ABSTRACT
Beyond Women’s Words unites feminist scholars, artists, and community activists working with the stories of women and other historically marginalized subjects to address the contributions and challenges of doing feminist oral history.
Feminists who work with oral history methods want to tell stories that matter. They know, too, that the telling of those stories—the processes by which they are generated and recorded, and the different contexts in which they are shared and interpreted—also matters—a lot. Using Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai’s classic text, Women’s Words, as a platform to reflect on how feminisms, broadly defined, have influenced, and continue to influence, the wider field of oral history, this remarkable collection brings together an international, multi-generational, and multidisciplinary line-up of authors whose work highlights the great variety in understandings of, and approaches to, feminist oral histories.
Through five thematic sections, the volume considers Indigenous modes of storytelling, feminism in diverse locales around the globe, different theoretical approaches, oral history as performance, digital oral history, and oral history as community-engagement. Beyond Women’s Words is ideal for students of oral history, anthropology, public history, women’s and gender history, and Women’s and Gender Studies, as well as activists, artists, and community-engaged practitioners.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
section Section 1|50 pages
Reflections on women's words
chapter 2|10 pages
The positionality of narrators and interviewers
section Section 2|74 pages
Doing feminist oral history then and now
chapter 6|14 pages
Talking about feminism
chapter 7|14 pages
“Are you only interviewing women for this?”
chapter 8|17 pages
Living, archiving, and reflecting on feminism and activism in India
chapter 9|11 pages
Locating lesbians, finding “gay women,” writing queer histories
section Section 3|68 pages
Decentering and decolonizing in feminist oral history
chapter 11|15 pages
Speaking private memory to public power
chapter 13|8 pages
“This thing we are doing here”
chapter 14|12 pages
Intersubjective experiences and a depiction beyond written words
chapter 15|13 pages
Putting the archive in movement
section Section 4|60 pages
Feminists in the field: Performance, political activism, and community engagement
chapter |4 pages
Introduction to Section 4
chapter 18|8 pages
Women power and feminine solidarity
section Section 5|59 pages
Listening to and learning from stories in the digital world