une réflexion nova­trice sur la théo­rie ou la pra­ti­que archi­vis­ti­que. Il est recom­mandé de pren­dre contact avec le comité de rédac­tion
au préa­la­ble
–  Entretien : entre­tien inédit avec une per­son­na­lité, pré­sen­tant un apport pour la théo­rie ou la pra­ti­que archi­vis­ti­que
–  Étude de cas : retour d’expé­rience ana­ly­ti­que sur un projet ou une acti­vité qui pré­sente un carac­tère ori­gi­nal et apporte une réflexion sur la pra­ti­que archi­vis­ti­que
–  Compte rendu : compte rendu pro­blé­ma­tisé d’un ouvrage ou d’un événement scien­ti­fi­que qui pré­sente des réflexions archi­vis­ti­ques

La revue accepte des contri­bu­tions en langue fran­çaise. Pour une contri­bu­tion en langue étrangère, il convient de contac­ter au préa­la­ble le comité de rédac­tion.

Les arti­cles ne sont pas rému­né­rés. Les auteurs signent une auto­ri­sa­tion de publi­ca­tion et sont tenus de res­pec­ter le format d’édition : uti­li­sa­tion d’une charte éditoriale et d’un modèle de texte com­mu­ni­qués par la rédac­tion et dis­po­ni­bles ci-des­sous. De même, vous y trou­ve­rez un manuel d’écriture inclu­sive à consul­ter libre­ment.

English

La Gazette des archives is a professional scientific journal published by the Association of French Archivists (AAF). Discover the redesign of the journal at our webinar on June 25, 2024!

La Gazette des archives is a peer-reviewed journal with professional and academic ambitions that promotes and contributes to the development of research and reflection in archives. It is primarily aimed at French and French-speaking archivists as well as the international academic community of researchers in archives or who are thinking about aspects relating to the management of archives and their production context, their uses or their place in society (researchers in history, information sciences, sociology, psychology, etc.). Its objective is to publish original work relating to archival theory and practice, to foster dialogue between disciplines, between professional fields and to contribute to the circulation of knowledge on archives throughout the world.

Join our webinar on June 25, 2024 to learn more!

How to write in the Archives Gazette  ?

The Gazette des archives publishes thematic issues and miscellaneous issues. For thematic issues, a call for contributions is published on the journal’s website and on social networks. Non-thematic contributions are accepted on an ongoing basis.

The magazine includes several sections:
–  Original article : original publication presenting a reasoned argument, demonstrated and supported by an analysis of literature and sources (archives, survey, etc.), likely to advance research or reflection on archives
–  Tracks and perspectives : an article that may adopt a more speculative tone and express innovative thinking on archival theory or practice. It is recommended to contact the editorial board in
advance
–  Interview : unpublished interview with a personality, presenting a contribution to archival theory or practice
–  Case study : analytical feedback on a project or activity which presents an original character and provides a reflection on archival practice
–  Report : problematized report of a work or a scientific event which presents archival reflections

The journal accepts contributions in French. For a contribution in a foreign language, please contact the editorial board in advance.

The articles are not remunerated. The authors sign a publication authorization and are required to respect the publishing format: use of an editorial charter and a text model communicated by the editorial staff and available below. Likewise, you will find an inclusive writing manual to consult freely.

CFP: Studies in Oral History (Australia)

Studies in Oral History, Issue No. 47

Editors: Skye Krichauff and Carolyn Collins

The Power of Oral History – Risks, Rewards & Possibilities

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Contributions are invited from Australia and overseas for the peer-reviewed articles section of the 2025 issue of Studies in Oral History, the journal of Oral History Australia (OHA).

Oral history can be powerful in so many ways: interviews generate potent emotions, recordings capture the power of voice as well as the power of silence, and multimedia productions engage and connect new audiences with the complexities of the past.

Fundamentally, oral history transforms the historical archive and challenges mainstream histories. It can shift traditional power dynamics, bring forth new voices and perspectives, reshape policies and politics, and shake up old certainties.

Yet these possibilities come with risk as well as reward – recording sensitive subjects is never easy. Creating an oral history production takes time, skill and care, and sometimes goes wrong. Imaginative re-uses of oral history recordings can raise ethical and legal complexities. And oral histories that disrupt accepted narratives can generate pain and conflict in families, communities and nations.

We invite papers that employ or interrogate oral history methodologies and illuminate aspects of the risks, rewards and possibilities of oral history. Contributions across the following themes are suggested (although not mandatory):

  • Indigenous oral histories and oral traditions
  • Oral history, culture and language
  • Interpreting memory in oral history
  • Transgressing boundaries with oral history
  • Documenting diverse voices with oral history
  • Histories of protest, activism and rights
  • Contested memories and histories
  • Oral histories of working lives and social class
  • Migrant and refugee history
  • Gender and oral history
  • LGBTIQA+ oral histories
  • Ethical issues in oral history
  • Technology and oral history
  • Archiving and oral history
  • Oral histories of family, community or place
  • Creative uses of oral history recordings
  • Oral history in galleries, libraries and museums

As all articles are subject to anonymous peer review, pleasure ensure your submission contains no identifying material. Articles submitted to the Oral History Australia Editorial Board for peer review will first be assessed for suitability by the Editorial Board. Please consult the Guidelines for Contributors, the Peer review FAQ and Journal Style Guide for further information.

Word Limits and Deadlines

To be considered for peer review, articles should be no more than 8,000 words, including references. Publication of the issue is anticipated in late 2025.

The submission deadline for articles for peer review is 17 January 2025.

Submission

Send submissions to: Dr Alexandra Dellios, Chair, Oral History Australia Editorial Board, email editorialboard.journal@oralhistoryaustralia.org.au.

Reports

Submissions are also invited for the reports section of the 2025 issue of Studies in Oral History. Reports may describe oral history projects conducted by museum curators, heritage professionals, consulting historians, community historians, academic historians and more. Projects may have resulted in public outcomes such as websites, exhibitions, podcasts, theses, articles or books. Please note the reports section is not peer-reviewed; notes from the field, updates on exciting new work, or reflections on the process and/or outcomes of oral history projects are encouraged. Reports which relate to the issue theme are welcome but not mandatory.

Word limit: 1,500 words.

Deadline for report submissions: Monday 30 April 2025.

Please send reports to our Reports Editor Alexandra Mountain:  reports.journal@oralhistoryaustralia.org.au

Please note that while the reports are not peer-reviewed, we cannot accept all reports for publication and accepted reports will need to be edited for length, clarity and adherence to the Style Guide. Reports will be selected on the basis of quality of writing, the diversity of oral history perspectives showcased across the reports section and relevance to the special issue theme. Please consult the Guidelines for Contributors and Style Guide for further information.