Projects
Where do we learn about history? At school? University? At home, with family and community?
Does history look the same across these spaces? Which aspects of the past do these different histories focus on? Which are silenced? How do we navigate the unevenness of this terrain?
Disruptive Oral Histories is a SOAS-funded project exploring these questions through creative intergenerational dialogue. It has been developed by playwright Guleraana Mir and academic Eleanor Newbigin, based on insights from their own work on memory and storytelling about the 1947 partition of British India. In particular Eleanor’s work on the AHRC-funded Border Crossing project, and the play Santi & Naz, produced by The Thelmas. Disruptive Oral Histories grew out of participatory workshops where students engaged these questions in ways that were immediate and personal. Conversation focused on the gap between academic history and the more personal storytelling of the past that takes place in families and communities, a gap that involves not just content but also the emotional tone of these narratives. Rather than casting these ways of engaging the past as opposites, we discussed how they overlap and can be held together in useful tension. This meant questioning the nostalgia and parochialism that run through both, and recognizing that such questioning involves its own emotional effort.
Three SOAS students chose to put these conversations into practice. They used sound and visual media to create pieces that explore, and respond, to their own histories. We also captured their reflections on how creative approaches can help us to think and feel about the past in more complex and nuanced ways and created an audio soundscape in order to share their insights with a wider audience.
This exhibit is a display of their work.
