EMILIA-AMALIA SESSION IX:
ORAL HISTORIES/INTERVIEWING
A two-part session: Tuesday, 4 April 2017, 6–9 PM
and Monday, 17 April 2017, 6–9 PM
With Seika Boye and Nicholas Matte

Oral histories and interviews are vital ways that knowledge is exchanged between generations: particularly for minority communities whose narratives and expertise are often ignored in, obscured by, or repressed from official histories and archives. Asking questions, and taking the time and care to record the answers, is therefore a political gesture that can give authority to the experiences of interviewees, and counts them as meaningful for future audiences.

In this two-part session, participants learn the basics of oral history methods and interviewing techniques and then are tasked with developing questions they would like to ask another feminist in their lives. In the second part, participants report back on their experiences of interviewing, share transcriptions and recordings of the results and work to translate and transcribe the answers into a collaboratively produced piece of writing.

Previous experience with interview methods is not required, although participants should expect to generate some material in relation to the workshop theme between sessions.

Participants are requested to commit to both parts of the session.

This session is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Seika Boye is a dance artist, scholar and advocate. She is a lecturer at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies and director of the newly established research Centre for Dance Studies at the University of the Toronto. She has been published in The Dance Current, Dance Collection Danse Magazine, alt.theatre and The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism. Seika has also worked in editorial capacities for the Dance Current and Dance Collection Danse, where she was an archives assistant from 2004-2010. Most recently Seika co-edited the first Dance Forum in Performance Matters online journal. As a performer Seika has appeared with Judith Marcuse Projects, Electric Company Theatre, Ballet Creole and various independent artists across Canada. Seika’s recent projects include movement dramaturgy for Djanet Sears’ A Black Girl in Search of God (Centaur Theatre/National Arts Centre) and Ars Mechanica’s Sisi (2016 Hatch Series, Harbourfront Centre). Her SSHRC-funded doctoral research focuses on social dancing within Toronto’s black population at mid-century.

Nicholas Matte is a politically conscious interdisciplinary historian whose research interests include the historical, social and scientific constructions of bodies in relation to sex, gender, sexuality, health, disability and race. Nick has presented at numerous conferences and his work has appeared in GLQ; International Journal of Transgenderism; Canadian Bulletin of Medical History; Transgender Studies Reader and Trans Activism in Canada. His dissertation, “Historicizing Liberal American Transnormativities: Medicine, Media, Activism, 1960-1990,” traced the consolidation of trans activism and transnormativity as a cultural formation and in relation to liberalism. Matte teaches in the Sexual Diversity Studies Program at the University of Toronto where he also curates the Sexual Representation Collection.