Tag: Oral History Review

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

CFP: Oral History Review, Special Issue on Indigenous Oral History

Oral History Review – Special Issue!
Announcing a Special Issue dedicated to Indigenous Oral History
Fall 2026

Twenty-five years ago, Winona Wheeler edited “Indigenous Voices from the Great Plains,” a special issue of Oral History Forum, the journal of the Canadian Oral History Association. Around the same time, she attended her first OHA conference, where, she figured, she was the only Indigenous person there. It was a lonely event! Indigenous peoples had been engaged in the practice of oral history for centuries but not many of us were finding our ways to meetings like those run by the OHA. The years since then have seen much change: in 2020 Nepia Mahuika’s exceptional Rethinking Oral History and Tradition: An Indigenous Perspective, won the OHA’s book award, and in 2021 an Indigenous caucus was
formed to provide a recognized space within the OHA for Indigenous oral historians to support one another and to encourage young Indigenous scholars’ oral history work within their communities. As caucus co-founder Sara Sinclair said at that time, her interest in the new group was in part the simple opportunity it granted to engage with other Indigenous practitioners whose work she admired more directly. In 2022, the OHA committed to an Indigenous Initiative, including building an endowed fund “to promote the success of Indigenous oral historians, as well as meaningful and ethical oral historical projects within Indigenous communities.”

There are still many challenges our practitioners face We remain under-represented within cultural and academic institutions and under-funded in our community-engaged practices. Accounts of what the practice of Indigenous oral history means, and how we do it, also remain under-published and misunderstood. For these reasons and more, we are excited to announce a special issue of the Oral History Review and with it, the opportunity to promote meaningful exchange within our community about the practice of Indigenous oral history, by Indigenous practitioners. This is an opportune time to bring the Indigenous oral history community together again, and welcome new peers to introduce themselves and to join us in our pursuits.

We invite you to respond to this call for papers with oral history encounters/interviews, essays, reflections and stories that reveal the multiplicity of ways in which Indigenous oral historians embrace different ways of knowing, and diverse expressions of what it means to “do” oral history in our communities.

Our call for papers asks you to consider:

  • What you are doing with your oral histories; what are the unique ways that you are working with your material, and how you are putting it to use.
  • The projects that shaped who you are and that most informed your oral history practice.
  • The stories of the narrators who changed your life, the relationships that underpinned your adventures, and the experiences that have evoked the most emotion.
  • The readings that have most impacted the way you think about/teach about oral history, whether those readings are categorized as “oral history” or not.
  • How relationships inform the work that you do.
  • How you think about, and feel about, and honor responsibility to community.
  • How you have navigated rules and restrictions in mainstream academic institutions that have made it harder to do your work.
  • How your own approach to teaching Indigenous oral history has evolved
  • How your own thinking about the meaning and practice of oral history has evolved in your own lifetime.

We are especially excited to consider multi-media approaches to sharing these reflections in the OHR’s digital edition of this issue!

The deadline for submissions is June 1st, 2025.

To submit your articles, use the OHR submission portal, https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ohr.

For questions, please contact our Special Issue Editors, Sara Sinclair and Winona Wheeler:

  • Sara can be reached at sara.e.sinclair@gmail.com.
  • Winona can be reached at winona.wheeler@usask.ca.

New Issue: Oral History Review

Oral History Review, Fall/Winter 2023
(subscription)

Special Issue: Disrupting Best Practices

Editorial
Editors’ Introduction
Abby Perkiss, Janneken Smucker, and David Caruso

Research Articles
Money Talks: Narrator Compensation in Oral History
By Fanny Julissa García and Nara Milanich

Oral History Indexing
By Douglas Lambert

The Evolution of Best Practice at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Oral History Program “(Special Focus on Best Practices)”
By Leslie McCartney

Learning about Sharing Authority With the Gathered Voices of Malmö
By Robert Nilsson Mohammadi and Sima Nurali Wolgast

Getting it Right: Safeguarding a Respected Space for Indigenous Oral Histories and Truth Telling
By Rhonda Povey, Susan Page, and Michelle Trudgett

Book Reviews
The Language of Russian Peasants in the Twentieth Century: A Linguistic Analysis and Oral History
Reviewed by Orel Beilinson

Once Upon a Time in Iraq: History of a Modern Tragedy
Reviewed by Mia Martin Hobbs

Remembering Theodore Roosevelt: Reminiscences of His Contemporaries
Reviewed by Rachel B. Lane

Children’s Voices from the Past: New Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives Reviewed by Kimberly Redding

Fly Until You Die: An Oral History of Hmong Pilots in the Vietnam War
Reviewed by Troy Reeves

Survival Schools: The American Indian Movement and Community Education in the Twin Cities.
Reviewed by Cameron Vanderscoff

Seeking Managing Editor and Book Review Editor for the Oral History Review

OHA is pleased to announce the first two members of the 2024-26 editorial team for its journal, Oral History Review: Holly Werner-Thomas as editor, and Robert LaRose as copy editor. Holly and Robert bring impressive experience and expertise to lead the next era of this leading oral history research journal published for OHA by Routledge/Taylor and Francis.

The OHA is searching for two additional team members to join Holly & Robert on the new editorial team in the roles of Managing Editor and Book Review Editor. Learn more and apply by September 15th here: https://oha.memberclicks.net/ohr-editor-app

This call is open to oral history practitioners – including oral historians, librarians, archivists, freelance/independent historians, instructors, trainers – located worldwide.

Contact Information

Oral History Association

Contact Email

oha@oralhistory.org

URL

2024-26 OHR Editorial Team Updates

New Issue: Oral History Review

Volume 45, Issue 2, Summer/Fall 2018
(subscription)

Animal Stories and Oral History: Witnessing and Mourning across the Species Divide
Carrie Hamilton

Remembering Migrant Life: Family Collective Memory and Critical Consciousness in the Midcentury Migrant Stream
Jennifer R Nájera

Special Section: Inside the Interview: The Challenges of a Humanistic Oral History Approach in the Deep Exchange of Oral History

Guest Editors’ Introduction
Andrea Hajek; Sofia Serenelli

Generation and Memories of Sex and Reproduction in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain
Angela Davis

“Medical Doctors Do Not Accept Any Refreshment from Us”: Oral History Interviews in a Medical Setting in Sri Lanka
Darshi Thoradeniya

Talking and Not Talking about Violence: Challenges in Interviewing Survivors of Atrocity as Whole People
Anna Sheftel

What Happens When an Interview Is Filmed? Recording Memories from Conflict
Cahal McLaughlin

Pedagogy

Sustainable Stewardship: A Collaborative Model for Engaged Oral History Pedagogy, Community Partnership, and Archival Growth
Janice W Fernheimer; Douglas A Boyd; Beth L Goldstein; Sarah Dorpinghaus

Media Reviews

The Berkeley Remix, Season Three: First Response—Aids and Community in San Francisco
Hannah Byrne

The Quipu Project. Digital oral history archive and interactive website
Dean Cahill

New Dimensions in Testimony. Interactive 3-D exhibit
Tomoko Kubota-Hiramoto

Book Reviews

Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story. By Mollie Gregory
Alan Bloomfield

I Got a Song: A History of the Newport Folk Festival. By Rick Massimo
Rebecca Brenner

Strangers in the Wild Place: Refugees, Americans, and a German Town, 1945-1952. By Adam R. Seipp
Joyce E Bromley

Little Manila Is in the Heart: The Making of the Filipina/o American Community in Stockton, California. By Dawn Bohulano Mabalon
Naomi Alisa Calnitsky

Garden of the World: Asian Immigrants and the Making of Agriculture in California’s Santa Clara Valley. By Cecilia M. Tsu
Sue Fawn Chung

Latina Lives in Milwaukee. By Theresa Delgadillo
Daisy R Herrera

Verlust und Vermächtnis—Überlebende des Genozids an den Armeniern erinnern sich [Loss and Legacy—Survivors of the Armenian Genocide Remember]. By Mihran Dabag and Kristin Platt (editors)
Stefan Ihrig

From Reconciliation to Revolution: The Student Interracial Ministry, Liberal Christianity, and the Civil Rights Movement. By David P. Cline
Lynched: The Power of Memory in a Culture of Terror. By Angela D. Sims
Anna F Kaplan

Anatomy of a Song: The Oral History of 45 Iconic Hits That Changed Rock, R&B and Pop. By Marc Myers
So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley. By Roger Steffens
Bud Kliment

Encounters with the People: Written and Oral Accounts of Nez Perce Life to 1858. By Dennis Baird, Diane Mallickan, and William R. Swagerty (editors)
Debbie Lee

Blue Texas: The Making of a Multiracial Democratic Coalition in the Civil Rights Era. By Max Krochmal
Gregory M Markley

In Broad Daylight: The Secret Procedures behind the Holocaust by Bullets. By Father Patrick Desbois
Filip Mazurczak

Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Islanders, Race, and the American Imagination. By Melissa L. Cooper
Robin M Morris

Soundtracks of Asian America: Navigating Race through Musical Performance. By Grace Wang
Mari Nagatomi

“Curing Queers”: Mental Nurses and their Patients, 1935-74. By Tommy Dickinson
Grey Pierce

Unnamed Desires: A Sidney Lesbian History. By Rebecca Jennings
Grey Pierce

Reclaiming the Personal: Oral History in Post-Socialist Europe. By Natalia Khanenko-Friesen and Gelinada Grinchenko (eds)
Kimberly Redding

Tales from Kentucky Nurses. Reprint edition. By William Lynwood Montell
Rachel F Seidman

Skyway: The True Story of Tampa Bay’s Signature Bridge and the Man Who Brought It Down. By Bill DeYoung
Heather J Stone

Charles Walters: The Director Who Made Hollywood Dance. By Brent Phillips
Jessica Webb

 

Call for Book Reviewers: Oral History Review

By Nancy MacKay, Book Review Editor

Did you know that the Oral History Review, the journal of the Oral History Association, publishes 30-40 book reviews in every issue?

And that each book reviewed first must be identified as relevant to oral history; then read, analyzed and written about by volunteer scholars in the OHA community?

And that once the review is submitted to the journal, it undergoes a rigorous review and editing process before emerging in print in the form you see when you sit down with your copy of Oral History Review?

I did not know the extent or the scholarly rigor of this process until I assumed the role as book review editor in January.  As a reviewer I had taken all these steps for granted. Now I understand the effort that goes into scanning new publications for potential review books and matching a book to a volunteer reviewer. And each of those reviewers does serious work in reading and analyzing each book for fellow OHA members.

I now know that the quality of the book review section is maintained through wide community participation. I’m calling out to potential reviewers, seasoned reviewers and authors to get involved by suggesting book titles for review and participating as a reviewer. Reviewers can select books of interest to review and their desired level of activity through a form. Anyone can recommend a title for review. To get started, please contact me at ohrbookreviews@gmail.com.