"I Didn't Do Anything Important": A Pragmatist Analysis of the Oral History Interview

In the course of gathering oral histories from women who servedin the Navy and Coast Guard during World War II, an unusualconversational pattern has emerged. The women almost invariablydiminish the importance of their wartime contributions; a commonrefrain is "I didn’t do anything important." Their individualexperiences, as revealed during the interviews, belie that assertion.In this paper, I will use the women's words to parse what ismeant by this rhetorical move. Do the women really believe theydid not do anything important? If so, why do they find it necessaryto participate in the very public process of oral history, placingtheir names and life stories within the historical record? Consideringboth the content and the context of the women's words from afeminist pragmatist philosophical base will help explain thisseemingly incongruent act. This article demonstrates that thewomen do not really mean to belittle their life experiences(and military service), but instead are using the phrase asa way to acknowledge society's expectations. The oral historyinterview, meanwhile, is used by the women to not only placetheir experience into the historical record but also to affirmthe importance of their wartime work.     

"We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming": NASA, Oral History,and the Contemporary Past

Over the forty-five years since its creation, NASA has completedliterally thousands of oral histories with people involved inthe agency and its programs. These include formal oral historiesthat collect information on the career of the individual, andshorter oral histories focusing on specific activities. Whilemany were done by scholars working on book projects there havebeen many, and increasingly so in recent years, completed tocapture the recollections of space scientists and engineerswithout a larger project envisioned. This presents a major resourcefor understanding the history of the U.S. space program.Thisarticle discusses the nature and extent of the oral historycollection at NASA, the processes in place for the colRoger     

Recovering a "Lost" Story Using Oral History: The United States Supreme Court's Historic Green v. New Kent County, Virginia, Decision

Abstract In 1965, New Kent County, located just east of Richmond,Virginia, became the setting for the one of the most importantschool desegregation cases since Brown v. Board of Education.Ten years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared "separate butequal" unconstitutional, both public schools in New Kent, theGeorge W. Watkins School for blacks and the New Kent Schoolfor whites, remained segregated. In 1965, however, local blacksand the Virginia State NAACP initiated a legal challenge tosegregated schools, hoping to initiate desegregation where theprocess had yet to begin and to accelerate the process in areaswhere token desegregation was the norm. In 1968, the U.S. SupremeCourt decision in Charles C. Green v. the School Board of NewKent County forced New Kent County and localities across thestate and nation to fulfill the promise of Brown. While thecase has been part of the court records since it was decidedin 1968, it has remained largely unknown to the general publicand many scholars of the era. This article is an attempt touse the tool of oral history to present the people and the storybehind Green v. New Kent County and to add another piece tothe puzzle that was school desegregation in this country.     

"The Doctor Told Us What He Wanted": Sam Koenig's Instructions to WPA Ethnic Group Survey Interviewers

The instructions given to Connecticut's Federal Writers' ProjectEthnic Group Survey interviewers seventy years ago by the Survey'sdirector, Samuel Koenig, raise many issues relevant to interviewingin today's digital age. Regardless of technology, or the lackthereof, how such instructions are followed help to determinethe quality of an interview.     

Method and Memory in the Midwestern "Lincoln Inquiry": Oral Testimony and Abraham Lincoln Studies, 1865 1938

This article narrates the role of oral testimony in the fieldof Abraham Lincoln studies from 1865 through the 1930s. Collectedin the form of letters, affidavits, and face-to-face interviews,this mounting body of "eyewitness evidence" dominated the discoursefor two generations and reflective, public practice culminatedin the organization of a "Lincoln Inquiry" in the Midwest duringthe 1920s and 1930s. For a time, practitioners successfullydefended themselves against increasing positivist assaults onthe credibility of oral testimony. Their interests and effortsresonate with later oral history practice and theory about method,authorship, performance, and memory, and their story highlightsthe contingency inherent in the development of oral historicalpractice in America.     

A Little Knowledge Is a Dangerous Thing: What We Know about the Role of the Media in State Politics

Abstract

This article explores the intellectual itinerary of the contemporary French political philosopher Pierre Manent. In particular, it highlights his efforts to do justice to the three great “poles” of human existence: philosophy, politics, and religion. Manent is shown to be a philosophically minded Christian, one who thinks politically and who rejects the temptation to “despise the temporal order.” Manent's reservations about the European project in its present form are shown to be rooted in a understanding of politics that emphasizes the need to weave together “communion” and “consent” if Europeans are to avoid administrative despotism and those postpolitical fantasies that prevent them from thinking and acting politically. The article ends with a reflection on Manent's impressive history of “political forms” in the Western world.     

努力建设中国特色的马克思主义口述史学--在"首届中华口述史高级论坛"开幕式上的讲话

尊敬的各位专家、学者,同志们,朋友们: 我非常高兴能参加"首届中华口述史高级论坛暨学科建设会议",非常高兴能和史学界的同仁们一起探讨口述史这门当今备受学术界关注的学问。首先,请允许我代表中国社会科学院和当代中国研究所,向论坛的召开表示热烈祝贺,向论坛的东道主扬州大学表示衷心感谢,向扬州大学的师生们致以良好祝愿!     

Reevaluating What We Know About the Histories of Maize in Northeastern North America: A Review of Current Evidence

The adoption of maize in northeastern North America is often seen as a catalyst for the development of settled village life. In this review we develop a theoretical framework centered on shifting-balance theory (SBT) and domesticated landscapes through which to understand the context for the adoption of maize agriculture in the Northeast. We review micro- and macrobotanical evidence and stable carbon isotope data from various sources to reevaluate maize histories and adoption trajectories. These data are coupled with contributions of subregionally significant predecessor plants, such as those constituting the Eastern Agricultural Complex, and wild rice. We find no evidence for rapid transitions to settled village life as a result of maize adoption. Maize was grown for centuries before settled village agricultural systems evolved. It was grown for a sufficiently long time that the potential for local selection leading to Northern Flint is a viable working hypothesis. We call for a refocusing of research questions and a systematic application of contemporary techniques as a means by which to strengthen future inferences based on comparative information sets.     

"If I See Some of This in Writing, I'm Going to Shoot You": Reluctant Narrators, Taboo Topics, and the Ethical Dilemmas of the Oral Historian

This essay argues that in the co-creation of the historicaldocument that is the oral history narrative the oral historianmust balance sensitivity to the interviewee with the professionalresponsibility to preserve history, without abdicating the roleof trained interpreter of the past. During the course of a lifehistory interview with a lightskinned African American woman,Marguerite Davis Stewart, the authors confronted a variety ofethical concerns over the shared authority of the interviewwhen the narrator disagreed over the range of topics to be covered—specificallythe issue of racial identity—and the final product. Theauthors conclude that scholars who employ oral history in theirresearch must confront taboo but historically significant topicsthrough an open dialogue with their narrators, but that theyultimately control the interpretation of the resulting information.     

Myths and the "Politics of Exceptionality": Interpreting Chicana/o Narratives of Achievement

Abstract: The author draws from select topical life histories conductedwith individuals who enrolled in doctoral programs at UC Berkeleyduring a ten-year period beginning with 1968. She examines themyths surrounding academic achievement for people of Mexicandescent and how these myths affected her initial interpretationof their childhood stories about their parents' relationshipto their achievements. She considers the interpretation of thesenarratives from the perspectives of various schools of thoughtand argues that the issue of educational achievement by minoritygroups is subject to a "politics of exceptionality." Hence,high academic achievement is not considered normative, and studentswho do achieve are treated as exceptions, not only to the presumedmeritocracy, but as exceptions to their racial/ethnic group.By individualizing their achievements and focusing on theircharacteristics as individuals, the focus of social policieswith respect to educational attainment remains focused on theindividual achiever and not on the institutional processes andstructural opportunities that maximize the possibilities forachievement.     

"That Food of the Memory which Gives the Clue to Profitable Research": Oral history as a source for local, regional, and family history in the nineteenth and early twentieth century

Numerous local, regional and family historians in the nineteenthand early twentieth century collected oral narrations and conductedinterviews as a form to document information that otherwisemight have never been preserved. Family historians, in particular,not only practiced interviewing relatives for family histories,but also encouraged the practice in how-to-do manuals amongtheir peers. While advocating the practice, family historiansalso reflected about the value of "traditionary evidence" collectedthrough interviews and other means. These reflections by familyhistorians mirrored the discussions about the value of traditionsand memories as historical sources among several professionalhistorians at the time. These reflections were shaped by a modernizedunderstanding of tradition, which combined a reverential approachto the authoritarian element of tradition with a critical approachquestioning the validity of tradition. In this context, oralhistory was both a tool to negotiate the value of traditionand a mirror to the contemporary understanding of tradition.     

The Invention of History: The Pre‐History of a Concept from Homer to Herodotus

The following pages, which deal with the pre‐history of the concept of history from Homer to Herodotus, first propose to decenter and historicize the Greek experience. After briefly presenting earlier and different experiences, they focus on three figures: the soothsayer, the bard, and the historian. Starting from a series of Mesopotamian oracles (known as “historical oracles” because they make use in the apodosis of the perfect and not the future tense), they question the relations between divination and history, conceived as two, certainly different, sciences of the past, but which share the same intellectual space in the hands of the same specialists. The Greek choices were different. Their historiography presupposes the epic, which played the role of a generative matrix. Herodotus wished to rival Homer; what he ultimately became was Herodotus. Writing dominates; prose replaces verse; the Muse, who sees and knows everything, is no longer around. So I would suggest understanding the emblematic word “historia” as a subsititute, which operates as an analogue of the (previous) omnivision of the Muse. But before that, Herodotean “invention”— the meeting of Odysseus and the bard Demodocus, where for the first time the fall of Troy is told—can be seen as the beginning, poetically speaking at least, of the category of history.     

The Embers of Hiroshima: From Author to Subject in a Transnational Oral History Collaboration

This paper examines an international oral history collaborationinvolving the "translation" of the American book, Atomic Fragments:A Daughter's Questions, by Mary Palevsky, into the Japanesedocumentary film, Memories of the Trinity Bomb, directed byYoshihiko Muraki. The author utilized oral history and personalnarrative to chronicle her inquiry into the legacy of the atomicbomb in the lives of its creators. Japanese scholar, KayokoYoshida, translated Palevsky's summary of Atomic Fragments intoJapanese for Muraki, working with the filmmaker throughout theprocess. For the film, the author conducted interviews withManhattan Project scientists and was interviewed in sites ofpersonal and historical significance. This paper explores themethodological challenges underlying three essential featuresof this transnational project: the transformation of audience,from American to Japanese; the transformation of medium, frombook to film; the transformation of identity,from researcherand author of a book to subject of a film.