The Battle of Valle Giulia: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue. University of Wisconsin Press.
This is a collection of Portelli’s essays on oral history methodology, theory, and ethics, with an emphasis on the relationship between interviewers and interviewees.
“What Makes Oral History Different?” In Oral History, Oral Culture, and Italian Americans, edited by Luisa del Guidice, pp. 21-30. Springer.
In this important article from 1979, Portelli argues that orality, narrative form, subjectivity, memory, and the relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee – all distinctive characteristics of oral history – should be considered oral history’s strengths, not weaknesses.
“The Audiovisual Unconscious: Media and Trauma in the Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies.” Critical Inquiry 39(1): 142-166.
A discussion of the relationship between testimony and audiovisual technology, arguing that technology influences the way testimony and trauma are theorized.
The Oral History Reader. Routledge.
A collection of major articles on theory, method, and use of oral history. Includes current thinking around traumatic memory, particularly concerning the interpretation of traumatic memories, and truth and inaccuracy in testimony.
Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide. University of California Press.
A book that focuses on 103 testimonies of Armenian genocide survivors, with a reflection on survivor’s responses to the genocide.
Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory. Yale University Press.
This is a first book-length study of videotaped testimonies of the Holocaust survivors. It discusses the ideas of Holocaust testimonies as disrupted narratives, the reliability and credibility of memory, and testimony as a form of remembering.
“Holocaust Testimonies: Attending to the Victim’s Voice.” In Catastrophe and Meaning: The Holocaust and the Twentieth Century, edited by Moishe Postone and Eric Santner. Chicago University Press.
“Holocaust Testimony, Ethics, and the Problem of Representation.” Poetics Today 27(2): 275-295.
The article traces the journey of Holocaust testimonies from a marginalized to a recognized subject of historical analysis.
“Memory-Work: Video Testimony, Holocaust Remembrance and the Third Generation.” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History 13(2-3): 129-150.
An article that focuses on the influence of video testimonies on the “memory work” of Holocaust survivors’ grandchildren.
“Toward an Ethnography of Silence: The Lived Presence of the Past in the Everyday Life of Holocaust Trauma Survivors and Their Descendants in Israel.” Current Anthropology 50(1): 5-27.
Through the examination of ethnographic accounts of Holocaust descendants, this article discusses an ethnography of silence, or silent memory, of Holocaust survivors and the “lived memory” of the traumatic past in the everyday familial life.