Tag: Oral History Association

New Issue: Oral History Review

The Oral History Review, Volume 53, Issue 2 (2026)
(subscription)

Special Issue: Indigenous Oral History

Introduction
Listening Forward: An Introduction to the Oral History Review’s Special Issue on Indigenous Oral History
Sara Sinclair

Research Articles

Mi’kmaw Oral History as Law: Narrative Authority and Indigenous Legal Sovereignty
Pamela Palmater

Aunt Helen and Navajo Code Talkers: Oral Histories with Diné Warriors
Farina King

Fichi Ukiin and Kuleana: Ancestors, Genealogy, and Island Responsibilities in Oral History
Micah Mizukami

Amazonian Storytelling as Co-Learning Within the Land of More-Than-Human Beings and Environmental History from Indigenous Perspectives
Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen, Sidney da Silva Facundes, Francisco Apurinã & Vesa Matteo Piludu

“All of Us, We Are Relatives”: The Hudum Framework in Conducting Chakma Oral History and Indigenizing Colonial Narratives
Dinalo Chakma

Oral Histories of Displacement: The Mizo Diaspora in Happy Valley, Shillong
Karen L. Donoghue & Donskobar Junisha Khongwir

Theorizing Indigenous Feminist Oral Histories: A Methodological Intervention in Indigenous Oral Histories from an Indigenous Feminist
Lindsey Willow Smith

uqaalaiharlutit uqaruk (say it slowly)
Norma Jean Dunning

Teaching and Learning with Indigenous Oral History: Intergenerational Truthtelling of Boarding Schools in Oklahoma
Rene Kemble, Tandra Morris & Erin Dyke

Reconciling a Sovereign Debt: The FWP Slave Narratives and the History of Chickasaw Slaveholding
Rozanne Gooding Silverwood

From the Archives: Preserving the Past, Empowering the Present Through the Doris Duke Native American Oral History Revitalization Project
Molly Stothert-Maurer & Jolene Dezbah Manus

Əstą: Reflections on a Community-Based Indigenous Oral History Research Trip in ’Iihts’ii nùtsudawit’į̀į̀h (March) 2012
Daniel Sims

Book Reviews

Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir (10th Anniversary Expanded Edition). By Deborah A. Miranda. Heyday Books, 2022.
Fanny García

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. By Robin Wall Kimmerer. Milkweed Editions, 2015.
Savannah Apedaile

Indigenous Oral History Manual: Canada and the United States. By Winona Wheeler, Charles E. Trimble, Mary Kay Quinlan, and Barbara W. Sommer. 2nd ed. Routledge, 2024.
Nina Knight

Nishga. By Jordan Abel. McClelland and Stewart, 2021.
Hilary Seeley

We Survived the Night. By Julian Brave NoiseCat. Alfred A. Knopf, 2025.
Hannah Conway

Book Review: Classics Revisited

Storyteller. By Leslie Marmon Silko. 3rd ed. Penguin Group, 2012.
Lindsey Willow Smith

Media Reviews

Mukurtu CMS
Christopher Mario Pandza

Native Voices: Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness
Clarissa A. Shane

Call for Applications: Copyeditor for the Oral History Review

To Apply: Email your resume and cover letter to oha@oralhistory.org

Application Deadline: October 23, 2026

The Oral History Review (OHR) is the scholarly journal of the Oral History Association, a publication that serves as the journal of record for the field of oral history in the US with an increasingly significant international presence and reputation. Because the Oral History Review is published biannually, the volume of editorial work varies throughout the publication cycle. The copyeditor’s role is an ongoing commitment that requires sustained engagement with the journal throughout the year.

The copyeditor of the OHR is responsible for ensuring that all of the content of the journal meets the highest editorial standards in matters of technical style (punctuation, capitalization, references and quotations, formatting, etc.), spelling and grammar, clarity, and readability. These standards must be upheld consistently, which requires thorough knowledge of the journal’s designated style guides and references: the Chicago Manual of Style (latest edition), the

Merriam-Webster Collegiate and Unabridged dictionaries, and the internal OHR style guide; standard word-processing and data management software; and the tools of scholarly research. The copyeditor reads and corrects all works published in the journal to ensure that authors’ and reviewers’ intentions are conveyed clearly through appropriate word and format choices and that citations and other references are correct. The copyeditor corresponds directly with authors with clarity and tact to affect necessary corrections and works within stringent deadlines, carefully managing document workflow and version control. The copyeditor works actively with other members of the editorial team to shepherd all content through the editing process, to establish—and revise as necessary—editorial policy, to update the OHR internal style guide, and to coordinate editorial processes with the publisher.

Duties of the Copyeditor:

  • Edit all articles, reviews, editors’ introductions, and other content to be published in the journal, adhering to established style guides.
  • Attend monthly staff meetings.
  • Act as the liaison with the publisher’s production staff as necessary.
  • Attend the OHA annual meeting in the fall (October/November); participate in OHR-related sessions and outreach as necessary.
  • Resolve complex or contested style matters in conjunction with the editors, authors, and the publisher as necessary and appropriate.
  • Use the publisher’s manuscript management platforms (currently, ScholarOne and the Central Article Tracking System [CATS]) to move article submissions through the production phase; collaborates with other members of the team as necessary to ensure articles move through the process promptly.
  • Support a collaborative, respectful, and professionally effective editorial culture.
  • Stay informed on current trends and challenges in copyediting and in academic journal publishing at large.

Qualifications & Skills:

  • Excellent editorial skills, with meticulous attention to clarity, accuracy, consistency, and detail
  • Familiarity with writing for academic or peer-reviewed publications
  • Experience editing work by authors whose first language is not English
  • Knowledge of and demonstrated passion for the field of oral history
  • Outstanding interpersonal and organizational skills, with the ability to manage deadlines and constituencies of a scholarly journal
  • Ability to build productive working relationships with editors, authors, reviewers, the publisher, and members of the broader oral history community

CFP: Oral History Review: Conflict Oral History: Ukraine, Palestine…& Elsewhere

CALL FOR PAPERS

Conflict Oral History: Ukraine, Palestine…& Elsewhere

While the focus on current events in the oral history field remains controversial, (contemporary) crisis oral history continues to grow. However, violent contemporary crises—from invasions and wars to the plight of refugees—often reflect decades if not centuries’-old conflicts and are therefore also historical. How can oral historians ethically engage in current conflict zones or with refugees? Is it too soon to do so? What are the costs of not documenting now? What is the long history of each country or region and how does that history inform peoples’ identity?

The Oral History Review invites article submissions on these and other issues from and about Ukraine, Palestine, and other war-torn countries and regions for consideration in the journal from Spring 2027.

Some potential themes to consider:

  • War, migration & refugee realities
  • Safekeeping collections (in a potentially shifting physical archive or under threat of censorship)
  • Places/time where/when research is physically impossible (or forbidden)
  • Ethical considerations, challenges, risks, and precarity
    • Displaced researchers in wartime 
    • Being interviewed as a displaced oral historian and the framework of “refugee”
    • For researchers still at home, where every day is a struggle for survival
    • Funding: in Ukraine, there is “finally” funding, but deliverables are expected
    • Funding: in Palestine–is there any, who are the funders and what are the stipulations?
    • History, contested history and contested memory & landscapes of memory/identity
    • The state of the oral history field in Ukraine or Palestine before and since the most recent invasions
    • For Palestine: The Gaza Strip

Please note that the Oral History Review published its first piece on Ukrainians living with–or in this case, fleeing–the Russian invasion of their country since 2022 in spring 2026.

SeeEleanor Paynter, “Crisis Oral History and the Asylum Timescape: Temporalities, Solidarities, and Affect in Interviews with Ukrainians with Temporary Protection in Italy” (Spring 2026, 53(1), 141–166). https://doi.org/10.1080/00940798.2026.2633140

To be considered for the Spring 2027 issue, submissions are due by July 2026, but we accept submissions on a rolling basis.

Please read our Mission Statement https://oralhistory.org/about-the-oral-history-review/ and contact the editors with any questions:

Holly Werner-Thomas, Editor-in-Chief, holly@hollythomasoralhistory.com

Molly Todd, Managing Editor, managingeditorohr@gmail.com

CFP: Oral History Review: Oral History in Practice: Applied Oral History, Survey Articles, From the Archives

CALL FOR PAPERS

Oral History in Practice: Applied Oral History, Survey Articles, From the Archives

 The Editors of the Oral History Review invite prospective authors to submit articles on oral history practice based on our recently expanded Mission Statement for consideration in issues beginning in 2027. In particular, we seek research-based articles focusing on state-of-the field surveys, applied oral history, and archives. We describe each of these features below.

Survey Articles

Survey articles serve as a kind of “state of the field” essay. They explore the evolution and/or current role of oral history.

Some Survey Article topics of special interest to the Editors include:

  • A survey article on a specific location (country, region, or state), e.g.—
  • Oral history in and from both French and English-speaking Canada. (What is the state of the field and the relationship to oral history in the U.S., and to the English and/or French-speaking world more broadly? How do the regions of Canadian oral history interact? Why was the Canadian Oral History Association dissolved?)
  • A survey article on the history and evolution of feminist contributions to oral history methodology–and therefore historiography. (While this is largely the theme of Beyond Women’s Words—itself a reflection on the classic 1991 text by Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai, Women’s Words––other early works have been published in the OHR, including in 1979, “Oral History in Teaching Women’s Studies,” and, in 1987, “Beginning Where We Are: Feminist Methodology in Oral History.” Is it time for an update with a view toward the historiography of oral history? 
  • The practices of oral history under authoritarianism. How have oral historians in different regions approached their work in dangerous times? What patterns or changes over time can be identified? What is the state of intellectual/academic freedom? How has funding been weaponized?
  • A survey article on an adjacent field.
  • A survey article on a project or projects that consider the oral history of a community, institution, or governmental agency–or a comparison study across agencies.

New Survey Articles:

Applied Oral History Articles

These articles extract broad lessons from specific projects that all oral history practitioners can learn from. These will most often focus on projects that result in system-wide/broad changes, are scalable, or can serve as a model in other contexts and locations.

Some Applied Oral History Article topics of special interest to the Editors include:

  • Oral history in federal governments and programs. 
  • Community-based oral history projects.
  • Public or individual health projects where listening/story was important.
  • Oral history and the arts. How is oral history used to inform art, where, when & why?
  • Oral history and incarceration. 

 New Applied Oral History Articles:

From the Archives

In “From the Archives” features, authors analyze an archival oral history collection in terms of the original goals of a project and collection, as well as the collection’s historical value, accessibility, and its use–or usefulness–in secondary research.

Some From the Archives feature topics of special interest to the Editors include:

  • Oral history from programs and archives at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)–everything from archival descriptions and original project goals to gaps in archives of subjects and people, to availability and potential future endeavors, and more.
  • Archivists’ perspectives on the value of oral history recordings and collections; the creation, ingesting, and managing of collections; how archival practices and technologies have changed across time and context; the archivist point of view on AI and online oral history collections (& issues of informed consent, privacy, etc.)
  • We would also like to see more of the hundreds of oral history archives that exist brought to the light and examined—from original goals to accessibility.

New From the Archive articles: 

To be considered for the Spring 2027 issue, submissions are due by July 2026, but we accept submissions on a rolling basis.

Please read our Mission Statement https://oralhistory.org/about-the-oral-history-review/ and contact the editors with any questions:

Holly Werner-Thomas, Editor-in-Chief, holly@hollythomasoralhistory.com

Molly Todd, Managing Editor, managingeditorohr@gmail.com

CFP: Oral History Review: Oral History, Climate Change & the Environment

The Editors of the Oral History Review invite prospective authors to consider themes around oral history, climate change, and the environment for publication beginning in 2027.

Broadly speaking, these themes include but are not limited to oral history and—

  • Ecological knowledge
  • Agriculture
  • Critical animal studies
  • Urban ecology
  • Environmental change & the climate crises

Some ideas & questions to consider regarding the climate crisis:

  • Are oral historians asking questions on climate change in their life story interviews?
  • If engagement with (solving) climate change is a political act, what role can and does oral history play? 
  • When oral historians interview in community, are they addressing home/sense of place, weather pattern and environmental changes over time?
  • What about public health, inequality & environmental justice?
  • What role does oral history play in shaping environmental policy? At the federal level, is oral history being used to gather knowledge and improve public policies?
  • What does the integration of oral history into scientific research look like?
  • In the U.S., the federal government has made egregious funding cuts to NOAA. What will be the long-term consequences of these cuts and to the NOAA Voices Oral History Archives? What other archives should be explored?
  • In what ways do (and should) oral historians communicate and disseminate climate? 
  • War and migration are also, and will increasingly be, a big part of climate change stories.

For reference, see recent OHR articles on oral history and climate change:

To be considered for the Spring 2027 issue, submissions are due by July 2026, but we accept submissions on a rolling basis.

Please read our Mission Statement https://oralhistory.org/about-the-oral-history-review/ and contact the editors with any questions:

Holly Werner-Thomas, Editor-in-Chief, holly@hollythomasoralhistory.com

Molly Todd, Managing Editor, managingeditorohr@gmail.com

Call for Posters: OHA 2026 Annual Meeting

Deadline May 31, 2026

While the Call for Proposals is now closed, there’s still time to submit a poster for the 2026 Oral History Association Annual Meeting!

Our memories are closely tied to the landscapes we inhabit, both real and imagined, and these connections are being reshaped by environmental change, political instability, and ongoing crises. As people become disconnected from familiar places and ways of living, oral history helps capture how individuals and communities make sense of identity and belonging.

The 2026 Oral History Association Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon invites contributions from across fields and communities to explore how people shape and are shaped by the places they inhabit, move through, or leave behind. With the Pacific Northwest as a meaningful setting, the conference will highlight themes such as environmental change, migration, memory, and resilience. We welcome a wide range of perspectives and formats that engage with these ideas and demonstrate the role of oral history in documenting relationships between people and place.

Don’t miss your chance to contribute to this important conversation! Submit your poster today.

IOHA 2026 Call for Submissions: Articles and Reviews

The Editorial Team of Words & Silences | Palabras & Silencios is pleased to invite submissions for articles and reviews in our upcoming 2026 edition.

Published by the International Oral History Association (IOHA), the journal is a peer-reviewed, open-access digital publication, freely available online, that welcomes contributions from all individuals engaged in oral history, whether in academia, community-based projects, creative practices, or activist contexts.

For this edition, we are accepting submissions in three sections:

1. Special Topic: (Re)Thinking Oral History

The section draws from the theme of the 23rd International Oral History Association Conference, (Re)Thinking Oral History, held in Krakow, Poland, in 2025, and extends its concerns into the pages of the journal. It invites articles that take a critical look at how oral history defines its aims, responsibilities, and modes of practice in the present.

In a world shaped by democratic tensions, geopolitical conflicts, climate change, deepening inequalities, wars, and mass displacement, we are interested in how oral history is being reworked in response to these conditions, and in how its ethical, methodological, political, and public commitments are being rethought.

We welcome theoretically informed, empirically grounded, and practice-based contributions that engage with issues such as neutrality and involvement, technological change (including AI), documenting moments of crisis, care and healing, marginalized voices, environmental concerns, community archives, global asymmetries in knowledge production, multilingualism, and new ways of circulating oral history—asking, ultimately, what kinds of stories are we producing, and for whom, now and in the years ahead.

Deadline for submissions: May 30, 2026

2. Articles and Essays

This open section reflects the broad, plural spirit of the International Oral History Association and its commitment to dialogue among oral historians working in different contexts around the world.

We invite both research articles and reflective essays on a wide range of themes related to oral history, including theory, methodology, ethics, archives, memory, public history, artistic practices, and community-based work. Contributions should offer original perspectives on oral history’s practices, debates, and futures across regions, languages, and traditions.

Deadline for submissions: June 30, 2026

3. Reviews

We are looking for reviews of diverse products and mediums, created no earlier than 2023, that focus on oral history or critically reflect on its challenges, methodologies, and practices, including but not limited to: books, electronic media, exhibitions, podcasts, films, events, festivals, conferences, archives, and collections.

Reviews should go beyond summary, having oral history as a central focus and offering critical insight into the contribution, reach and significance of the work for oral history and related fields.

Deadline for submissions: June 30, 2026

Submission Guidelines

  • Length: 2,500–6,000 words (Special Topic and Articles and Essays) and 1,000–1,500 words (Reviews).
  • Format: Double-spaced throughout (except footnotes), Times New Roman, size 12pt.
  • Style: Chicago Manual of Style, including footnotes (not endnotes) and a complete References or Works Cited section at the end.
  • Articles and essays should include an abstract (150–200 words) and 3–5 keywords. Reviews do not require an abstract.
  • Language: Submissions may preferably be made in English and/or Spanish. Submissions in other languages are possible; however, upon acceptance, authors will be asked to provide a final revised version in English and/or Spanish. Authors are encouraged to submit the final version in more than one language to support IOHA’s multilingual tradition.

Submission Instructions

  • Submissions should be sent as a Word document (.doc or .docx) to iohajournal@gmail.com  
  • Please indicate in the subject line the section for which the submission is intended (Special Topic, Articles and Essays, or Reviews).
  • Manuscripts should be anonymized for peer review, with any identifying information removed from the text and file properties. A separate title page should include the author’s name(s), institutional affiliation (if any), a brief biographical note, and contact information.

For further inquiries, feel free to contact us at iohajournal@gmail.com

Call for Nominations: Oral History Association Awards

Book Award, The OHA Book Award recognizes a published book that uses oral history to make a significant contribution to contemporary scholarship; and/or significantly advances understanding of important theoretical issues in oral history; and/or is an outstanding example of sound oral history methodology.

Deadline: April 1, 2026

Stetson Kennedy Vox Populi (“Voice of the People”) Award

The Stetson Kennedy Vox Populi Award honors individuals and organizations for outstanding achievement in using oral history to create a more humane and just world with special consideration given to candidates whose body of work is substantial enough to be regarded as a significant achievement. 

Deadline: July 1, 2026

OHA Article Award

The OHA Article Award is an honorific award to recognize a published article or essay that uses oral history to make a significant contribution to contemporary scholarship; significantly advances understanding of important theoretical issues in oral history; and/or is an outstanding example of sound oral history methodology.

Deadline: July 1, 2026

Mason Multi-Media Awards,

The OHA Elizabeth B. Mason Multi-Media Award recognizes outstanding oral history projects, collections, exhibits, and multimedia presentations for the public.

Deadline: July 1, 2026

More information and links to nomination forms.

2026 Oral History Association Annual Meeting: Call for Proposals

2026 Oral History Association Annual Meeting: Call for Proposals

October 14-17, 2026 | Portland, OR

Landscapes of Memory

Our memories are shaped by the landscapes we inhabit—both real and imagined. These landscapes are shifting in the face of environmental change, political instability, and an ongoing sense of crisis. Ancient connections with the natural world are being severed, and people are displaced not only from this innate connection to the earth but also from familiar ways of living and relating to one another. As oral historians, we witness narrators’ struggles to imagine new identities within this changing ecology.

For the 2026 Oral History Association Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon, we invite contributions from around the world —from those working in academia, advocacy, education, and community-based practice—that speak to how people shape and are shaped by the landscapes they inhabit, traverse, defend, or are forced to leave behind. We welcome proposals that explore relationships to land, memory, and movement across shifting environmental, political, and cultural boundaries.

The Pacific Northwest offers a vivid backdrop for these conversations. Portland is where many Indian tribes collaborate on river and salmon habitat restoration. It is where Governor Tom McCall pioneered environmental laws that became a national model, and where artists, writers, and community organizers have long given voice to place, displacement, and environmental justice. The region’s convergence of urban innovation, protected wilderness, and layered histories invites wide-ranging discussions about how oral histories illuminate ecological crises, stewardship, and resilience.

Possible areas of focus include, but are not limited to:

  • Ecological knowledge, Indigenous storytelling, and traditional/local epistemologies
  • Displacement, migration, activism, and environmental change
  • Borderlands and their stories—whether shaped by international borders, colonial legacies, or climate crises—and the questions they raise about identity, belonging, and resilience
  • Foodways, coastal livelihoods, sacred geographies, and senses of place grounded in memory
  • How digital tools, social media, and emerging technologies shape or amplify environmental narratives and collective memory
  • How oral history bridges local and global contexts in documenting environmental change
  • How people remember and make meaning of the places they have lost—or reclaimed
  • What it means to belong to a place today
  • Interdisciplinary approaches—from Memory Studies, Environmental History, and related fields

We encourage proposals from academics, independent scholars, activists, museum curators, tribal historians, teachers, students, archivists, documentary filmmakers, artists, creative writers, ethnographers, and other practitioners whose work relates to these themes. The Program Committee welcomes broad and creative interpretations of the conference theme and encourages innovative formats, such as workshops, interactive sessions, performances, digital media presentations, and collaborative community reports.

To submit a proposal, please click here.

To view the submission guidelines, please click here.

Contact Email

oha@oralhistory.org

URL: https://oralhistory.org/2026-call-for-proposals/

CFP: 2024 Oral History Association Annual Meeting

Call for Proposals for the 2024 Oral History Association Annual Meeting, to be held in Cincinnati, Ohio, from October 30 to November 2. The URLs below should offer all the essential meeting info, but we will try to answer any question that they don’t! Those questions can go to the OHA’s home office (oha@oralhistory.org), Conference Committee Chair Ellen Brooks (ellen.b.brooks@gmail.com), or me (troy.reeves@wisc.edu).

We hope to see you in Cincinnati later this year!

URLs: