Interactive Oral History Interviewing

by Eva M. McMahan (editor), Kim Lacy Rogers (Editor)

The essays in this anthology represent, in the broadest sense, an interpretive perspective of inquiry that has flourished in oral history for the past 15 years. This perspective considers oral history interviews as subjective, socially constructed and emergent events; that is, understanding, interpretation, and meaning of lived experience are interactively constructed.The impetus for this volume was the editor's fascination with the multifaceted complexity of the oral history interview method coupled with the belief that, despite many books that address methodological issues, no single work takes as its focus those complex, interactive processes which constitute the oral history interview. The editors' purpose in developing this anthology, therefore, was to provide a variety of essays which taken together address the possibilities and constraints inherent in oral history interviewing.

184 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 1994

Reviews

[Kayli · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book as a source for my oral and memory history essay. Since the chapters are technically articles and this being for an essay I've selected chapters 1-4, 6 and 7. Overall I really liked the book and the order the articles were in made sense. Some of the articles were a bit long-winded and I found myself zoning in and out of them whereas others were extremely engaging. My favorite articles were "Trauma Redeemed: the Narrative Construction of Social Violence" by Kim Lacy Rogers and "A Riot of Voices: Racial and Ethnic Variables in Interactive Oral History Interviewing" by Arthur A. Hansen because they were engaging, well-written and flowed seamlessly. My only note is that this book is predominately focused on American oral and memory history, which is not a bad thing - unless you were focusing on German oral and memory history like I was.