A Conversation with Katrina Srigley, Stacey Zembrzycki, and Franca Iacovetta.

Earlier this year saw the publication of Beyond Women’s Words: Feminisms and the Practices of Oral History in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Katrina Srigley, Stacey Zembrzycki, and Franca Iacovetta. As someone who practices feminist oral history myself, and as a big fan of all three editors (who are also some of my academic heroes), I jumped at the opportunity to speak with them recently about their new book, what feminist oral history means, how the field has evolved over the last forty years, and where we go from here. Enjoy!

Dr. Katrina Srigley lives and works on Nbisiing Anishinaabeg territory. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Nipissing University and co-editor of Beyond Women’s Words: Feminisms and the Practices of Oral History in the Twenty-First century (Routledge 2018). Her Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)-funded projects, developed in partnership with Nipissing First Nation, examine the history of Nbisiing Anishinaabeg through Anishinaabeg ways of knowing, recording, and sharing the past. Dr. Srigley is currently co-authoring a book with Glenna Beaucage (Cultural and Heritage Manager, Nipissing First Nation) titled Gaa-Bi Kidwaad Maa Nbisiing/The Stories of Nbisiing.   

Dr. Stacey Zembrzycki teaches History at Dawson College in Montreal, Quebec. An award-winning oral and public historian of ethnic, immigrant, and refugee experience, she is the author of According to Baba: A Collaborative Oral History of Sudbury’s Ukrainian Community (UBC Press, 2014) and its accompanying website: www.sudburyukrainians.ca, and is co-editor of Oral History Off the Record: Toward an Ethnography of Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Beyond Women’s Words: Feminisms and the Practices of Oral History in the Twenty-First Century (Routledge, 2018). Zembrzycki’s current SSHRC funded project, Mining Immigrant Bodies, uses oral history to explore the connections between mining, health, and the environment and their impact on postwar immigrant communities in Sudbury, Ontario. She is also completing a book entitled Chaperoning Survivors: Telling Holocaust Stories on the March of the Living, which uses multiple, life story oral history interviews to understand how five Montreal Holocaust survivors give testimony, remember in-situ, and educate others about the horrors they witnessed in Poland.

Dr. Franca Iacovetta is Professor of History at University of Toronto and co-editor of Studies in Gender & History at University of Toronto Press. Besides Beyond Women’s Words (Routledge, 2018), recent publications include a volume in honour of Luisa Passerini and articles on married women’s nationality and migrant children’s health. Now completing a monograph on women’s community-based pluralism, she is involved in a collaborative project on Emma Goldman in Toronto and continues to conduct research on transnational radical antifascists.