International Annual of Oral History, 1990

This volume marks the transformation of the International Journal of Oral History from a journal publication to an annual. The objective of the publication remains the same: providing a forum for articles on oral history methodologies and research perspectives.

This year thirteen articles are presented. Following Ronald Grele's overview introduction, the world of the Japanese silk weaver is explored by Tamara Hareven. Selma Leydesdorff examines the making of a collective identity among workers in Amsterdam, while John Bodnar looks at the Polish immigrant experience. Issues of black South African working class and nationalist experience are the subject of pieces by Isabel Hofmeyr, Ari Sitas, and Glenn Adler. Florence Charpigny and Jenny Gregory raise issues of methodology and interdisciplinarity. Consciousness and political involvement are the concerns of essays by Lu Ann Jones, Alessandro Portelli, Michelle Palmer et al. Issues of political involvement and the ways in which oral history can document that involvement are the subject of articles by Pamela Grundy and Sherna Berger Gluck. As with the earlier issues of the Journal, this volume will be essential reading for scholars and researchers involved with oral history methodology and with working class and ethnic history.

RONALD J. GRELE is Director of the Oral History Research Office at Columbia University. A leading oral history theoretician, he is also author of Envelopes of Sound: The Art of Oral History (Praeger, 1991), now in its second edition.