ORAL HISTORY REVIEW CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: ORAL HISTORY & AUTHORITARIANISM
Guest editors: Charlene Makley, Mark Menjívar, Molly Todd
Deadline: November 15, 2026
In the past fifteen years, scholars and journalists alike have sounded the alarm in the face of a perceived new “global wave” (or “spirit,” or “drift”) of authoritarian governance. Some observers have pointed out that, for North Atlantic ethnographers across disciplines, a renewed sense of crisis peaked with the “Atlantic Alliance” (the MAGA and Brexit movements) and the election of Trump in 2016. Yet others have urged us to look past the anxieties of contemporary crises to consider the longer histories of these more recent developments in the U.S. and U.K., especially in light of the fact that many people around the world have long experiences with repressive governance.
Oral historians are well-positioned both to think through what the more recent rise of transnational authoritarian orders could mean for their practice, as well as to contribute to scholarship exploring varied experiences of and resistances to such orders. How might “authoritarian fields” challenge the premises of conventional oral historical research? How are relationships with our respondents or interlocutors shaped or shifted in such politically repressive contexts? What does historical “truth” mean when all storytelling is subject to surveillance and (self)-censorship? What roles can or should community-based archives play? How should oral historians navigate the minefields of access and potential complicities with the authorities? When working in non-English languages, what are the politics of translation and entextualization of stories under such conditions?
The Oral History Review invites submissions of abstracts for a special section dedicated to these themes. We are especially interested in pieces that consider oral historical research in the context of the recent authoritarian turn to explore:
- Methodological issues, including broader questions about the ethics, possibilities, and impossibilities of conducting oral historical research in authoritarian contexts
- Creative or multimodal responses to political repression (on the part of the oral historian and/or their interlocutors)
- The creation of community-based archives
- Translation politics
Abstract guidelines:
- Submit by November 15, 2026, to .
- Doc or docx file format only
- Information to include, in this order:
- Title
- Abstract text (Maximum 300 words; should offer information about main argument, method, structure, and relevance.)
- 5-7 key words (Basic terms that researchers might use to discover your article in an online database search. Do not use “oral history.”)
- Author information (For each author include name, 1-2 sentence biographical note, and email address)
Schedule:
- November 15, 2026 : deadline for submission of abstracts
- mid-December: complete abstract review, respond to authors
- June 1, 2027: full manuscripts due (target length approx 6,000 words inclusive of notes)
- summer 2027: peer review cycle
- fall 2027: final decisions
- spring 2028: earliest potential publication
Oral History Review Mission Statement: https://oralhistory.org/about-the-oral-history-review/