ASIA-INDIA: ORAL HISTORY AND THE SENSE OF LEGACY – A CONFERENCE IN BANGALORE
Indira Chowdhury and Rob Perks report on a conference organized by the Centre for Public History (CPH) at the Srishti School for Art, Design and Technology on the 19 July 2011.
‘The conference was held at the auditorium of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Bangalore, and brought together 160 participants from many parts of India, including Baroda, Lucknow, Kolkata, Chennai, Pondicherry, Mumbai and Hyderabad. Participants included academics, NGOs, college students, corporates and individuals.
‘The speakers included Rob Perks and Mary Stewart from the British Library, who spoke about the origins of oral history and archiving; Dr. Indira Chowdhury reflected on her own oral history fieldwork in rural India; Dr. C S Lakshmi of the Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women (SPARROW), Mumbai, spoke about her experience of setting up an oral history archive; Dr. Suroopa Mukherjee, Reader, Department of English, Hindu College, University of Delhi, talked about her oral histories with survivors of the Bhopal industrial disaster; and Urvashi Butalia, director and co-founder of Kali for Women (see www.zubaanbooks.com), India’s first feminist publishing house, talked about her groundbreaking oral history book on Partition The Other Side of Silence. There was also a poster session and a film screening by SPARROW.
The audience remained engaged throughout the conference and expressed their interest in the formation of an Oral History Association of India.
‘The conference saw the announcement of the foundation of the Centre for Public History (CPH) at Srishti School for Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore. CPH seeks to democratize history by using oral history to incorporate multiple and marginalized voices and use design and digital technologies to reach diverse audiences. Dr. Suroopa Mukherjee announced she would make the oral history interviews with survivors of the Bhopal industrial disaster available to CPH so that the archive can become a resource for future researchers.
‘The British Council kindly supported the visit of Dr. Perks and Ms. Stewart through their “Connections through Culture†program and the visit encompassed a training seminar and several presentations.’
Source: ORAL HISTORY, OHS Journal, Spring 2012, p. 27
Number of Visits: 10405
The latest
- 374th Night of Remembrance - 1
- 100 Questions / 36
- The Underground City of Tehran
- Report of the 15th Oral History Conference; Religion and Culture -2
- The Third Regiment: Memoirs of an Iraqi Prisoner of War Doctor - 36
- Third Theory: Covering up the gaps in the document with oral narration
- 100 Questions/35
- Javad Poyanfar's Memories
Most visited
- Report of the 15th Oral History Conference; Religion and Culture -1
- Third Regiment: Memoirs of an Iraqi Prisoner of War Doctor – 35
- Javad Poyanfar's Memories
- Third Theory: Covering up the gaps in the document with oral narration
- 100 Questions/35
- The Third Regiment: Memoirs of an Iraqi Prisoner of War Doctor - 36
- Report of the 15th Oral History Conference; Religion and Culture -2
- The Underground City of Tehran
Validation: Challenges and Necessities
Where does truth stand in oral history? How can the correctness of a narrative be recognized? Does fact-checking matter? If there is exaggeration in the reporting of some accounts, how can it be detected? Is it possible to record an event accurately through the recording of a narrative? Readers and users of oral history works are often faced with these questions, and sometimes encounter doubts about some oral history works.From Revolutionary Circles to the Military Arm of the Islamic Government
In those days, it became clear that certain institutions had to be established very quickly—institutions suited to the temperament, expectations, and lingering aspirations of the younger generation; young people who had been politically active before the Revolution and, in some cases, had been directly entangled in arrests, imprisonment, ...Authenticating Oral History: From Possibility to Necessity
The use of oral history as one of the historical sources has long been one of the principal challenges facing oral historians and those who employ it in contemporary historiography. The development of international standards for oral history, as well as IRIB standards, was intended to address the criticisms raised in this regard. The relationship between Diplomatics in written records and oral history is reciprocal.100 Questions/27
What is the place of research ethics in compiling oral history?We asked several researchers and activists in the field of oral history to express their views on oral history questions. The names of each participant are listed at the beginning of their answers, and the text of all answers will be published on this portal by the end of the week.
