Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about people, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people who participated in or observed past events and whose memories and perceptions of these are to be preserved as an aural record for future generations. Oral history strives to obtain information from different perspectives and most of these cannot be found in written sources. Oral history also refers to information gathered in this manner and to a written work (published or unpublished) based on such data, often preserved in archives and large libraries. Knowledge presented by Oral History (OH) is unique in that it shares the tacit perspective, thoughts, opinions and understanding of the interviewee in its primary form.
The term is sometimes used in a more general sense to refer to any information about past events that witnesses told anybody else, but professional historians usually consider this to be oral tradition. The Columbia Encyclopedia explains:
Primitive societies have long relied on oral tradition to preserve a record of the past in the absence of written histories. In Western society, the use of oral material goes back to the early Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides, both of whom made extensive use of oral reports from witnesses. The modern concept of oral history was developed in the 1940s by Allan Nevins and his associates at Columbia University.
Oral history has become an international movement in historical research. This is partly attributed to the development of information technology, which allowed a method rooted in orality to contribute to research, particularly the use of personal testimonies made in a wide variety of public settings. For instance, oral historians have discovered the endless possibilities of posting data and information on the Internet, making them readily available to scholars, teachers, and ordinary people.
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Dans le cadre du Montreux Jazz Digital Project, ce cours propose de créer et de publier des podcasts (FR/ENG) à partir d'interviews sur les coulisses du festival. Il vise à développer des connaissance
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas who have occupied parts of the Western Hemisphere since prior to arrival of European settlers in the 15th century. Indigenous cultures vary by language, culture, social practices, and geography. Some Indigenous peoples in the Americas have historically been hunter-gatherers, while others traditionally practice agriculture and aquaculture.
Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another. The transmission is through speech or song and may include folktales, ballads, chants, prose or poetry. In this way, it is possible for a society to transmit oral history, oral literature, oral law and other knowledge across generations without a writing system, or in parallel to a writing system.
Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes. Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. It is usually considered an independent academic discipline, but may also be classified as part of anthropology (in North America – the four-field approach), history or geography.
Informed by longstanding artistic practice, this doctoral thesis approaches entanglements of Swiss coloniality in Brazil and Switzerland under the lens of land, archive, and visuality. The enduring legacies of imperial capitalism in the former Colonia Leop ...
Once a commune in the heart of Apuseni mountains, Geamăna undergone a radical change, from a territory resourceful in its domesticity to a post-extraction environment. As of 1984, more than 400 families forcefully relocated, due to the village becoming flo ...
How can artistic practices trace, unearth and reveal long lasting intrusion into landscapes and ecosystems through colonial infrastructure? This talk compares the romantizised visual language in travelogues of european „scientific“ explorers in the forests ...