Most discussions of oral history method are rooted in abstract ideas about what interviewing should be and should achieve. However, interviews are ultimately personal interactions between human beings, and as such they rarely conform to a methodological ideal. Nonetheless, oral history's complex, capricious nature is rarely addressed by its practitioners when they share their work with the world. The struggles and negotiations interviewers face while conducting interviews - ethical, political, personal - either go unacknowledged or are discussed only with trusted colleagues in informal settings. This groundbreaking collection shows that a full account of oral history methodology must include honest and rigorous analyses of actual practice, allowing us to embrace the uncertainties and remarkable opportunities that define a human-centered methodology. Here, fourteen practitioners draw connections between vastly different areas of study, including Holocaust memories, work with Aboriginal communities, Islamic studies, immigration, and conflict studies. All are united by the shared experience of encountering complex individuals with messy, difficult, and ultimately illuminating stories to tell.

Anna Sheftel teaches at the undergraduate and graduate levels in the Conflict Studies program at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, Canada. She has significant experience working on issues related to oral history methodology and ethics, and is the founder of H-Memory, the largest network of people working on scholarship in the inter-disciplinary field of Memory Studies.

Stacey Zembrzycki is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Concordia University, Canada. Her book Sharing Authority with Baba: Wrestling with Memories of Community is forthcoming with the University of British Columbia Press.

Foreword; Steven High
Introduction: Toward an Ethnography of Practice; Anna Sheftel and Stacey Zembrzycki
PART I: REFLECTIONS ON A LIFETIME OF PRACTICE
Section Introduction: Henry Greenspan
1. From California to Kufr Nameh and Back: Reflections on Forty Years of Feminist Oral History; Sherna Berger Gluck
2. "On" and "Off" the Record in Shifting Times and Circumstances; Julie Cruikshank and Tatiana Argounova
3. Politics and Praxis in Canadian Working-Class Oral History; Joan Sangster
PART II: BUILDING TRUST, BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS
Section Introduction: Hourig Attarian
4. The Vulnerable Listener; Martha Norkunas
5. Listen and Learn: Familiarity and Feeling in the Oral History Interview; Alan Wong
6. Going Places: Helping Youth with Refugee Experiences Take Their Stories Public; Elizabeth Miller
7. Not Just Another Interviewee: Befriending a Holocaust Survivor; Stacey Zembrzycki
PART III: THE ETHICS AND POLITICS OF PRACTICE
Section Introduction: Leyla Neyzi
8. I Can Hear Lois Now: Corrections to My Story of the Internment of Japanese Canadians - "For the Record"; Pamela Sugiman
9. Third Parties in 'Third Spaces': Reflecting on the Role of the Translator in Oral History Interviews with Iraqi Diasporic Women; Nadia Jones-Gailani
10. "If you told me you wanted to talk about the '60s, I wouldn't have called you back": Reflections on Collective Memory and the Practice of Oral History; Nancy Janovicek
11. The Ethical Murk of Using Testimony in Oral Historical Research in South Africa; Monica Eileen Patterson
PART IV: CONSIDERING SILENCE
Section Introduction: Erin Jessee
12. Toward an Ethics of Silence? Negotiating Off-the-Record Events and Identity in Oral History; Alexander Freund
13. The Heart of Activism in Colombia: Reflections on Activism and Oral History Research in a Conflict Area; Luis van Isschot
14. "I don't fancy history very much": Reflections on Interviewee Recruitment and Refusal in Bosnia-Herzegovina; Anna Sheftel
Afterword; Alessandro Portelli