Since the inception of oral history as a separate branch of Social and Humanitarian Studies, researchers have focused mostly on the questions of public challenges and conditionalities, civic responsibility and initiative, and the political and academic importance of discrete oral history projects. These questions have gained prominence during times of public turmoil and conflicts, periods of (post)revolutionary upheavals, and at various stages marked by efforts aimed at overcoming and “working” the past. With renewed force they have actualized the problems of academic and sociopolitical responsibility faced by oral historians, their understanding of the social and political context of a completed project, and their adherence to research ethics and the development of professional practices of communication and interaction.

The current situation, characterized by a reinterpretation of the past, “battles” for memoirs as the capital of history politics, and the instrumentalization of memory as a legitimizing tool of certain political projects, has raised a number of questions. When does an event end and when does it become history? How can the oral history toolbox affect the preservation of memory of events that are still ongoing? Does the essence of oral history change when it is applied to the study of political challenges and present-day public reactions? From the perspective of these challenges and reactions, whose “voices” from the past are we trying to uncover, hear, record and analyze? Finally, in what way can professional oral history prevent the unpromising—from the standpoint of commemoration—increase in recorded recollections?

This year’s Ukrainian Oral History Association conference is devoted precisely to these questions: the sociopolitical role of oral history in the age of overcoming, working, and reinterpreting the past; ethical priorities; and the civic position and professional responsibility of oral history specialists.

The following topics will be discussed at the conference:

• Oral history in Ukraine: experience, dynamics, perspectives;
• Oral history of East Central Europe: the specific features of political challenges and social interaction;
• Reinterpretation of the past: political project and oral history initiative;
• Methodology of oral history research in the (post)revolutionary and military present: public challenges and academic possibilities;
• The “incomplete past” as a sociopolitical reality and scholarly problem: the experience of oral history research;
• Civic initiative and oral history projects: advantages and difficulties of collaboration;
• Oral history of traumatic events: research ethics and the professional training of researchers;
• Oral history in schools: the experience of pupils’ projects on local oral history.

Date and time

Thursday-Friday

December 1-2, 2016

Location

Kharkiv, Ukraine

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Organizer

The Ukrainian Oral History Association (UOHA)

In cooperation with

AMO, Ukrainian Studies Department, Karazin National University, Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Office in Kiev, Center for Urban History of East Central Europe and Prairie Centre for the Study of Ukrainian Heritage

WORKING LANGUAGES

Ukrainian, Russian and English