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

Cover of Beyond Women's Words: Feminisms and the Practices of Oral History in the Twenty-First Century. Features an image of "Aunt Grace and the Elders," a painting by Daphne Odjig.

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!

Katrina Srigley headshot

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.   

Image of Stacey Zembrzycki
Photo credit: David Ward

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.

Headshot of Franca Iacovetta

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.

The Book Itself

Beyond Women’s Words is a large volume that contains twenty-five full-length articles, in addition to a preface, foreword, introduction, and section introductions, written by forty-three different contributors. The articles are organized along five themes. The first, “Reflections on Women’s Words,” features some of the original authors from Women’s Words reflecting on what has changed over the past twenty-five years. Section two, “Doing Feminist Oral History Then and Now,” includes reflections on the challenge of a feminist methodology. Section three, “Decentering and Decolonizing in Feminist Oral History,” looks at the rejection of Western epistemologies and methodologies in favour of community-based and/or local ontologies in oral history practice. Section four, “Feminists in the Field: Performance, Political Activism, and Community Engagement,” focuses on the labour involved in memory work, collaborative storytelling, and in building democratic relationships. Finally, section five, “Listening To and Learning From Stories in the Digital World,” explores the possibilities and challenges of doing feminist oral history after the digital turn.  

While all three editors of the volume are specialists in Canadian history (though Iacovetta is also a transnational migration scholar), this book is not a Canadian history book. Rather, it brings together scholars, artists, and community activists from around the world who work in the field of feminist oral history. That said, the volume is not lacking in Canadian content. Far from it. The volume features the following Canadian pieces:

  • Lianne C. Leddy (Anishinaabe kwe from Serpent River First Nation, who grew up in Elliot Lake) on “’Are You Only Interviewing Women For This?:’ Indigenous Feminism And Oral History,” 
  •   Valerie Korinek on “Locating Lesbians, Finding ‘Gay Women,’ Writing Queer Histories: Reflections On Oral Histories, Identity, And Community Memory,” 
  •   Stéphane Martelly on “This Thing We Are Doing Here? Listening And Writing In The ‘Montréal Life Stories Project,” 
  • Penny Couchie (Anishinaabe dancer, actor, teacher, and choreographer from Nipissing First Nation)’s piece co-authored with Muriel Miguel (Kuna/Rappahannock) on “Storyweaving, Indigenous Knowledge, and process in Material Witness,” 
  • Shahrzaf Arshadi, Hourig Attarian, Khadija Baker and Kumuru Bilici’s piece, “Come Wash With Us: Seeking Home in a Story,” 
  • Elise Chenier’s “Oral History’s Afterlife,”
  • Heather A. Howard, “’Shut The Tape Off And I’ll Tell You A Story:’ Women’s Knowledges In Urban Indigenous Community Representations.”

The History of a Book: Relationships, Conferences, and Collaborations

In many respects, this book is a symbol of the power of relationships. The lineage of this book can be traced back to a 1977 special issue of Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies,guest edited by Sherna Berger Gluck and Joan Jensen. The issue itself contains sixteen articles, mostly focusing on American women’s history (though there is one Canadian piece!) by mostly US-based scholars. This special issue would be followed fourteen years later with the publication of Gluck and Daphne Patai’s edited collection Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History. This volume contains thirteen articles organized across four different fields (language and communication, authority and interpretation, dilemmas and contradictions, and community and advocacy). 

The idea for the latest entry in the Women’s Words conversation came about during a 2011 international oral history workshop at Concordia University in Montreal, organized by Stacey Zembrzycki and Anne Sheftel. As groundbreaking as this volume was at the time of its publication, by the late 2000s it was increasingly out of touch with contemporary thinking on feminist oral history practice. Zembrzycki initially raised the possibility of a new volume in discussion with Gluck, who gave her blessing. The groundwork for what became Beyond Women’s Words was laid at a panel organized by Zembrzycki and Pamela Sugiman at the 2014 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, hosted outside of the United States for the first time at the University of Toronto and organized by Franca Iacovetta. In addition to Zembrzycki and Sugiman, the panel also featured Gluck, Srigley, and several other scholars who would eventually contribute to the new book. While I was not fortunate enough to attend the conference, I was charmed by Srigley’s description of a packed room and Iacovetta running around trying to find chairs for everyone. 

Image courtesy of Joyce Pillarella.

Over the next few years, Zembrzycki, Srigley, and Iacovetta worked closely with one another to bring the book to fruition. Summers were filled with long editing sessions. The team encountered many challenges along the way, from pregnancies to Zembrzycki’s status as a precarious worker in academia, juggling the demands of contracts and teaching as a Cégep teacher. The entire book took four years from start to finish, which is exceptionally fast for an edited collection. 

Throughout the process, relationship-building was a central aspect of Zembrzycki, Srigley, and Iacovetta’s work. In some cases this meant building on relationships that Srigley had established with members of Nipissing First Nation; in others it meant building bridges with international scholars working in a wide range of fields as well as community practitioners, artists, and activists, and tapping into existing networks established by their colleagues. For instance, Iacovetta pointed to the tremendous amount of work done by Mary Jane Logan McCallum (Member of the Munsee Delaware Nation) and Susan Hill (Haudenosaunee citizen from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory) as the co-chairs of  the Indigenous stream at the Berkshire conference as a key component in allowing the editors to connect with Indigenous scholars. All three editors had a very specific vision in mind, to “create a space where we were all having conversations in relationship.”

In the background there are people standing listening to a talk. In the foreground a woman sits in front of a table with piles of books on it.
Image courtesy of Stacey Zembrzycki.

Decentering and Decolonizing Feminist Oral History

This emphasis on shared space went alongside a commitment to broaden their methodological and historiographical communities in an integrated and relational way. It would be a mistake to see this book as the sequel to Women’s Words, just as Women’s Words was not a sequel to the special issue of Frontiers. Rather, it showcases a shift in thinking in the field, one that moves away from essentializing notions of “womanhood” towards a more nuanced understanding of gender. Further, the editors felt that Beyond Women’s Words was, in many ways, a circling back to critical insights in Women’s Wordsand an opportunity to revisit the foundational work of early feminist historians as well as charting the paths not taken. Many of the issues raised in Women’s Words continue to be contested, like the question of authorial interpretation or whether scholars collaborate with their narrators to tell the final story together. This is why it was so important to all three editors that some of the original authors be included in this new collection. The use of the term “beyond” in the title was a deliberate attempt to avoid a whiggish interpretation of the historiography, and to remember important insights while also dealing with some of the limitations of the original work through a focus on the diversity of women’s voices and practices for listening to and learning from stories of the past.

Image of seven women posing for a photograph. The four women at the centre of the image are all dressed in white.
Image courtesy of Stacey Zembrzycki.

For instance, there was a clear dedication to acknowledging that Indigenous Knowledge Keepers and Elders have been doing this kind of work since time immemorial. Contributors were encouraged to speak to their own teachers, from fields that are not typically considered in feminist oral history, even when this includes Elders or life experience. The editors also believed it was important to highlight the work being done by Indigenous scholars working today. Zembrzycki, Srigley, and Iacovetta all pointed to the US Oral History Association (Montreal 2018) plenary presentation by Autumn Varley (Anishinaabekwe Southern Georgian Bay), one of Srigley’s former students, as an example. During the plenary, Varley spoke out about the importance of recognizing and honouring Anishinaabe ethics in research projects. In Varley’s case, questions about definitions of community — who is in our communities and who leads or speaks for a community — emerged in her work with the Research Ethics Board (REB). Varley’s grandmother was displaced from her home community as a result of an early incarnation of the Sixties Scoop, and never returned to live in her community. However, the REB, following the guidance of Chapter 9 of the Tri-Council Policy on Research with Human Subjects, requested that Varley seek permission from Chief and Council of her grandmother’s childhood community before continuing with her research. Varley challenged this request, arguing that in this case her family in Southern Georgian Bay was her community and that forcing her grandmother to seek consent from a community she no longer belonged to had the potential to cause harm. More broadly, Varley argued that ethics boards need to recognize and understand the ethics Indigenous scholars bring to their work. Anishinaabe ethics guided Varley’s practice in important ways, including how she listens to and understands stories. She noted that “you have a responsibility to the stories you hear.” In another example, the editors highlighted the work of two contributors, Penny Couchie and Muriel Miguel, who also spoke at the OHA plenary. During their talk, they showed an extended clip from a performance of their play, Material Witness, which explores Indigenous women’s stories of violence, healing, and resilience (you can see a clip here). A powerful film in its own right, Material Witnessalso demonstrates the tremendous potential to be found at the intersections of oral history, Indigenous storytelling, and artistic performance.

A group of people listen to three speakers.
Image courtesy of Stacey Zembrzycki

Throughout the entire process, the editors were acutely aware of their privilege and the irony of three Canadian scholars working to decenter the Global North, while working with a British publisher (Routledge) on a book that was aimed towards a presumed British and North American audience. Iacovetta noted the challenges that arose when trying to ensure that the book was global in scope. She pointed in particular to the “activist” contribution by Uma Chakravarti, a trail-blazing feminist historian and activist in India,  and Ponni Arasu, a queer Indian activist and U of T PhD candidate. As the essay powerfully shows, Chakravarti’s activism included campaigns to expose custodial violence and gender inequality, which meant she was often faced with life-threatening situations. Their fascinating conversation also refers to events that were critical to building feminist oral history networks and scholarship in India and South Asia, but Iacovetta (who loves the piece) had to point out to them that many of the Global North readers of this book would not understand the references. While initially surprised by the comment, they graciously met her request to provide contextual endnotes.   

It was also for this reason that the book was intentionally written to make it accessible for undergraduate students and community practitioners without sacrificing insight or nuance. Women’s Words, and oral history itself, especially since the “reflexive turn” in the field, has sometimes been criticized for its adoption of theoretical frameworks that are inadequately explained or descend into “naval-gazing.” As such, the editors worked with the contributors to ensure that theoretical explanations “illuminated” rather than “obscured,” and that they were grounded in a discussion of how these dynamics operate in the real world. While it will be awhile yet before we know more about how students engage with the book, early reports are promising. Srigley has successfully used Katherine Borland’s original piece from Women’s Words and her contribution to Beyond Women’s Words in a fourth-year seminar. These pieces focused specifically on Borland’s grandmother, intergenerational relationships, developing understandings, and the power of individual stories and the storytelling process as historical practice. Lucky students enrolled in Srigley’s upcoming course on feminist oral history will be able to use the entire book and expand upon these themes.

Edited Collections and Hidden Labour

Academic writing is often depicted as a solitary endeavour, though nothing could be further from the truth. This is especially true for edited collections. But there is a great deal of hidden labour that goes into the production of these volumes. Edited collections depend upon the fostering of relationships, the building of bridges, modeling mentorship, and tremendous amounts of emotional labour (or as Srigley put it, “getting us through some of those walls, […] when I felt I can’t do anymore.”). And yet this kind of labour continues to be undervalued by the academy and our institutions, and scholars are frequently discouraged from working on edited collections. Monographs continue to be seen as the gold standard for scholarly work, while increasingly edited collections are not even being considered as books when it comes to hiring and promotion in academia. While working on edited collections can often be personally rewarding, scholars can be penalized for participating in them. Iacovetta herself recalled that senior male colleagues have criticized her for dedicating so much of her career to helping “other” people publish rather than publishing more herself. However, mentorship is a major factor in a person’s career trajectory, intellectual development, and success beyond the walls of our institutions. 

It was only appropriate that the book be officially launched at another conference, the US Oral History Association (OHA) meeting in Montreal in October 2018. The OHA asked the editors to organize a series of panels around the book, which they happily did. Out of a total of forty-three contributors to the book, close to thirty were able to attend the book launch, which drew about 100 people. This was also the first time where the editors were able to meet many of the contributors in person. But more importantly, the OHA meeting allowed the editors to fully realize their vision of the book. The joy expressed by all three editors when discussing their experiences at the OHA was palpable. 

But for me, what stood out most in my conversation with Zembrzycki, Srigley, and Iacovetta was their excitement about seeing what the future holds in the field of feminist oral history. It was extremely rewarding for them to see so many people identifying themselves as feminist oral historians, acknowledging the creative practices that are increasingly a part of the field, the honesty and courage displayed by panel presenters, and the careful deliberation about what moving outside of a traditional feminist framework means in practice. It should therefore come as no surprise that the editors intend for all of the proceeds from the sales of the book to go the Ojibwe Cultural Foundationon Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island), to support existing community and cultural programs, and acknowledge Anishinaabekwe artist Daphne Odjig, whose artwork, “Aunt Grace and the Elders,”  is on the cover. So I hope this gives you all the motivation to go out and get a copy for yourself!

I hope you enjoyed this week’s blog post, featuring a conversation with Katrina Srigley, Stacey Zembrzycki, and Franca Iacovetta. If you did, please consider sharing it on the social media platform of your choice! And don’t forget to check back on Friday for Stephanie’s regular look at upcoming publications in Canadian history. See you then!

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