Unlocking Voices in History

📋 Course Outline

1. Oral history as historical research method
2. From oral tradition to systematic source use
3. Institutionalization of oral history archives
4. Oral history and the history of the voiceless
5. Critiques and reliability of oral sources
6. Interview design and documentation process
7. Oral history in classroom teaching

📖 1. Oral history as historical research method

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Oral history : Oral history is a branch of historical science that reconstructs the past mainly from oral testimonies.
• Oral testimony as source : Oral testimony as a source is the spoken account used to recover and use information about past events.
• Systematic recovery of oral sources : Systematic recovery of oral sources is the organized work of collecting, preserving, and employing oral accounts for research.
• Positivist distrust of oral sources : Positivist distrust of oral sources is the 19th-century skepticism that treated oral accounts as unreliable and subjective.

📝 Essential Points