UCLA Center for the Study of Women

This paper explores the efficacy of using oral history to document the life history narratives of individuals and communities impacted by a high degree of trauma. Oral history, I believe, poignantly captures a gamut of traumatic experiences by embodying the multiple dimensions of individual experience—including affective dynamics and social meanings—within a socio‐cultural and historical frame. This paper also articulates the ways in which an oral history project is often directed and informed by the social location(s) of the interviewer and narrator (Shuman 130).