CIUS Co-organizes Conference in Kharkiv

An international scholarly conference titled “In Search of One’s Own Voice: Oral History as Theory, Method, and Source,” was held in Kharkiv, December 11-12, 2009. It was jointly organized by the Kowalsky Eastern Institute of Ukrainian Studies, the Ukrainian Oral History Association, the Prairie Centre for the Study of Ukrainian Heritage at St. Thomas More College (University of Saskatchewan), and the V. Karazin National University of Kharkiv. Specialists in various fields of social studies and humanities who actively apply the oral history method in their research work took part in the conference, and were from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Canada, Germany, Belgium, Finland, and Poland.

Issues pertaining to oral history as a research method, the analysis and interpretation  of interviews, and the use of oral sources were discussed, and results of scholarly projects were presented. A session on “Relationships and Convergences: Oral History and Its Subject” addressed the problem of identifying the creators of oral narratives, which involves individuals, society, and its metanarratives. Some participants in this session discussed practical aspects of oral history in post-totalitarian countries, where the problem of subject and subjectivity is complicated by specific conditions.  

The session on “Aspects and Dichotomies: Oral History and Power Relationships” focused on power relationships at the micro-level and in everyday interactions. There was particularly heated debate with regard to the gender issue and prospects of integrating gender studies with oral history. Aside from the question of power hierarchies in society, participants considered the problem of hierarchies in the researcher’s attitude to his subject. This problem may arise not only during interviewing but also in the course of subsequent analysis and the writing and publication of papers.

A session on “Oral and Historical Projects: Organizational Experience and Implementation,” examined various aspects of large-scale research projects, from seeking institutional and financial support and developing research methodology to the presentation of results.

The first day of the conference ended with a round table devoted to oral history as a method and source of research. The most intense debates concerned the interdisciplinarity of oral history, its advantages and implicit drawbacks. Most participants accepted interdisciplinarity as a desired and even inevitable aspect of oral history, but many questions about the forms and methods of its implementation remained open.

These questions were further discussed on the second day of the conference at sessions devoted to “Institutionalization of Oral and Historical Research” and “Overcoming Barriers: Oral History at the Crossroads of Research Practice.” Presentations and discussions concentrated on the comparatively weak institutional basis for oral history in post-Soviet countries, as well as on regional aspects of its development. Relations between the individual and the collective (especially when applying the category of “memory”) were a major concern at the session on “The Issue of Memory in Historical Research.” The conference ended with presentations by young scholars at a session on “Interview, Interpretation, and History - Research Practice and the Responsibility of Scholars.”

The Kowalsky Eastern Ukrainian Institute, directed by Volodymyr Kravchenko, was established at the V. Karazin National University of Kharkiv in 2000 under the aegis of the Kowalsky Program for the Study of Eastern Ukraine at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta. The Zaporizhia branch of the Kowalsky Institute, directed by Anatolii Boiko, came into being soon thereafter to focus on the study of Southern Ukraine. The Program also undertakes other scholarly projects concerned with reviving Ukrainian studies in russified regions of Eastern and Southern Ukraine. The most significant of these is the Baturyn Project for the reconstruction of the historic capital of the Cossack Hetmanate, which has won international recognition and received state support in Ukraine.

Photos (by Volodymyr Kravchenko)