scholarly journals Safe for Whom? And Whose Families? Narrative, Urban Neoliberalism, and Queer Oral History on San Francisco’s Polk Street

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 86-113
Author(s):  
Joseph Plaster
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Gay Men ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Homeless Youth ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Family Structures ◽  
Biological Family ◽  
Queer Politics

In this essay I reflect on my experience as director of Polk Street: Lives in Transition, a project that drew on oral histories to intervene in debates about gentrification, homelessness, sex work, queer politics, and public safety in the highly polarized setting of gentrifying San Francisco. From 2008–10, I recorded more than seventy oral histories from people experiencing the transformation of the city’s Polk Street from a working-class queer commercial district to a gentrified entertainment destination serving the city’s growing elite. Oral histories enabled me to document a local past rich in non-biological family structures, which I interpreted through public “listening parties,” professionally mediated neighborhood dialogues, a traveling multimedia exhibit, and radio documentaries. The project challenged gentrifiers’ claims to be promoting “safety” and “family” by positing alternative understandings of both concepts drawn from oral histories with transgender women, queer homeless youth, sex workers, and working-class gay men who had made Polk Street their home.

Invaluable Lives

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Fran Leeper Buss
Keyword(s):  
New Mexico ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Oral History ◽  
American History ◽  
Close Friend ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Poor Women ◽  
History Of ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
Racial Ethnic

Fran Leeper Buss began her career as an historian of poor and working-class women in July 1971 by recording the near homelessness of herself, her close friend, and their combined six children. Working as a founder of an early women’s crisis center, she learned the stories of other poor women. In 1976, she developed a technique for and recorded an oral history of the last of the traditional, licensed, Latina midwives in northern New Mexico. Specializing in lengthy oral histories of activist women, she then collected oral histories from over one hundred working-class women from multiple racial/ethnic groups throughout the country. A feminist, she received a PhD in American history, published the oral histories in six books, and placed them in six archives.

Geographies of Displacement: Latina/os, Oral History, and The Politics of Gentrification in San Francisco's Mission District

2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Raquel Mirabal
Keyword(s):  
Real Estate ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Oral History ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Print Media ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Mission District

Abstract During the 1990s and early 2000s, working-class and poor neighborhoods in San Francisco underwent dramatic economic and racial changes. One of the most heavily gentrified neighborhoods was the Mission District. As a result of local politics, housing and rental policies, real estate speculation, and development, thousands of Latina/o families were displaced. Using oral historical and ethnographic methodologies, print media, archival sources, and policy papers, this article traces the gentrification of the Mission District from the perspective of the Latina/o community. It also examines how gentrification was articulated as a positive turn within the larger public discourse on space and access.

Third Wave Feminist Analysis of a Second Wave Feminist's Art

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer A. Zenovich ◽  
Shane T. Moreman
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Symbolic Order ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Feminist Art ◽  
Feminist Analysis ◽  
Second Wave

A third wave feminist approach to feminist oral history, this research essay blends both the visual and the oral as text. We critique a feminist artist's art along with her words so that her representation can be seen and heard. Focusing on three art pieces, we analyze the artist's body to conceptualize agentic ways to understand the meanings of feminist art and feminist oral history. We offer a third wave feminist approach to feminist oral history as method so that feminists can consider adaptive means for recording oral histories and challenging dominant symbolic order.

The Personal is the Political

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-148
Author(s):  
Mercilee M. Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Community Member ◽  
The Political ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Feminist Organization ◽  
Second Wave

This paper explores the transformation of oral histories into a play about the founding of San Francisco Women's Building based on extensive interviews. My impetus for writing She Rises Like a Building to the Sky was to portray the kind of grass roots feminist organization primarily composed of lesbians that made up a large part of the second wave of the Women's Movement in the 1970's and early 1980's. The evolution of She Rises is discussed from three positionalities I occupied over an extensive period of time: oral historian, playwright and eventual community member. Excerpts from She Rises are used to illustrate the lessons I learned in the process of creating this work. I will discuss my self-collaboration in terms of the oral historian's concern for fidelity, the playwright's desire to bring such material to life whether by fact or fiction, and the community member's fears of how others will view this rendition of their stories. The behind the scenes dramas reveal as much as the play itself about the challenges and rewards of undertaking such projects.

THE KHOREZM SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL OF HISTORY AND ORAL HISTORICAL RESEARCHES OF OTAMISH HODJA

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 39-46
Author(s):  
Ziyovutdin Ilkhomov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Scientific School

The article analyzes the features of the historian Otamish Hodja's writing of Chingiznoma and the author's extensive use of oral histories in writing the work. The oral history issues in this source and the author's approaches have not been analyzed to date

“Scrap-Heap Storiesˮ: Oral Narratives of Labour and Loss in Scottish Mining and Manufacturing

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2-2018) ◽  
pp. 8-21
Author(s):  
Arthur McIvor
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Job Loss ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Oral Narratives ◽  
Industrial Work ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Plant Closures ◽  
The Impact

This article is an attempt to comprehend deindustrialisation and the impact of plant downsizing and closures in Scotland since the 1970s through listening to the voices of workers and reflecting on their ways of telling, whilst making some observations on how an oral history methodology can add to our understanding. It draws upon a rich bounty of oral history projects and collections undertaken in Scotland over recent decades. The lush description and often intense articulated emotion help us as academic “outsidersˮ to better understand how lives were profoundly affected by plant closures, getting us beyond statistical body counts and overly sentimentalised and nostalgic representations of industrial work to more nuanced understandings of the meanings and impacts of job loss. In recalling their lived experience of plant run-downs and closures, narrators are informing and interpreting; projecting a sense of self in the process and drawing meaning from their working lives. My argument here is that we need to listen attentively and learn from those who bore witness and try to make sense of these diverse, different and sometimes contradictory stories. We should take cognisance of silences and transgressing voices as well as dominant, hegemonic narratives if we are to deepen the conversation and understand the complex but profound impacts that deindustrialisation had on traditional working-class communities in Scotland, as well as elsewhere.

Working-Class Autobiography, c.1970–1985

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Domestic Service ◽  
Political Education ◽  
Post War ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
Community Publishing

This chapter examines working-class autobiographies and oral history testimonies created in the 1970s by the ‘history from below’, oral history, and community publishing movements. It finds that most working-class autobiographers felt that class divisions had weakened and changed radically in the post-war years: they identified improvements in housing, the NHS, education, and the power of workers as key alterations. The disappearance of live-in domestic service was a particularly powerful symbol of the changes that had taken place. Though none thought class had disappeared, many thought class divides were less powerful. While some working-class autobiographers wrote that their experiences made them instinctive socialists, in fact political activism did not flow straightforwardly from experience, but was the result of political education and context. Working-class experience was highly diverse, and as this became clear to many in the community publishing movement, it led to changes in their activist practice in the 1980s.

In Their Own Words: Susan Stafford

BioScience ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-219
Author(s):  
James M Verdier
Keyword(s):  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
University Of Minnesota ◽  
American Institute ◽  
The University

Abstract In Their Own Words chronicles the stories of scientists who have made great contributions to their fields, particularly within the biological sciences. These short oral histories provide our readers a way to learn from and share their experiences. Each month, we will publish in the pages of BioScience and in our podcast, BioScience Talks (http://bioscienceaibs.libsyn.com), the results of these conversations. This fourth oral history is with Dr. Susan Stafford, professor and dean emerita at the University of Minnesota. She previously served as president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. Note: Both the text and audio versions have been edited for clarity and length.

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