Tag: oral history

Call for Papers: Oral Histories with the Dead

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

CFP: Texas Oral History Association 2025 Annual Conference

The Texas Oral History Association (TOHA), founded in 1983, promotes the use and good practices of oral history research through a variety of programs and publications, including the journal Sound Historian. Comprised of individuals representing diverse interests and disciplines, the professional organization will host its fourteenth annual conference September 5-6, 2025, on the campus of Baylor University in Waco, TX! 

Scholars, educators, students, history enthusiasts, folklorists, family historians, and more are encouraged to submit proposals for papers or sessions to be considered for the program. Topics should include clear evidence of oral history research or provide new insights on the methodology.

Both complete sessions and individual paper proposals are welcome. Individual presentations must not exceed twenty minutes, and the session format will include opening remarks by a chair, followed by two or three papers, and concluding remarks from a commentator.

Proposals should include the names, affiliations, and contact information of participants (bio), the titles of sessions and papers, and a brief description of the topics to be covered. Please submit your proposals via email by July 18, 2025.

Direct all submittals and inquiries to:

Adrienne Cain Darough, Secretary-Treasurer

adrienne_cain@baylor.edu

Contact Information

Adrienne Cain Darough

Asst Director, Baylor University Institute for Oral History

Secretary-Treasurer, Texas Oral History Association

adrienne_cain@baylor.edu

Contact Email

adrienne_cain@baylor.edu

URL

https://toha.web.baylor.edu/2025conference

Ideas from oral history colleagues for a 4th edition of The Oral History Reader

Dear oral history colleague/s

We – myself and Alexander Freund – seek your expert advice, and would like to share your suggestions about oral history writings with colleagues, as appropriate, through H-OralHist.

We have been contracted by Routledge to edit a fourth edition of The Oral History Reader, which was first published in 1998 (Rob Perks, who co-edited the first three editions with Alistair, has decided to take a more back seat role in the fourth edition, as a founding editor). 

We are seeking your suggestions about oral history journal articles, or book chapters or extracts, published from 2015 on, that we might consider for inclusion in the fourth edition. We are looking for well-written pieces from the last decade that use oral history in original and imaginative ways, that include especially insightful reflections about aspects of oral history theory and method, and that would work for an international English-language readership that includes oral history students, researchers and practitioners. 

You don’t need to tell us about articles in the major English language oral history journals (Oral History, Oral History Review, Oral History Forum, Studies in Oral History, and Words and Silences), or about chapters in the major oral history books series (Palgrave Macmillan, Oxford and Routledge) – as we’ll be reading everything in those book series and journal issues.

We are keen to include writings from across the oral world, and from the range of disciplines and practices that work with oral history. They might concern any aspect of oral history, though the publisher, and reader reports, urged us especially to include new writing about the following topics:

  • Remote interviewing
  • Audio and video interviewing
  • Developing an oral history project
  • New digital media formats (podcasting, soundscapes etc)
  • ‘Shared authority’ 
  • Oral history and artificial intelligence

We will probably use the same five-part structure for the Reader (Critical Developments, Interviewing, Interpreting Memories, Making Histories, and Advocacy and Empowerment) so ideally the writings will work within that scheme though they may of course work across different categories. 

Please also let us know about appropriate, exceptional oral history writings that have been published in languages other than English (we don’t have a budget for translation, but AI now makes it easier to do quick and rough translations so we can consider such pieces).

Finally, if you have used earlier editions of the Reader for teaching or in other ways, we’d love to hear your thoughts about the chapters in previous editions that are indispensable, and about chapters you think should be replaced by new writings. 

We look forward to hearing your thoughts through this group or, if you prefer, email privately to alistair.thomson@monash.edu and / or alexanderfreund9@gmail.com 

With best wishes, Alex and Al