ABSTRACT

This comprehensive international collection reflects on the practice, purpose, and functionality of queer oral history, and in doing so demonstrates the vibrancy and innovation of this rapidly evolving field.

Drawing on the roots of oral history’s original commitment to "history from below" queer oral history has become an indispensable methodology at the heart of queer studies. Expanding and extending the existing canon, this book offers up key observations about queer oral history as a methodology, and how it might be advanced through cutting edge approaches. The collection contains a mix of contributions from established scholars, early career researchers, postgraduate students, archivists, and activists, ensuring its accessibility and wide appeal.

The go-to reference for queer oral history for scholars, undergraduate and postgraduate students, and community-engaged practitioners, New Directions in Queer Oral History advances rigorous methodological and theoretical debates and constitutes a significant intervention in the world of oral history.

chapter |18 pages

Introduction

Archives of disruption

part 1|61 pages

Narrating LGBTQ histories: Presence, absence, and the space between

chapter 1|9 pages

(Un)speakable pasts

Reflections on working at the edges of queer oral history

chapter 2|10 pages

Locating lesbians, finding “gay women”, writing queer histories

Reflections on oral histories, identity, and community memory 1

chapter 3|10 pages

Queer intergenerational reticence

A religious case study 1

chapter 4|9 pages

Reading both ways

Lesbian oral histories and bisexual visibility

chapter 5|12 pages

Finding “evidence of me” through “evidence of us”

Transgender oral histories and personal archives speak

chapter 6|9 pages

Destabilising identities and normative narratives

The methodological challenges of navigating oral history interviews with LGBTQ+ children of Holocaust survivors

part 2|50 pages

Re/making meaning: Navigating discourse, composure, and intersubjectivity

chapter 8|9 pages

“Fuck the gay movement”

Dissemblance and desire in a Black AIDS activist oral history

chapter 9|10 pages

Unfinished business

Documenting Australian lesbian feminism

chapter 11|10 pages

Filling the boxes in ourselves

Conducting a queer oral history of bisexuality and multiple-gender-attraction

part 3|42 pages

Making a queer mess: Embodiment, affect, and exceeding our limits

chapter 12|10 pages

Towards a queer-chronology

Telling stories in the queer/ed archives

chapter 13|8 pages

“I gotta go”

Mobility as a queer methodology

chapter 14|11 pages

LGBTIQ activism and “insider” interviewing

Reflecting on oral histories from the campaign for Australian marriage equality

chapter 15|11 pages

In search of queer composure

Queer temporality, intimacy, and affect 1

part 4|41 pages

Negotiating identity: Sharing authority in creative practice

chapter 16|10 pages

Dry Your Eyes, Princess

Oral testimony and photography – a case study 1

chapter 17|10 pages

“It's telling your story to your family”

Why positionality matters when interviewing an older lesbian for a verbatim play 1

chapter 18|10 pages

An army of listeners

Interviewing lesbians as a practice of liberation for all

chapter 19|9 pages

“Free to Be Me”

Oral history research with lesbians and bisexual women seeking asylum in the UK