Full Description
Practicing Oral History with Military and War Veterans focuses predominantly on conducting oral history with men and women of recent wars and military conflicts.
The book provides a structured methodology for building interest and trust among veterans to conduct interviews, design oral history projects, and archive and use these oral history interviews. It includes background on the evolution of veterans oral history, the nuts and bolts of interviewing, ethical guidelines, procedures, and the overall value of veterans oral history. The methodology emphasizes how memory evolves over the years - when a veteran becomes more distant from the events of war, the experiences become individualized and personalized for each veteran based on location, time, place, and purpose of their service. The book also aims to improve understanding of the personal, ethical, and psychological issues involved in listening compassionately to veterans' stories that may contain issues of trauma, gender, socio-economics, race, dis/ability, and ethnicity.
Practicing Oral History with Military and War Veterans is an invitation to community scholars, students, oral historians, and families of veterans to actively participate in the oral history process and to embrace methodology that may help with designing and conducting oral history projects and interviewing war veterans.
Contents
Preface
Section I: Introduction
Chapter 1: My Story
Chapter 2: Overview and Evolution of Military and Veterans Oral History
Chapter 3: Personal Connections to Veterans Oral History
Section II: Issues Common in Veterans Oral History
Chapter 4: Best Practices and Ethical Guidelines
Chapter 5: Race, Ethnicity, Class, Dis/Ability and Gender in the Military [among Veterans]
Chapter 6: Trust, Trauma and the Human Factor
Chapter 7: The Nature of Memory and Silence
Section III: Conducting a Veterans Oral History Project
Chapter 8: Project Design and Preparation
Chapter 9: Recording Techniques
Chapter 10: Interviewing Techniques
Chapter 11: Interviewing War Veterans
Section IV: After the Interview
Chapter 12: Transcribing and Archiving
Chapter 13: Using Veterans Oral History
Chapter 14: The Value of Veterans Oral History
Chapter 15: Reflections
Appendix
Appendix A: Sample Interview Questionnaire
Appendix B: Veteran's Biographical Information Form
Appendix C: Interview's Release Agreement Form
Appendix D: Veteran's Release Agreement Form
Appendix E: Photograph & Memorabilia Log
Appendix F: Interview Summary Form
Appendix G: Project Design Form
Appendix H: Veterans Organizations
Appendix I: Oral History Organizations
Selected Bibliography
Index
