59th OHA Annual Meeting
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
The Oral History Association invites proposals for papers and presentations for its 2025 annual meeting October 15 – 18, at Crowne Plaza Atlanta Midtown in Atlanta, Georgia.
Inspired by the upcoming semi-quincentennial commemoration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, the 2025 Oral History Association Annual Meeting will convene a variety of shared experiences that ask and answer the question: What is America? This year, we reflect on how we have arrived where we are today, what this country means to its citizens and the world, and how 250 years of independence impacts us all. What are American stories and the stories about America we hear and tell? American politics today are contentious. Stories of institutions silencing academics have become alarmingly commonplace, and even five years later, the aftereffects of the global pandemic leave us questioning accuracy and truth among misinformation, doubts, and fear. However, Americans have proven their resilience and capacity for change. Likewise, as a field, oral history has been undergoing a paradigm shift towards radical inclusivity. In that, we hope practitioners are finding new possibilities, generating new approaches, reassessing best practices, and recalling and refurbishing the fundamentally democratic impulse of oral history practice. The paradigm shift is broad and encompasses an openness to different cultural perspectives, and deeper analysis of power dynamics.
The United States of America, aka the “United States” or “America”, is a federation of 50 states and 574 federally recognized tribal nations located in North America. With a non-contiguous Alaska in the northwest, and Hawaii an archipelago in the Pacific, it shares borders with Canada and Mexico. The U.S. also asserts sovereignty over five unincorporated island territories and various uninhabited islands, giving it the world’s third-largest land area and population. But America is more than these facts. It is also an idea and an ideal: a political culture promoting liberty, equality, individualism, personal autonomy, and limited government. America’s identity, however, shifts constantly depending on the lens through which one looks. Throughout history, its citizenry has actively expanded and shaped that identity, making it both dynamic and continually contested. How does this shape the questions we ask ourselves and others?
The 2025 OHA meeting will provoke generative discussions about oral history’s fundamental role in defining a nation. We invite you to consider the following questions as examples of ideas and discussions we hope to include in the 2025 program:
- What can the spirit and methods of oral history contribute to modern-day understandings of the nation-state?
- What might project-based learning models teach us about participatory community work and active citizenship?
- How do we honor and maximize the potential of the oral history encounter for participants and audience members?
- Who else might inspire innovation in oral historians’ intellectual, institutional, political, aesthetic, cultural, and spiritual work?
Practitioners can use oral history to explore national identity in many ways, including: understanding national interests; sharing and preserving unique cultural memories; and exploring individual identity politics, such as how ordinary people construct their own identities. Our hope is to catalyze such transformations by creating space for sharing teachable cases, probing discussions, and forging new connections.
The Program Committee welcomes panel and presentation ideas that offer broad, creative interpretations of the conference theme. We encourage presenters to think about innovative delivery models of practical use to those new to the field, including workshops, interactive sessions, case studies of oral history projects, personal reflections by students, teachers, narrators, and other project participants; interpretive performance; and the use of digital media. We welcome proposals from diverse communities that carry out oral history work – academics, independent scholars, activists, librarians, museum curators, web designers, teachers, community/public historians, documentary filmmakers, artists, creative writers, ethnographers, and others whose work relates to this theme. We welcome first-time attendees who can take insights and ideas back to their communities. We anticipate a significant international presence at the meeting. We particularly welcome proposals highlighting oral history in the various parts of the Americas outside the United States.
We will utilize Atlanta, Georgia, as the conference location, a city whose rich yet checkered history testifies to individual stories’ crucial roles in fulfilling democracy’s promises. As the birthplace of the world’s most famous soda, Coca-Cola, and home to countless other Fortune 500 companies, The ATL also holds space within the capitalist nature of the American Dream. Established in 1732, Georgia was the last of the thirteen colonies, the fourth state to join the Union in 1776, fifth to join the Confederacy in 1861, and it remains the ancestral homelands of the Muscogee (Creek) and the Cherokee nations.
Atlanta provides an exciting location to highlight all the innovative and exciting oral history work from around the country and worldwide. Whether you call it The Big Peach, A-Town, Dogwood City, or even the New York of the South, it is home to 16 colleges and universities that attract students from all over the world. This gives the city a vibrant and diverse culture that reflects its rich history, blending traditional Southern hospitality with contemporary urban energy. Furthermore, the city is home to vast oral history collections representing this history and diversity and contributing to rich discussion and debate about what America is today and what it could become. Whether in myth or reality, how does all this impact our work, the stories we record, and the people we share them with?
Proposal format: The online proposal site is NOW OPEN and closes on February 21, 2025.
