Oral History

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Below are groups and resources (books, articles, websites, etc.) related to this topic. Click on an item’s title to go its resource page with author, publisher, description/abstract and other details, a link to the full text if available, as well as links to related topics in the Subject Index. You can also browse the Title, Author, Subject, Chronological, Dewey, LoC, and Format indexes, or use the Search box.
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Connexions Library

American Dreams: Lost and Found
Terkel, Studs
Book
1981
Interviews with 100 Americans who relate their dreams, disappointments, aspirations and experiences.
Bequests: Leaving a social justice legacy
Article
2017
Many of us have made working for social justice a lifetime commitment. If you are thinking about leaving a legacy for social justice that will live on, you might want to consider leaving a bequest to ...
The Case for Grassroots Archives
Diemer, Ulli
Article
2012
Grassroots archives play a valuable role in what has been called "the battle of memory". People's history projects such as grassroots archives preserve and share stories of resistance, hidden historie...
Connexions Library: History Focus Page
Website
2009
Selected articles, books, documents and other resources on historical topics.
Connexions Library: Oral History Focus Page
Website
2009
Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on oral history.
Eating Fire: Family Life, on the Queer Side
Riordon, Michael
Book
2001
An inside look at a rainbow of relationships, sexual and otherwise, that gay, lesbian, and transgendered people create to animate their lives: lovers, partners, parents/kids, quick tricks, torrid affa...
The First Stone: Homosexuality and the United Church
Riordon, Michael
Book
1990
A dramatic account of the tumultuous decade-long struggle in the United Church of Canada to balance faith, sexuality and human rights. Drawing on the church's history, and more than one hundred person...
Gender and Sexuality: Canadian History Through the Stories of Activists
Neigh, Scott
Book
2012
Stories, accounts and histories of the movements to overcome racism, sexism and poverty.
Howard Huggett in conversation with Ulli Diemer: Interview May 24, 1989
Huggett, Howard; Diemer, Ulli
Audio
1989
An interview with Canadian socialist Howard Huggett. An audio recording of this interview is in the Connexions Library & Archive.
Memory as Resistance: Grassroots Archives and the Battle of Memory: Preservation as subversion: Do grassroots archives have a future?
Article
2012
CONNEXIONS and Beit Zatoun are spotlighting grassroots archives this November with an open house and networking event November 24, a talk and discussion November 27, and an exhibit (November 16-27). G...
Michael Riordon in conversation with Barbara Goslawski
Riordon, Michael; Goslawski, Barbara
Article
"People are not specimens or statistics," says Michael Riordon, author of Eating Fire: Family Life on the Queer Side.
Movement-history.ca
Website
A site devoted to chronicling the progress of a project that collects and intends to publish oral histories of long-time Canadian social movement activists.
Museum of the World and Image
Becerra, Diana C.S.
Article
2013
Challenges the "official narrative" that re-writes the Civil War as a struggle of "national security" against an "internal communist threat," manifested in the form of unions, student groups, human ri...
No Bankers in Heaven: Remembering the CCF
Melynk, Olenka
Book
1989
An oral history of men and women who devoted themselves to building the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation.
Oral history: Connexipedia Article
Article
The recording, preservation and interpretation of historical information, based on the personal experiences and recollections of the speaker.
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - October 2, 2014: Climate Change
Diemer, Ulli (editor); Khan, Tahmid (production)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2014
This issue of Other Voices looks at why so many people deny or ignore the very real and very near threat of climate change. We also look into the ways on how NGOs tame and undermine grassroots movemen...
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - February 12, 2015: SYRIZA
Diemer, Ulli (editor); Khan, Tahmid (production)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2015
This week we're featuring the 40-point program which SYRIZA, the Greek coalition of the radical left, put forward to win the Greek election. Oliver Tickell writes about the mass media's latest campaig...
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - August 21, 2015: Canadian federal election, mining and the environment
Diemer, Ulli (editor); Rickwood, Darien Yawching (production)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2015
Featuring the Canadian federal election, mining and the environment, failure of Syriza in Greece, refugees, veterans of India's struggle for independence.
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter June 26, 2017: Public Safety
Diemer, Ulli (ed.)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2017
The June 26, 2017 issue of Other Voices, the Connexions newsletter is about public safety.
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - December 17, 2017: Collective Memory and Cultural Amnesia
Diemer, Ulli
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2017
Our society is obsessed with the short-term present. It devalues memory and the past. But there are those who do remember, and who work to preserve and share our collective memory. But they have to co...
Out Our Way: Gay & Lesbian Life in Rural Canada
Riordon, Michael
Book
1996
Explores the richly varied life experience of gay and lesbian Canadians living in small towns and rural areas across the country. Travelling 27,000 km and recording more than 300 conversations, the au...
Rank and File: Personal Histories of Working Class Organizers
Lynd, Alice; Lynd, Staughton (eds.)
Book
1973
A collection of stories and recollections from labour movement organizers.
Sisters in the Resistance: The Women's War to Free France
Collins Weitz, Margaret
Book
1995
Weitz documented accounts of 70 women involved in the Resistance.
The Slave Narratives: American Slavery: A Composite Autobiography
Website
Interviews with former slaves. Nearly all of the information presented here came from the WPA collection at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, in addition to the 232 boxes of unproces...
The Studs Terkel Radio Archive
Website
Over the course of his 45 years on WFMT radio, Studs Terkel discussed every aspect of 20th-century life with movers, shakers, artists, celebrities, and working folks. From civil rights to labor to jaz...
Ten Lost Years 1929 - 1939: Memories of Canadians Who Survived the Depression
Broadfoot, Barry
Book
1973
An oral history of the Great Depression in Canada.
Terkel, Studs: Connexipedia Article
Article
American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. (1912-2008).
Traces of Magma: An Annotated Bibliography of Left Literature
Knight, Rolf
Book
1983
An annotated bibliography of left wing novels which deal with the lives of working people during the twentieth century.
An Unauthorized Biography of the World: Oral History on the Front Lines
Riordon, Michael
Book
2004
This book uses oral history to discuss oral history. It is in memoir style, and delves into how oral history is done in such places as First Nations (Canada), Turkey, Chicago, Newfoundland, Peru, New ...
Wolfe Erlichman in conversation with Ulli Diemer: October 26, 2016
Erlichman, Wolfe; Diemer, Ulli
Article
2016
An interview with Wolfe Erlichman, who worked as a community worker/organizer in Trefann Court in Toronto in the late 1960s.
Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism
Bennoune, Karima
Book
2013
Karima Bennoune interviews 300 people from 30 countries to report on a largely invisible group of people: Muslim opponents of fundamentalism. They remain largely invisible, lost amid the heated cover...
Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight against Muslim Fundamentalism, by Karima Bennoune (Book Review)
Droeber, Julia
Article
2013
Karima Bennoune, a US-based law scholar raised in Algeria, has written an account of the stories of numerous people whose lives have been scarred by Islamic fundamentalism and who decided, using a var...

Sources Experts & Spokespersons

Sources Library

The Canadian Oral History Reader
Llewellyn, Kristina R.; Freund, Alexander; Reilly, Nolan (eds.)
2015
A collection of work in oral history by Canadian scholars.
Hurricane Digital Memory Bank
2005
The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the stories and digital record of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank contributes t...
The Memory Code: how oral cultures memorise so much information
Hamacher, Duane W.
2016
Long before the ancient Celts, Aboriginal Australians were recording vast scores of knowledge to memory and passing it to successive generations. Aboriginal people demonstrate that their oral traditio...
The Ojibwa of Southern Ontario
Schmalz, Peter S.
1991
A history of the Ojibwa in Southern Ontario.
Oral history
Sources Select Resources Encyclopedia
Oral history is the recording, preservation and interpretation of historical information, based on the personal experiences and opinions of the speaker.
Oral history preservation
Sources Select Resources Encyclopedia
Oral history preservation is the field that deals with the care and upkeep of oral history materials, whatever format they may be in. Oral history is a method of historical documentation, using interv...
Oral tradition
Wikipedia article
Cultural material and tradition transmitted orally from one generation to another.
Public history
Sources Select Resources Encyclopedia
Public history is a term that describes the broad range of activities undertaken by people with some training in the discipline of history who are generally working outside of specialized academic set...
Ten Lost Years discovery of superb social history
Book Review of Ten Lost Years by Barry Broadfoot
Diemer, Ulli
1974
Barry Broadfoot's book consists almost entirely of excerpts from interviews he conducted with people who remember the Depression. The people speak for themselves: Broadfoot has edited them and organis...