Talk:Oral history

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 May 2019 and 23 July 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Ousainou Adeniyi.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 01:56, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Africa

I notice Africa is left out of this article, which is surprising because it contains some of the best and most recent examples.

• Vansina describes African societies as 'oral civilisations' as opposed to 'literate civilisations'. The paragraph in the lead that labels oral history as primitive is a clear example of academic racism in my view.
• General History of Africa: Voume 1, chapter 2: The place of history in African society
• Also see Griot. In West Africa their position was hereditary and one of their roles was to memorise their peoples' history and serve as an advisor in the king's court, where they would be expected to turn their knowledge into lessons. There are more examples across the continent, especially in the Great Lakes shown in the Empire of Kitara article.

I'm happy to add a section for Africa (perhaps have it most prominent?) however I'm not knowledgeable about this and I don't want to mess around this article without speaking to others first. If I send a few more sources, would someone else be willing to write it? If not I'm happy to write a draft and then put it here for approval.

@Rjensen, Born digital 2, Lc.umd, Mreid123, Dklionsky, Espoo, and Morskyjezek: Alexanderkowal (talk) 18:33, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

I can't write the section but i have some suggestions: 1) Gunner, Liz. "Africa and orality." The Cambridge history of African and Caribbean literature 1 (2004): 1-18. online at https://www.academia.edu/download/49907532/Africa_and_Orality_in_Irele_and_Gikandi_eds_2003.pdf 2) Vansina, Jan. "Once upon a time: Oral traditions as history in Africa." Daedalus (1971): 442-468. online at https://www.jstor.org/stable/20024011 (I can email a copy) 3) Irwin, Paul. Liptako speaks: History from oral tradition in Africa. Princeton University Press, 2014. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Liptako_Speaks/Pcv_AwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=oral+history+africa&pg=PP1&printsec=frontcover and 4) Field, Sean. Oral history, community, and displacement: Imagining memories in post-apartheid South Africa. Springer, 2012. review of important book by Sean Field at https://core.ac.uk/reader/157781040 --good luck! Rjensen (talk) 23:36, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

@Rjensen Thank you, I'll start working on it.

Is the introduction correct? Doesn't the title better match "Oral historiography", the study of oral history, rather than "Oral history", the practice of retaining/preserving history orally?

This article appears to be about the academic discipline. Perhaps the issue is that oral history has obtained two meanings. I do think it is worth keeping this article about the academic discipline, which I can add a section summarising 'General History of Africa: Volume 1, Oral tradition and its methodology' which is about the study of African oral history, however a new article should probably be created which focuses on oral history as the practice of preserving history orally (different to recording sound in modern times), which is a subset of oral tradition.

I do think the title of this article should be changed, however begrudgingly not if the subject of this article is only ever referred to as oral history. Alexanderkowal (talk) 20:31, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps changing the title to "Oral history (recordings)" supposedly once the other article is completed? Alexanderkowal (talk) 20:35, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

WP:WikiProject Oral tradition

Would people be interested in joining a wikiproject on improving and creating articles about oral tradition? Wikipedia's coverage on this appears to be very poor Kowal2701 (talk) 19:30, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Possible AI use

Concerns have been raised about AI-generated content in part of this article. This is a procedural talk page section to discuss it. There is no need to ping me in response. Gnomingstuff (talk) 15:50, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Syria subsection is about oral traditions

I have marked the Syria subsection, which is about oral traditions, as being off topic in relation to how oral history has been defined in this article. Most historians, but not all, separate the two, but many (?) anthropologists seem to treat any history derived from oral sources as oral history. The easiest solution would be to delete the Syria subsection, which is not very interesting, and leave the article's definition alone or should the definition be expanded to include oral traditions? Zoocat56 (talk) 23:34, 19 September 2026 (UTC)