WORKSHOP AT SSEES, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON, 15.1.2011: 'SPEAKING SUBJECTS: THEORY AND PRACTICE OF ORAL HISTORY IN THE EASTERN BLOC'

[Polly Jones]

'Speaking subjects: theory and practice of oral history in the Eastern bloc'
Workshop: UCL-SSEES, Saturday 15 January 2011

Registration is now open for a workshop on oral history to be held at
University College London (School of Slavonic and East European
Studies) on 15 January 2011.

The workshop aims to improve the use of oral history by modern
historians, especially those working on Soviet and East European
history.  The workshop, funded by SSEES, arose out of the realisation
that oral history has become an increasingly popular tool for scholars
of the Soviet bloc, especially with the turn towards the
post-Stalinist and late socialist period (where archives are often
inadequate, and where living witnesses are still alive to give
testimony) and towards ‘subjectivity’ as an area of historical
enquiry. However, the methodology remains under-developed, and rarely
draws on the remarkable innovations that are occurring in oral history
and ‘life history’ outside the Eastern bloc. How can these innovations
outside our field enhance research into 20thc. Soviet and East
European history? And how can our research help to develop oral
history theory and practice in general?

The proposed workshop will answer these urgent questions by bringing
together Soviet-era scholars using, or planning to use, oral history
methods with practitioners of oral history from a variety of academic
and public institutions. It will foster a mutually enlightening
dialogue among scholars of our region, who will discuss the practical,
ethical and intellectual issues specific to the use of oral history in
researching socialism, and experts in oral history research into other
societies and time periods. The workshop will also be genuinely
interdisciplinary; speakers include cultural and social historians,
anthropologists, sociologists and practitioners of oral history from
some of London’s leading museums and libraries.

The workshop will begin with a keynote address by Professor Mary
Fulbrook (UCL), followed by panels on:
•	Practical and ethical considerations of oral history research;
•	Oral history as life history: biography and prosopography;
•	Memory, trauma and testimony;
•	Oral testimony, everyday life and subculture;
•	Interdisciplinarity. Historians as ethnographers; ethnographers as historians?

Conference organisers: Polly Jones, Kristin Roth-Ey (SSEES)

Confirmed speakers: Mary Fulbrook (UCL; keynote speaker), Joe Cain
(UCL), Juliane Fuerst (Bristol), Emily Fuggle (Imperial War Museum),
Jenny Harding (London Metropolitan), Caroline Humphrey (Cambridge),
Margaretta Jolly (Sussex), Catriona Kelly (Oxford), James Mark
(Exeter), Rob Perks (British Library), Susan Reid (Sheffield), Irina
Shcherbakova (Memorial), Olga Shevchenko (Williams), Marsha Siefert
(CEU), Graham Smith (Royal Holloway), Tatiana Voronina (European
University of St Petersburg), Barbara Walker (Nevada)

Pre-registration is free, but essential. Numbers are limited. Please
email Ben Chatterley (b.chatterley at ssees.ucl.ac.uk) to secure a place
at the workshop.
Deadline for registration: 5 November 2010.


-- 
Dr Polly Jones
Lecturer in Russian
School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES-UCL)
University College London
Gower St
London WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom
0207 679-8723
http://www.ssees.ucl.ac.uk/prospect/jones.htm

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