Papers by Martha Norkunas
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2013
In remembering and speaking, narrators reassess, relive, and sometimes painstakingly reconstruct ... more In remembering and speaking, narrators reassess, relive, and sometimes painstakingly reconstruct life experiences. What can be asked? The empathetic listener assesses the goals of the interview, the potential contribution the interview can make to social and cultural history, the emotional state of the narrator, the interactions between narrator and any other people present, what participants hope for in the narration, the political risks that may result when information is revealed, and whatever other concerns are salient in that context. The listener is keenly sensitive to the nonverbal communication from her narrator-gestures, voice intonation, pauses-in an effort to respect her narrator's emotional boundaries. Together narrator and listener negotiate what the narrator must tell, wants to tell, tries to shape into a coherent narrative, and cannot bear to tell. What can be heard? The listener assumes sharply different roles in each interview: scholar, fellow survivor, a person with shared experiences, the Other, witness. She negotiates what she can hear, must hear, hopes to know, and cannot bear to know. She senses where the emotional boundaries are located for her, given her own complex memoryscape. She tries to shape the oral history interview so that it is intellectually honest, and historically relevant, yet does not draw her into painful waters she cannot navigate. She tries to assess how much emotional residue may remain after the interview ends, and what impact that will have on her. In Michael Riordon's interviews with oral historian Elizabeth Pozzi-Thanner she told him that while she may cry in her heart, she never openly cries during the interviews: "If I hear something that really cuts into my soul. .. sometimes A. Sheftel et al. (eds.), Oral History Off the Record
Journal of American Folklore, Apr 1, 1999
KOWA YA SHA KI0A EVERYONE DRINKS THE DRUMMING [Everyone Likes his Praises Sung] The Author's... more KOWA YA SHA KI0A EVERYONE DRINKS THE DRUMMING [Everyone Likes his Praises Sung] The Author's Introduction Muhammadu Sani Ibrahim Translated by Martha Norkunas and Frank Wright Translators' Note: This article is an example of fine Hausa prose. The ...
Journal of Ethnic Studies, 1987
Colloquia Humanistica, 2015
Narrating the Racialization of Space in Austin, Texas and Nashville, TennesseePeople of color in ... more Narrating the Racialization of Space in Austin, Texas and Nashville, TennesseePeople of color in the United States have been obligated to move through public space in particular ways, dictated by law and social custom. Narrators create cognitive maps of movement in the city shaped by racial codes of behavior. The maps change over time as law and social custom changes. The fluidity of the maps is also influenced by status, gender, class, and skin tone. This paper examines a rich body of oral narratives co-created with African Americans from 2004 to 2014 focusing on how men and women narrate their concepts of racialized space. It moves from narratives about the larger landscape — the city — to smaller, more personal public places — the sidewalk and the store — to intimate sites of contact in the public sphere. Many of the narratives describe complex flows of controlled movement dictated by racial boundaries in the context of capitalism. The narratives form an urban ethnography of the ...
The Journal of American Folklore, 1995
The Public Historian, 2005
Oral History Review, 2011
... co-create a detailed, meaningful life history. In describing a philosophy of listening,Gemma ... more ... co-create a detailed, meaningful life history. In describing a philosophy of listening,Gemma Corradi Fiumara wrote of the need for authentic openness to sustain a revealing dialogue. Without this openness, there cannot be a ...
The Journal of American History, 2000
On May 9, 1990, a bottle of Jack Daniels, a ring with letter, a Purple Heart and Bronze Star, a b... more On May 9, 1990, a bottle of Jack Daniels, a ring with letter, a Purple Heart and Bronze Star, a baseball, a photo album, an ace of spades, and a pie were some of the objects left at the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial. For Kristin Hass, this eclectic sampling represents an attempt by ordinary Americans to come to terms with a multitude of unnamed losses as well as to take part in the ongoing debate of how this war should be remembered. Hass explores the restless memory of the Vietnam War and an American public still grappling with its commemoration. In doing so it considers the ways Americans have struggled to renegotiate the meanings of national identity, patriotism, community, and the place of the soldier, in the aftermath of a war that ruptured the ways in which all of these things have been traditionally defined. Hass contextualizes her study of this phenomenon within the history of American funerary traditions (in particular non-Anglo traditions in which material offerings are common), the history of war memorials, and the changing symbolic meaning of war. Her evocative analysis of the site itself illustrates and enriches her larger theses regarding the creation of public memory and the problem of remembering war and the resulting causalities - in this case not only 58,000 soldiers, but also conceptions of masculinity, patriotism, and working-class pride and idealism.
Etnološka tribina, 2016
is article examines African American women's movement in racialized and gendered space in Austin,... more is article examines African American women's movement in racialized and gendered space in Austin, Texas in the mid twentieth century, re ecting on the relationship between race, gender, power and space. It draws on oral history interviews with African American women to consider how they negotiated the racialized and gendered geography of the city as well as the microspaces-especially downtown clothing stores-that were racialized and gendered in particular ways.
The essays in this volume focus on the role of women in the work force. They explore how organize... more The essays in this volume focus on the role of women in the work force. They explore how organized sports, social associations of all kinds and the educational system faced by the children of worker were profoundly linked to work place and community activism. They examine why radical labor organizations that could win major strikes often could not sustain themselves as permanent institutions. Finally, the essays argue that simultaneous leadership changes in management and labor in the auto industry were less the result of internal conflicts than needed structural adjustments to changing economic and political realities. Interwoven into all of the essays is the intricate dynamic between immigrant and native-born, between different immigrant waves and the groups, and between workers at different skill levels. Work, Recreation, and Culture enriches and expands the established labor narratives.
Narrative Culture, 2017
Do Trees Have Souls? Narratives about Human-Tree Relationships "I believe that encounters with li... more Do Trees Have Souls? Narratives about Human-Tree Relationships "I believe that encounters with lively matter can chasten my fantasies of human mastery, highlight the common materiality of all that is, expose a wider distribution of agency, and reshape the self and its interests."-(Bennett 122
Journal of Folklore Research, Jan 4, 2005
... They continue: Black men such as Mance Lipscomb in the bottoms and Bubba Bowser,Davis Washing... more ... They continue: Black men such as Mance Lipscomb in the bottoms and Bubba Bowser,Davis Washington, and Ed Lathan on the nearby bluffs looked out on a different world than did Germans, Czechs, or Anglo-Americans. . . . ...
Journal of Folklore Research, Jan 4, 2005
This is a phrase that I heard long before I could understand it. I am not sure I understand it ev... more This is a phrase that I heard long before I could understand it. I am not sure I understand it even now. My grandmother would take the four-hour bus ride from her tenement in Lowell, Massachusetts, to visit my mother in her sprawling home in New Jersey. She brought tea bags, a pound of coffee, sugar, coloring books and crayons for the children. And she brought her wisdom and strength of spirit that my mother much needed in the long sad days, weeks, and months when she and my father were separating. My father, like so many of the other wealthy businessmen of the 1950s and 1960s who worked in New York City, had what was then called a "mistress" in the city, and a wife and children in the suburbs. In the style of Jack and Jackie Kennedy, the women "looked the other way" as long as they were amply supported. They engaged in a form of silence that was not resistance, but rather, in Richard Bauman's words, was a form of silence that demanded a suppression of the self and of self-will (Bauman 1983:22). It was a way of life for men and women of a certain social class. But my mother defied the rules of this new social class she had come to inhabit. Hers was a narrative of resistance, of the consequences of resistance, and of the silences that enveloped her choices
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Papers by Martha Norkunas