Oral History at the Crossroads
Sharing Life Stories of Survival and Displacement
Creates a new model for how oral and public stories can be recorded and curated.
Description
Over the span of seven years, hundreds of people displaced by mass violence told their stories to the Montreal Life Stories project. From the outset, the project’s organizers sought to develop an alternative model to traditional oral history practice, one where community members “shared authority” as equal partners. Together, they challenged long-held beliefs about how oral stories should be collected and shared. As a sustained reflection on this large-scale experiment in collaborative research, Oral History at the Crossroads has methodological and ethical implications for scholars. It also provides a contemporary model for curating public history, pushing the field in new directions.
Awards
- Winner, CLIO Prize for Quebec, Canadian Historical Association 2015