The Women and Memory Forum (WMF), in cooperation with the Supreme Council of Culture in Egypt and the UN Women, organized the international conference “Oral History in Times of Change: Gender, Documentation, and the Making of Archives,” held in Cairo on 13–15 September 2015.

The WMF conference aimed to strengthen the relations between researchers, students, artists, and practitioners of oral history by creating a platform to exchange views and experiences regarding the challenges to oral history projects in times of change, with a focus on gender issues. The conference also aimed to present and discuss documentation initiatives that targeted oral narratives on revolutions in the Arab world, and invited international participants to explore experiences of documenting oral history in times of change in other parts of the world. In addition, the conference aimed to review conceptual and methodological issues pertaining to documenting oral narratives and the making of archives.

The WMF conference encompassed research papers, live testimonies, and roundtable discussions, in both Arabic and English, on themes such as: the archive, power, and authority; personal memory and collective memory; the challenges and opportunities of new technologies to oral history archives; visual and audio archives, politics of representing Arab women in oral history; the interpretation of memory narratives; ethical concerns in oral historiography; conceptual and methodological issues in oral history, and women’s archives and the production of alternative knowledge.

Conference Background

In the 1960s, oral history projects were at the forefront of liberatory social movements in general, and feminist movements in particular. Feminist historians challenged mainstream historical narratives that fed normalized cultural stereotypes of women’s roles in history and society. They documented the marginalized voices of women and integrated their diverse points of view in historical narratives. They also engaged in intellectual debates about the relation between the social and the individual, the workings of memory and the construction of subjectivity, and the relation between personal memory and collective memory. Feminist historians played a key role in highlighting the value of subjectivity and dismantling the false binary between subjective and objective histories. Feminist oral history succeeded in creating a knowledge foundation to support women’s movements in many countries around the world by creating archives of women’s voices.

In the Arab world, archives of women’s voices were absent until the end of the twentieth century despite the documentation efforts in individual research projects. However, the twenty-first century witnessed a discernible increase in documentation projects in general, and particularly projects that focused on Arab women’s voices. The Arab region underwent radical historical transformations in the aftermath of critical events including the second Palestinian intifada in 2000, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the invasion of Lebanon in 2006, and recently, the wave of Arab uprisings that erupted late 2010. The interpretations, meanings, and repercussions of these events continue to be sites of conflict and negotiation between different factions of the Arab community. In addition, the new technologies contributed to the changes in the field of oral history, inviting new practitioners and new audiences.

The increase in radical shifts and uprisings in the Arab region compels oral history practitioners to raise and confront several questions regarding the role, potentials, and limitations of oral history projects and research in times of change; the potential role of oral history in enabling women’s active participation in transitional politics; the challenges and dangers facing oral historians and practitioners working in an environment marked by severe political disintegration; the challenges posed by the new technologies on the field of oral history; and the challenges to the construction of an ‘objective’ and ‘representative’ archive of women’s voices in turbulent times.

To access the abstracts of the conference papers, follow the below links:

For the Arabic edition, visit https://www.wmf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Abstracts2.pdf

For the English edition, visit https://www.wmf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Abstracts1.pdf