The Oral History Association of India is pleased to announce its third Oral History Conference on 13th and 14th November, 2017 in collaboration with the Department of History, Gauhati University, Guwahati.
“Public Memory and Oral History”
Venue: Gauhati University Campus, Guwahati, Assam, India
The Oral History Association of India and the Department of History, Gauhati University hosted a National Conference on Public Memory and Oral History at Gauhati University, Guwahati, Assam (India) on November 13-14, 2017.
The theme of the conference addressed the growing interest in the study of the relationship between public memory and oral history. The ways in which individuals and societies choose to remember, or forget, moments and events in history through ‘sites’ of public memory such as memorials, museums, monuments, films and public speeches, is often highly contested. The narration of the past, the preservation and loss of collective memories is clearly a matter of ideology and power which has implications for contemporary issues such as ethnicity, class, gender and religion. Oral history as a subject and technique interprets how memory affects impressions of the past. If traditional history is produced by those in power, oral history by contrast can be seen as repository of knowledge for ‘people without history’. No memory is possible outside the frameworks used by people living in society to determine and retrieve their recollection. As a product of social change, public memory looks beyond the State to understand how individual perspectives in history build collective memory focusing on the broader cultural meanings of oral history narratives.
Sub – themes:
- Oral History and Cultural Heritage
- Oral History, Museums and Archives
- Oral History and Public Events
- Public Memory and Verbal Arts
- Media and Memory
- Memory and Migration
- Memory, Nation and Identity
- Memory, Urban Spaces and Cultures
- Natural Disaster and Public Narratives
- Voices of Collective Remembering
- Oral History and Environment