Virtual Symposium
“Oral Histories with the Dead: Cemeteries, Communities, and Haunting Stories”
February 13, 2026 (Online)
Organized by Naomi Frost and Anna Sheftel, Concordia University

Oral Histories with the Dead will be an intimate, one-day symposium exploring how oral historians from various backgrounds are working to understand the past and the present through cemeteries and burial spaces. We are seeking paper proposals from community or academic oral historians at all career levels who have engaged with cemeteries and burial sites, whether official or unofficial, and their evolving meanings in the present, through the practice of oral history. Oral history generally focuses on the life stories and experiences of the living: how do these stories connect us to the dead? Can we listen to the dead? How can the practice of listening help us to understand the role of these spaces and those buried there, in understanding the past, our present, and questions of inequality and injustice? How does oral history of cemeteries and burial sites require engagement with silence and forgetting?

While there has been considerable scholarly and community interest in cemeteries and burial sites in recent years, particularly in situations of violence and oppression, much of the focus has been on archeological and related methods. The hope of this symposium is to bring together people trying to make sense of these spaces through story. While cemetery oral history may seem like a niche topic, we argue that it gets to the heart of many of the major themes that preoccupy oral historians: questions of place, belonging, silences, and power. Oral histories can interrogate how cemeteries, and the permanence that comes from burial, can teach us about who is and is not allowed to be visible, who is remembered and who is forgotten. These questions are especially salient in the case of cemeteries of marginalized or historically underrepresented communities, as well as in stories of migration, where burial often connects to questions about diasporic identity and belonging.

This symposium will explore how innovative approaches to listening and oral history help us to “speak” with or “listen” to the dead and the spaces we make for them. We welcome proposals grounded in oral history and storytelling, community and scholarly research, or creative practice, that consider what listening to cemeteries can reveal about the past and how they shape our understandings of the present.

In order to welcome proposals from a range of geographical and cultural settings, and from presenters with a range of disciplinary backgrounds, this symposium will be hosted remotely via Zoom on February 13, 2026. The hope is to work towards a collective publication afterwards. 

To submit your proposal for a presentation, please email us at naomi.frost@concordia.ca and anna.sheftel@concordia.ca and include the following documents: an abstract that addresses how your work engages with the themes of the symposium (up to 300 words); and a short bio (up to 100 words).

The deadline for submissions is: September 30, 2025.

Contact Information

Naomi Frost and Anna Sheftel, Concordia University

Contact Email

anna.sheftel@concordia.ca

URL

https://bit.ly/4mhTBOs