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Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects > Oral history
*Highly Commended by the British Records Association for the 2019 Janette Harley Prize* In September 1943, at the height of World War II, the Aegean island of Leros became the site of the most pivotal battle of the Dodecanese campaign as the British tried, in vain, to retain control of the island. Over the course of two short months - from 15 September 1943 to 17 November 1943 - almost 1500 men lost their lives and hundreds more ended up in Prisoner-of-War camps. In this book, Julie Peakman, a modern-day resident of Leros, brings to life the story of the men caught up in the battle based on first-hand interviews and written accounts including diaries, letters and journals. She tells of the preparations of the soldiers leading up to the battle, the desperate hand-to-hand fighting, and the suffering endured from continual bombings. She also shows the extent of the men's despair at the allied surrender, the many subsequent daring escapes as well as the terrible years of incarceration for those who were captured and imprisoned. Many of the heart-rending accounts of the battle are told here for the first time, providing a unique eyewitness take on this forgotten corner of World War II.
This ground-breaking history of the UK Women's Liberation Movement shows why and how feminism's 'second wave' mobilized to demand not just equality but social and gender transformation. Oral history testimonies power the work, tracing the arc of a feminist life from 1950s girlhoods to late life activism today. Peppered with personal stories, the book casts new light on feminist critiques of society and on the lives of prominent and grassroots activists. Margaretta Jolly uses oral history as creative method, making significant use of Sisterhood and After: The Women's Liberation Oral History Project to animate still-unresolved controversies of race, class, sexuality, disability, and feminist identity. Women activists vividly recall a divisive education system, the unevenness of sexual liberation and the challenges of Thatcherism, Northern Ireland's Troubles and the policing of minority ethnic communities. They illuminate key campaigns in these wider contexts, and talk of the organizational and collaborative skills they struggled to acquire as they moved into local government, NGOs and even the business sector. Jolly provides fresh insight into iconic actions including the Miss World Protest, the fight to protect abortion rights, and the peace protest at Greenham Common. Her accounts of workplace struggles, from Ford and Grunwick to Women Against Pit Closures and Women and Manual Trades, show how socialist ideals permeated feminism. She explores men's violence and today's demands for trans-liberation as areas of continuing feminist concern. Jolly offers a refreshingly jargon-free exploration of key debates and theoretical trends, alongside an appreciation of the joyfully personal aspects of feminism, from families, homes, shopping and music to relationships, health, aging, death and faith. She concludes by urging readers to enter the archives of feminist memory to help map their own political futures. Her work will appeal to general readers, scholars and practitioners alike.
Living in the shadow of state is not a dark, static and silent world. It was the world in full radiance, involving multiple process of reenactment to life, lifeways and relationship. If state and history demonized the hill people as the 'pest' and 'nuisance' to civilization, and the hill practices as the 'relics' of the 'primitive', the hillmen's narratives celebrated them as their core cultural collective. Against State, Against History is a radical reevaluation of the dominant civilizational narratives on the 'tribe' and attempts to recast their history in the light of recent historiography that presents the hillmen as state evading population. Bringing together both conventional and oral narratives, and from the counter-perspectives of the margin, the book explores the conditions in which section of valley population escaped to the hills, their migration history, how they reenact their space, society, culture and economy in the hills. Their physical dispersion in the highland terrain, choosing an independent village polity, defended by trained warriors, fortressed at the top of hills, connected by repulsive pathways, following jhum economy, and adopting a pliable social, cultural, ethnic and gender formations, are their counter cultural collective at the margins of state. They were reenacted to prevent state control and the emergence of domination relations in the hills. This process is understood as unstate involving the process of disowning state and becoming an egalitarian society where freedom of individuals was located at the core of their cultural collective.
Gender and Memory is the fourth volume of the International Yearbook of Oral History and Life Stories . Once again, its theme is a fundamental issue, the shaping of memory by gender. Are the different ways in which men and women are recalled in public and private memory, and also the differences in men's and women's own memories of similar experiences, simply reflections of unequal lives in gendered societies, or are they more deeply rooted? How early in childhood do girls and boys reveal differences in memory? How far does the character of memory change as gender roles evolve? The Special Editors of Gender and Memory , Selma Leydesdorff, Luisa Passerini, and Paul Thompson, draw on original contributions reflecting on the relationships between gender and memory in western and eastern Europe, China, Africa, Australia, the United States and Brazil. The aim of the International Yearbook is to increase our understanding of the recent past and the changing present. It sets out to present and interpret autobiographical testimony, whether in the firm of written autobiography, oral history, or life story interviews. Each issue forms a coherent volume focusing on a single theme. This book i
Migration and Identity concerns the shaping of identity using the theme of migration, revealing how migration acts as a crucible for individual social development and for wider social change. The International Yearbook of Oral History and Life Stories aims to increase our understanding of the recent past and the changing present through autobiographical testimony, in the form of written biography, oral history, and life story interviews.
During the 872-day siege of Leningrad from September 1941 to January 1944, civilians endured air raids, bread rations as low as 125 grams, food theft and speculation by opportunistic officials and shadow market traders, and death by starvation. As shocks of total war weaken institutions, desperate survival can compel violation of norms, and personal suffering can shatter long-held beliefs and practices. In Wartime Suffering and Survival, Jeffrey K. Hass uses the Blockade of Leningrad in World War II to explore the social practices and dynamics by which we cope or collapse. Using hundreds of personal accounts from diaries, recollections, police records, interviews, and state documents, Hass tells the story of how average Leningraders coped with the nightmares of war, starvation, and extreme uncertainty. By exploring the state and shadow markets, food, families, gender, class, death, and suffering, he describes the routines of daily life, the functioning of official institutions, and the development of illegal practices that were made and remade in the interactions of citizens and state agencies coping with new and extreme situations. The key to what Leningraders did and how they survived, Hass argues, is relations to anchors-entities of symbolic and personal significance that tethered Leningraders to each other and shaped practices of empathy and compassion, and of opportunism and egoism. Moving and powerful, Wartime Suffering and Survival goes to the heart of human resilience and fragility and to the core of the human condition-both individual and social.
Few cultural activities speak more powerfully to international histories of the modern world than football. In the late nineteenth century, this cheap and simple sport emerged as a major legacy of Britain's formal and informal empires and spread quickly across Europe, South America, and Africa. Today, football (known to many as soccer) is arguably the world's most popular pastime, an activity played and watched by millions of people around the globe. Contested Fields introduces readers to key aspects of the global game, synthesizing research on football's transnational role in reflecting and shaping political, socio-economic, and cultural developments over the past 150 years. Each chapter uses case studies and cutting-edge scholarship to analyze an important element of football's international story: migration, money, competition, gender, race, space, spectatorship, and confrontation.
From the bestselling author of FORGOTTEN VOICES OF THE GREAT WAR, comes an unforgettable collection of vivid eyewitness accounts of life in the Royal Navy Acclaimed historian Max Arthur pays tribute to the Royal Navy from 1914 to 1945. Drawing on the personal stories of those who have served during this period, he has created a unique narrative history of the senior service. FORGOTTEN VOICES: THE ROYAL NAVY is a memorable and moving testament to the courage, spirit, skill and irrepressible humour of those who served in the Royal Navy during these crucial years.
Our Portion of Hell: Fayette County, Tennessee: An Oral History of the Struggle for Civil Rights offers an unrivalled account of how a rural Black community drew together to combat the immense forces aligned against them. Author Robert Hamburger first visited Fayette County as part of a student civil rights project in 1965 and, in 1971, set out to document the history of the grassroots movement there. Beginning in 1959, Black residents in Fayette County attempting to register to vote were met with brutal resistance from the white community. Sharecropping families whose names appeared on voter registration rolls were evicted from their homes and their possessions tossed by the roadside. These dispossessed families lived for months in tents on muddy fields, as Fayette County became a "tent city" that attracted national attention. The white community created a blacklist culled from voter registration rolls, and those whose names appeared on the list were denied food, gas, and every imaginable service at shops, businesses, and gas stations throughout the county. Hamburger conducted months of interviews with residents of the county, inviting speakers to recall childhood experiences in the "Old South" and to explain what inspired them to take a stand against the oppressive system that dominated life in Fayette County. Their stories, told in their own words, make up the narrative of Our Portion of Hell. This reprint edition includes twenty-nine documentary photographs and an insightful new afterword by the author. There, he discusses the making of the book and reflects upon the difficult truth that although the civil rights struggle, once so immediate, has become history, many of the core issues that inspired the struggle remain as urgent as ever.
Our Portion of Hell: Fayette County, Tennessee: An Oral History of the Struggle for Civil Rights offers an unrivalled account of how a rural Black community drew together to combat the immense forces aligned against them. Author Robert Hamburger first visited Fayette County as part of a student civil rights project in 1965 and, in 1971, set out to document the history of the grassroots movement there. Beginning in 1959, Black residents in Fayette County attempting to register to vote were met with brutal resistance from the white community. Sharecropping families whose names appeared on voter registration rolls were evicted from their homes and their possessions tossed by the roadside. These dispossessed families lived for months in tents on muddy fields, as Fayette County became a "tent city" that attracted national attention. The white community created a blacklist culled from voter registration rolls, and those whose names appeared on the list were denied food, gas, and every imaginable service at shops, businesses, and gas stations throughout the county. Hamburger conducted months of interviews with residents of the county, inviting speakers to recall childhood experiences in the "Old South" and to explain what inspired them to take a stand against the oppressive system that dominated life in Fayette County. Their stories, told in their own words, make up the narrative of Our Portion of Hell. This reprint edition includes twenty-nine documentary photographs and an insightful new afterword by the author. There, he discusses the making of the book and reflects upon the difficult truth that although the civil rights struggle, once so immediate, has become history, many of the core issues that inspired the struggle remain as urgent as ever.
THESE ARE THE WORDS THAT CAME TO ME. NO MATTER HOW THEY GOT HERE, THEY DID THE F***ING JOB. Iggy Pop hasn't left a mark on music; he's left it battered and bruised, too. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, here for the first time are his selected lyrics, complete with stunning original photographs, illustrations, alongside Iggy and others' reflections on a genre-defining music career that spans five decades. Coinciding with a new album, FREE, this is the ultimate book for every rock and roll fan.
Pickers come from near and far, year after year, for the berry-picking season, and from a variety of backgrounds. In the 20th century, for local people, both adults and children, it was an opportunity to supplement the family income; Glasgow folk combined it with a holiday. For the Scottish Traveller community it was an annual opportunity to meet up with friends and family, and forge new relationships. Roger Leitch encouraged many of those berry pickers to share their (mostly happy) recollections for this book - which is published at a time of political change with challenges for the soft fruit cultivation business. He also interviewed workers in other seasonal employments: potato picking; working with crops: hay/bracken/reed/flax cutting and sugar-beet lifting; fencing; repairing drystone dykes; being a deer ghillie or a river ghillie or water bailiff; salmon fishing.
Oral history gives history back to the people in their own words. And in giving a past, it also helps them towards a future of their own making. Oral history and life stories help to create a truer picture of the past and the changing present, documenting the lives and feelings of all kinds of people, many otherwise hidden from history. It explores personal and family relationships and uncovers the secret cultures of work. It connects public and private experience, and it highlights the experiences of migrating between cultures. At the same time it can bring courage to the old, meaning to communities, and contact between generations. Sometimes it can offer a path for healing divided communities and those with traumatic memories. Without it the history and sociology of our time would be poor and narrow. In this fourth edition of his pioneering work, fully revised with Joanna Bornat, Paul Thompson challenges the accepted myths of historical scholarship. He discusses the reliability of oral evidence in comparison with other sources and considers the social context of its development. He looks at the relationship between memory, the self and identity. He traces oral history through its own past and weighs up the recent achievements of a movement which has become international, with notably strong developments in North America, Europe, Australia, Latin America, South Africa and the Far East, despite resistance from more conservative academics. This new edition combines the classic text of The Voice of the Past with many new sections, including especially the worldwide development of different forms of oral history and the parallel memory boom, as well as discussions of theory in oral history and of memory, trauma and reconciliation. It offers a deep social and historical interpretation along with succinct practical advice on designing and carrying out a project, The Voice of the Past remains an invaluable tool for anyone setting out to use oral history and life stories to construct a more authentic and balanced record of the past and the present.
This book explores the transition from oral to written history now taking place in tribal Jordan, a transition that reveals the many ways in which modernity, literate historicity, and national identity are developing in the contemporary Middle East. As traditional Bedouin storytellers and literate historians lead him through a world of hidden documents, contested photographs, and meticulously reconstructed pedigrees, Andrew Shryock describes how he becomes enmeshed in historical debates, ranging from the local to the national level. The world the Bedouin inhabit is rich in oral tradition and historical argument, in subtle reflections on the nature of truth and its relationship to poetics, textuality, and power. Skillfully blending anthropology and history, Shryock discusses the substance of tribal history through the eyes of its creators - those who sustain an older tradition of authoritative oral history and those who have experimented with the first written accounts. His focus throughout is on the development of a 'genealogical nationalism' as well as on the tensions that arise between tribe and state. Rich in both personal revelation and cultural implications, this book poses a provocative challenge to traditional assumptions about the way history is written.
Over a span of eighteen years, Lady Bird Johnson recorded forty-seven oral history interviews with Michael Gillette and his colleagues. These conversations, just released in 2011, form the heart of Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History, an intimate story of a shy young country girl's transformation into one of America's most effective and admired First Ladies. Lady Bird Johnson's odyssey is one of personal and intellectual growth, political and financial ambition, and a shared life with Lyndon Baines Johnson, one of the most complicated, volatile, and powerful presidents of the 20th century. The former First Lady recounts how a cautious, conservative young woman succumbed to an ultimatum to marry a man she had known for less than three months, how she ran his congressional office during World War II, and how she transformed a struggling Austin radio station into the foundation of a communications empire. As a keen observer of the Washington scene during the eventful decades from the 1930s through the 1960s, Lady Bird Johnson shares dramatic accounts of pivotal moments in American history. We attend informal dinners at Sam Rayburn's apartment and opulent social events at grand mansions from an earlier age. Her rich verbal portraits bring to life scores of personalities, including First Ladies Edith Bolling Wilson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Truman, Mamie Eisenhower, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Pat Nixon. An informal, candid narrative by one of America's most admired First Ladies, this volume reveals how instrumental Lady Bird Johnson's support and guidance were at each stage of her husband's political ascent and how she herself emerged as a significant political force.
Women were at the forefront of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011, with the Arab Spring protests providing an unprecedented opportunity to make their voices heard. But these women also faced an intense backlash from Egypt's patriarchal authorities, with female activists subjected to sexual violence and intimidation by the regime and even fellow protestors. Centered on the testimonies of four women who each played a significant role in the protests, this book provides unique insight into women's experiences during the Egyptian Revolution, and into the methods of resistance these women developed in response to sexual violence. In the process, Hamzeh casts new light on the relationship between gendered and state violence, and argues that women's resistance to this violence is reshaping gender relations in Egypt and the wider Arab world.
This is an oral history of a second-generation, urban-born woman who struggles to survive in the poor, Andean city of La Paz. It shows how her identity shifts over time, shaped by the major events in her life. Topics range fron social networks to magical interventions and clairvoyant dreaming.
Topics discussed in these recorded oral interviews with residents of Stranraer and district, in south-west Scotland, include tattie howking, war, the capsizing of the Larne-Stranraer ferry and the stormy winter of 1947. The interviews took place over a period of time, the first being with Helen Davies who was 87 when recorded in 1997.This is the first book based on research carried out by the European Ethnological Research Centre (EERC) as part of their current research programme: Dumfries and Galloway: A Regional Ethnology - part of a wider research programme, The Regional Ethnology of Scotland Project.Co-published by NMS Enterprises Ltd - Publishing and the EERC. |
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