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Oral History and Living Memory in Cyprus:
Performance and Curricular Considerations
Nicoletta Christodoulou1
Frederick University, Cyprus
Introduction
Oral history has gained significant interest in the past few decades in the social sciences and
humanities, including education. Established toward the end of the 1940’s, today it is
undertaken by many qualitatively inclined researchers who work with human subjects. Also,
many oral history projects are being implemented in schools, as scientists and teachers
recognize the direct educational benefits of oral history.
The mid-twentieth century is considered to be a landmark for oral history (Perks &
Thomson, 1997; Caunce, 1994; Yow, 1994), especially with the work of the American
historian and journalist at Columbia University, Alan Nevins, in 1948. Nevins was
established for his extensive work on the history of the Civil War and his biographies of
politicians and industrialists (North American Oral History Association, as quoted by
Thomson, 1998, p. 581).
Oral history is a way of collecting and interpreting human memories to foster
knowledge and human dignity. “[It] is a field of study and a method of gathering, preserving
and interpreting the voices and memories of people, communities, and participants in past
events” (Oral History Association, 2012). “[It] collects memories and personal commentaries
of historical significance through recorded interviews” (Ritchie, 2003, p. 19). An oral history
interview normally consists of a well-prepared interviewer questioning an interviewee and
recording their exchange in audio or video format. Recordings of the interview are
transcribed, summarized, or indexed and then placed in a library or archives. Clearly, oral
history refers both to the method of recording and preserving oral testimony and to the
product of that process (Oral History Association, 2009). A critical approach to the oral
testimony and a variety of interpretations are necessary for the practice of oral history.
The Cyprus Oral History and Living Memory Project2
The Cyprus Oral History Project (COHP) took place between 2010 and 2012 and is the first
of its kind in Cyprus. Its aim was to audio or video- record the voices and words of Cypriots
of all communities, to capture their memories and to understand their individual meanings
and perspectives regarding the 1960 - 1974 events, thus shedding light on their lives. The
project sought to record first-hand or vicarious experiences of Greek-Cypriots, Turkish-
Cypriots, Maronites, Armenians and Latins. The opening statement was: “Tell me your
experience and memories of the events of 1960-1974.” Each interview aimed at creating an
open-ended conversation between the interviewer and the interviewee, and at following the
lead of the interviewee in describing and discussing events.
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Fifty interviews were recorded, with a wide range of people of different capacities
who experienced the events from varying perspectives: inhabitants, soldiers, refugees,
students, relatives, friends who experienced the events vicariously, adults—women and
men—and youngsters—girls and boys back in the 1960’s—as well as people from the
younger generation who experienced the events and their aftermath through the memories
and stories of others. The interviews were conducted in a single year, each lasting for one to
one-and-a-half hours, each transcribed and minimally edited using the Q and A model, each
posted on the project’s website3.
The Context
Cyprus, one of the smallest countries in the European Union, is also the last divided country
in Europe and Nicosia its last divided city. Winning its independence from Great Britain in
1960, Cyprus has been roiled in ethnic conflict, violence, and division almost from the start;
everyone of a certain age remembers the troubles of 1963-1967. The 1974 Turkish invasion
and subsequent occupation sealed the fate of Cyprus for decades. The troubles of the last 50
years are not unrelated to Cyprus’ strategic location at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean
Sea, a place that has long attracted and continues to draw the great world powers. Rome
ruled, as did Istanbul and England. Richard the Lion Hearted took a piece of the island on his
way to the Crusades, Paul the Apostle was given 39 strokes with a lash by the Romans for
preaching the Gospel, Othello’s Castle is on the southern coast, and Lazarus died on the
island. Cyprus has always been a storied jewel of the Mediterranean.
Today UN peace keepers patrol the buffer zone between north and south, and England
maintains a massive presence, tens of thousands of military personnel, and two air bases
constituting 10% of the land mass. Some Cypriots complain that the great powers see Cyprus
as little more than a huge, unsinkable aircraft carrier. While there has not been a shot fired
since 1999, and while the border between the north and the south opened in 2003, for the
generation now in its sixties, memories of the early days are both vivid and raw, and, indeed,
for most Cypriots of every age, Cyprus still bleeds. For Turkish Cypriots the bleeding started
with the events of 1963 and ended with the “peace operation” of Turkey on the island in
1974. For Greek Cypriots the bleeding started with the events of 1974 when Turkey invaded
the island, and still occupies the northern third of the island. That bleeding—its interpretative
meaning and its pervasive imaginative power today—was the focus of COHP.
Although tensions between the Greek Cypriot and the Turkish Cypriot side are low
because of the partition, both sides remain pervaded by antagonistic biases, histories, and
myths. Each community represents the other as the villain, and descriptions regarding the
events surrounding the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 differ. In reality both
communities have suffered losses in human lives and property. Currently, different political
opinions exist as to what an “ideal” solution to the Cyprus situation would be, with strong
disagreements emerging amongst the opposing parties on the island. In addition, there are
different interpretations based primarily on personal experiences, upbringing, schooling and
socio-political assumptions, about how the Cyprus problem began, the history of 1963-1974,
and the events that led to the 1974 Turkish invasion.
Inclusion, Democratic Practices, Trust, and Authority
Two alterations were made to the initial COHP plan; the first regarded the inclusion of known
political persons, instead of just collecting stories randomly from “ordinary” people who had
an interesting story to share. Following the nature of oral history and the needs of the project,
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we used snowball sampling (Atkinson & Flint, 2004), combined with selection based on
individuals’ experiential backgrounds and capacities in order to ensure diversity of opinions
and experiences. In this way participants often referred us to other potential interviewees.
Thus, we included people who expressed their interest, and who consented, to share their
story even if they were political persons. Every single story was important and valuable, and
the contribution of each one, the known and the unknown, mattered. The stories of the known
participants, their perceptions and interpretations of the events were as important and
interesting as those of the “common people”, the poor and the marginal. Additionally,
people’s different responses and oral performances regarding a particular question allowed
us to compare, contrast and better examine a wide range of stories, thus refining historical
knowledge. The inclusion and diversity of personal stories, social and political, were vital,
especially in the case of the 1960-1974 events in Cyprus, which changed the course of a
whole country and the lives of its people.
Oral history is an epitome of inclusion, voice and democratic practice. It values the
life and story of all people, promoting “the equal rights and importance of every individual”
(Portelli, 1997, p. 58). “Each interview is important, because each interview is different from
all the others” (p. 58). Oral history also champions “everybody’s right to autobiography”,
which coincides with many contemporary societies’ struggle for democracy as well as with
the shift toward subjectivity. It is an “opportunity to narrate oneself, to give a meaning to
one’s life and one’s narrative” (Passerini as cited in Portelli, 1997, p. 58). It can work with
elites, and also with “those who had gone unheard” (Portelli, 1997, p. 58). It concerns both
the art of listening that results to the “awareness that we gain something of importance from
virtually every person we meet” (p. 58), and the art of reciting owned by the individual that
leads to the acknowledgement of difference and equality.
The second alteration was that we broadened our initial question to include a longer
time span; instead of focusing solely on the events of 1974, we also asked about the period
before 1960, during 1960-1974, and after 1974. The whole of that period, after the
establishment of the Cyprus Republic in 1960 up to the Turkish invasion in 1974, is
considered critical in the contemporary history of Cyprus. The decision to broaden the time
span was related to “power and attitude” (Portelli, 1997, p. 62). Focusing on one year alone
would mean that we perceived as a single, isolated event what many participants saw as a
sequence, an interconnection of events that took place across many years. Hence, we
broadened the time span in order to prevent confining the performative reaction of the
participants to the events of 1960-1974. Additionally, that the interviewer did not prescribe
the time span of the narration moderated her power over the interviewee, allowing the
narrator to discuss what was important to him/her. As Portelli (1997) argues, people are
helpful, friendly and approachable when the interviewer is “not from where power comes
from” (p. 63). The interviewee’s sense of freedom was crucial in the COHP since our aim
was not to seek the historical truth but rather to learn what was important to whom and why
during that period on the island.
The two cases below show how the broadening, or lack of it, reflected power relations
between the interviewer and the narrator and affected the narrators’ performance. In the first
case, when the interviewer allowed a broader time span, Sophia, the interviewee, felt that she
could go further back, earlier than 1960, to talk about the 1958 events in Cyprus. She talked
about the injustice she felt because people who were forced out of their properties and
villages by the Turks in 1958 were not considered refugees and accordingly were not granted
the refugee status, unlike people in 1974:
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Sophia: I am not considered a refugee, but Turkish-inflicted. Since 1958... That’s
how they called us ... and it was somewhat “contagious”, [the idea] that we were
Turkish-inflicted. Other people did not want us...
[Her husband, Costas, intervenes]
Costas: Yes, Turkish-inflicted… Because they were chased away by Turks in 1958.
Sophia: About 6-7 years ago…or maybe more[?]…we had written a letter to the
government saying that… Because we, as Turkish-inflicted, although we were only
few families, we received no help whereas the others—although those of 1963 I
cannot argue that anyone helped them either—but those of 1974 received help. They
offered help…foreign countries and everyone. Whereas us, then, nobody. Nothing.
Interviewer: Even though you had also lost everything.
Sophia: Of course we had lost everything; we abandoned our homes at 10 o’clock
at night. The young man to whom we were renting the house [a neighbor] was a
policeman and he left the station and he came at night driving the Turkish police
Land Rover. He was Turkish Cypriot and he drove us from our area to the area
where my uncle, my mother’s brother was, so that we could stay there at night. We
stayed there for a few days, then we [went] to my mother’s village… We stayed
there for a few years, eight years… But our first night there...when we found a house
to stay… I will never forget it. My mother went to the convenience store. She bought
three plates—because our father had passed away—three forks, three knives and a
small pot. She cooked pilaf on a petrol engine and we sat on the ground, on the
carpet, to eat. I will never forget that. We had that pot until recently [laughs] as a
memento.
The freedom Sophia was given to talk about an expanded time span was important to her, as
it enabled her to talk about the events of 1958, which was the period that concerned her the
most, and of which she had strong memories. Viewing the interviewer as a person of power—
as researchers and academics may be perceived—Sophia wanted to express the injustice and
pain she felt about the event. Although the interviewer could not really do anything about the
situation, she still needed to share her story knowing that it was her chance to be heard.
In the second case, the interviewer visited her mother’s house, which had been
abandoned in 1974 during the bombing of the village, in order to interview the Turkish
Cypriot woman who now lives there. The interviewer posed the question “What do you know
about 1974?” which offended the potential interviewee since to her, the most important era
of the modern history of Cyprus was 1963. The following quote is from the interviewer’s
field notes:
We arrived at the village and then at my mother’s house… I started calling to see if
someone was in… We rang [the bell]… ‘Welcome,’ the woman said with a smile.
She seemed as if she was waiting for us. We greeted her in Greek. ‘I am the daughter
of the woman who owns the house,’ I said. ‘Yes, I know,’ she said… She wanted to
show us the house… She talked to us about her family… about the parts of the house
she fixed because there were damages… [She said] she was given the house
legally…after the invasion… I said I am conducting this research and I am collecting
people’s stories about 1974. I immediately noticed the change in her look. ‘What do
you mean?’ she said. I said, ‘I want to find out what people know about 1974 and
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how they experienced it and I collect stories from a wide range of people, different
ages, Turkish Cypriots, Greek Cypriots...’ ‘But you are illegal,’ she said…‘You are
asking about a politically sensitive issue.’ ‘I am … doing research,’ I said… ‘And
from whom did you get permission?’ she asked… She picked up the phone
ostentatiously saying, ‘I can call the police right now and put you in jail… [T]his is
just a warning to stop’… The daughter, Tülin, said, ‘How do we know that you will
write the stories the way we narrated them?’ I said, ‘I can send them to you to take
a look before I publish them.’ ‘No,’ she said, ‘I do not trust you.’ ‘No, no,’ the
mother, Şenay, said, “Do you want to know the truth? I will tell you the truth.
Greeks were very bad and they were killing and torturing Turkish Cypriots. They
were more and [they were] the strong ones. Then Turkey came to save us. Now we
are the strong and more [in numbers]”… I emphasized that it is not the truth that I
want to know, but rather I am interested in the story itself. Tülin said, ‘I like things
the way they are now. Before I wasn’t safe. I had to go through three security checks
to go from one point to the other’… [Şenay] told me she is a politician. Tülin asked
me why I only gather stories about 1974…
Issues of trust and authority arise here. Firstly, the potential interviewee felt threatened
because she perceived the interviewer to be a person of power who came from the Greek
Cypriot side, possibly to gather information to reclaim her mother’s house and property.
When the interviewer mentioned 1974 the potential interviewee perceived power to be
favoring the interviewer. She then attempted to reverse the power relation through the
warning “you should stop your research immediately”, a threat of imprisonment and by
announcing that she is a politician, a person of power. Secondly, the woman perceived the
current situation in Cyprus to be ideal, because she now feels safe.
Storytelling as a Performance
Storytelling in oral history is a “spoken performance” (Portelli, 2011). How things are told
and what is told adds to the meaning of the narrative. The performance of the narrator—
enabled by the interviewer’s listening and the narrator’s talking—and the transferring of the
performance on paper—the scholarly practice of oral history—are of critical importance.
Exemplifying ignorance on the matter and the desire to learn on behalf of the interviewer are
also important, as the interviewer is not there to study the narrators, but “to learn from and
about them” (Portelli, 2011, p. 7). In order to obtain meaning from the interviewees’
perspective, “we must become nonjudgmental and open listeners” (Hesse-Biber & Leavy,
2006, p. 161).
The statuses and capacities of the COHP narrators varied: refugees, soldiers, captives,
mothers, activists, students, to name a few, each with a different story and performance, and
a unique narrative style (how they told things and what they chose to tell); each performance
and style bore its own importance; each fashioned by both the listening and the talking. In
COHP the idea was to attain meaning from the narrator’s viewpoint; thus, we listened for the
interviewee’s “moral language” (Anderson & Jack, 1991, p. 19), for “metastatements” (p.
21), for the “logic of the narrative,” paying particular attention to consistencies,
contradictions and “recurring” themes (p. 22). We also listened for patterns: whether people
used a unified, a segmented, a conversational (Etter-Lewis, 1991) or an episodic (Kohler-
Reissman, 1987) narrative style to tell their stories.
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In regard to the transferring of the spoken performance on paper we followed two
general rules of thumb: “never putting into people’s mouths words they did not actually say…
and striving to retain on the written page some of the impact of the spoken performance”
(Portelli, 2011, p. 10). Proper punctuation was used to structure the sentences and suggest
the rhythm of speech: each comma was viewed as “an act of interpretation” (p. 10).
The Performance of a Soldier
Socrates Menelaou: The Turkish airplanes…were bombing… And I was afraid of
airplanes[!] since I was young. I tried…to fit into an opening between the rocks
while attacking…and…[while] only my hand fit inside [laughs]…I was trying to
squeeze my whole body [laughs]… In 1964…my father went to the morgue because
they showed on TV that they were throwing napalm… They knew
that…commandos were killed. And he went to the hospital alone to see… [Most of
the soldiers] were burnt… He looked if anyone was hairy [laughs] [and] looked at
their finger [laughs]…like this [laughs]. I broke it when I was young… In '77…I
asked permission to go to England. ‘You don’t exist,’ they said. They noted that I
was buried…
The Performance of a Wife
Maria Menelaou: …On the street where we lived…there were many Greek
officers. The night before the invasion, around 11-12 at night, we were sitting on
the porch… We saw them…loading their cars with electrical items, radios, hi-fi,
televisions…one could tell they were leaving… I called a colleague who
was…renting a house to a British Commission diplomat…and she told me that ‘he
is packing, he is leaving. And he said nothing. He will leave us here for the Turks
to get us’… I had many calls from the [British] Embassy [as a British citizen] to go
to the Hilton… There would be a bus [to] take us to Dhekelia [British overseas
territory in Cyprus]… And I said, 'but my husband will be here, why should I go?’
The Performance of Captives
Theodora Giorkadji: [While I] was talking to my grandfather he looked out…he
got up and put his hands up… And immediately I saw two soldiers… In our house.
We had not realized that they got in…no one had realized. Then these two soldiers
began shouting, in Turkish, of course, ‘Out, out!’ They all began to cry and shout…
They had the Turkish flag on them… When…we were released by the Turks…we
were taken to an orphanage… [I thought my parents were dead and I was
sad]…[until] my mother came… She thought she had heard the previous night…that
they released prisoners, [and] a neighbor who had TV confirmed that…
Tony Liatsos: I was captured by the Turks in 1974 in Famagusta, and my
experiences [of] that period were very intense. [I experienced]…the execution
process, twice at execution row, where…they ended up executing the first four… I
was imprisoned in various camps in Turkey…from August 14 until October 28,
1974. My personal experience was much worse than many others’, because the
Turkish officers believed that I…was the brother of the ‘revolutionary’ President of
the Republic of Cyprus… For a whole month I was questioned…I was badly beaten
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by officers and finally…luckily, my name was in the UN files and that's why I got
back unharmed…
The Performance of Those Experienced Death or Missing of Loved Ones
Giorgoula Pantechi-Pandouri: …Every afternoon…[t]he buses…brought
captives from the Turkish occupied area, based on some agreements of the
government. And the agony was to ‘go today to see if our loved ones will come.’
And it was very heartbreaking…both for those coming and for those waiting. Some
wept, others fainted, very…tragic. I was going every night, but the last time we went
and we had no [news], not even in the last [bus]…the situation was…very bad. And
then…you enter another process. Because every night you would think ‘Okay,
tomorrow.’ Upon the last tomorrow, when there were no news…the climate became
too heavy. And then you start experiencing another torment… It was that situation
where…nobody could tell you for sure ‘this is how things are,’ so that you could
start accepting it…
Huseyin Akansoy: …My mother, two sisters, two brothers were sent to the villages.
We were taken to…a military camp. And then on the day of the second
invasion…August14th, we were taken to Limassol. On that day, a big catastrophe
was experienced in our village… I heard it in Limassol. Two people were talking to
each other…and very soon…we learned that yes, some nasty things had happened.
They killed people, children. How many? They killed everyone? Are there still
people who are living? And I spent 72 days in the Limassol camp… I kept thinking
who is living, who has died without knowing exactly what had happened… And
when I got back here, of course my father hugged me. And he burst in cries, tears,
and I understood that everything is gone…
The Performance of a Refugee
Canan Oztoprak: We left our home in 1963… So I spent the first seven years of
my life in Paphos. And the very first memory I have was an [English policeman]
knocking on the door… It was a curfew, and everybody had to be in their homes…
So they were knocking, and, even now I can remember my heartbeat. I was so
frightened until my mother opened the door. And later, there were troubles with
Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots in Paphos district… And, some of the Turkish
Cypriot homes were burnt… I have a memory of all this, since some of my
childhood photographs were burnt, and which we managed to keep. But they have
the burnt edges…
The Performance of a Non-Refugee
Fatma Azgin: Nicosia was divided in the ‘50s… Most people think…that Nicosia
was divided after 1974… And there used to be every year a [funfair] at Ae-Louca
church, it was in the center of [the] Turkish part in the old city. And we used to go
there, and suddenly they evacuated the houses and left, before ’63 and ’74. So I lived
in that condition… In villages there were tragic things, you know. The Turkish
Cypriots left their villages, most Greek Cypriots were not aware that Turkish
Cypriots left their homes, they were always saying in ’74 they lost their houses, but
since I was in the conflict resolution group in the 1990’s, 10 years I was there
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working, and people started to know that in ’63 there was a similar story for Turkish
Cypriots…
The Performance of People Who Were Kids at the Time
George Demosthenous: So, what was memorable about the first invasion were the
airplanes. And…one of the things that we were experiencing at the age of 10, [were
the] bombings. One could hear from a distance…other weapons, too, but what was
most prominent was the sound of airplanes crossing over Cyprus…and the bombs
that were falling… It was such an intense noise. What was…causing more
terror…was the deafening sound of airplanes when they crossed over… The
other…memorable thing was when they were trying to teach us…some basic things,
[such as] lying face down…[how] to hold our head under tables or…under trees…
Salih Oztoprak: Unfortunately…like everybody those days, I was influenced by
the nationalist stories. And, uh, we all believed what our only radio station was
saying. And we believed, unfortunately… So, I remember, for example, in ’58,
people gathering in the street. They were speaking about…what we would do if the
Greeks attacked. And I remember they were preparing sticks and knives. Something
like that… And, those days, the people who were admired were the ones who were
doing more against Greeks. And I remember…in the beginning of ’63… a taxi had
brought an ill person to the doctor in our neighborhood. The doctor was Turkish,
and the patient was Greek Cypriot… I must have been nine or ten, I think. And,
while the taxi was waiting for the patient, I tried to…puncture the car tire... [T]he
driver…saw me from the window… Of course he understood what I was doing. And
thank God he was a very…calm man… He started telling me that that was ‘not right.
You shouldn’t do this. I’m here for a patient.’ And at that moment, I was actually
really sorry for this event. And I said sorry to him. Not because I was afraid…since
I was in my neighborhood… But I really felt sorry. When he spoke to me, I was
embarrassed and I felt sorry…
The Performance of a Teacher
Stella Spyrou: …We stayed about twelve months at Dome [hotel], trapped. A
city…in a hotel… It functioned as a small community… Right before many left,
two teachers…[started] a small school at Dome and taught the young students…
Meanwhile we heard on the radio that there were thoughts to operate schools in
Kyrenia, middle school, they said… I thought, since I was a teacher and I hadn’t yet
been appointed at a school, [and] I wrote a message and sent it via the Red Cross,
that ‘I intend to work…if schools operate in occupied Kyrenia.’ And…at the end of
September, I got…a message from the Ministry of Education saying, ‘you are
appointed at the Bellapais Gymnasium’…
The Performance of People of a Younger Generation
Nasia Avraam: My uncle, my father’s brother… He was missing… He was 21…
He received a call to join the army… Meanwhile…he was engaged and about to get
married on August 14… He had left 4-5 days before [the wedding] and he was
supposed to return. He was together with others…and…on their way back…we
don’t know what happened, but they disappeared. Since that day he did not contact
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anyone…and he was missing for 33 years… Until one day in the summer they went
to my father's family house and asked to take a DNA test to see if the bones that
were found were my uncle's… They were in shock...
Ali Sahin: …So, we grew up in a situation where everybody was telling us these
stories about how the Greeks were bad, and how they did bad things relating to the
Cyprus problem, that they were trying to kill all the Turkish Cypriots, and these
kinds of things. And Turkey came here and saved us. This is the official story that
everybody would tell us, in the schools, on the streets… Slowly, slowly, when you
grow up you realize that the reality is a little bit different…especially the
relationship between Turkey and Turkish Cypriots. Turkish Cypriots started
questioning this…
Faika Deniz Pasha: The meaning of ’74, both in my family and society, has
changed over the years. When I was a little girl, it was the day that we were saved.
As I became older, and as people became much more politicized and they could talk,
and they could see what’s really going on...
In the above narrations we witness the testimonies of people in relation to the manner
in which they experienced the period between 1960 and 1974 in Cyprus. Sophia’s testimony
concentrates on 1958, while the people from the younger generation, Nasia, Ali and Faika,
referred to dimensions that extend to their own era. Socrates’ episodic storytelling is centered
on the theme of life and death as experienced by the soldiers and the agony of their families
about their fate. Maria and Salih used moral language. Maria focused on the fact that
foreigners were leaving, not telling Cypriots that the Turks were coming to get them, and
also on her decision to stay with her husband, ignoring the Embassy’s phone calls to leave.
Salih, who used an episodic frame to share his story, described his plan to puncture the car
tires, that in the car there was a patient going to the doctor, and how bad he felt for his action.
Salih recounted his experience as a thematically driven—rather than chronologically
ordered—episode to talk about their naive actions against Greek Cypriots at the time, blindly
following nationalistic leaders. Fatma, in a segmented narrative style, emphasized the events
before 1974, which Greek Cypriots either do not acknowledge or are unaware of: that Nicosia
was divided before 1974 and that Turkish Cypriots were forced out of their houses, too.
In Theodora’s and Tony’s narrations we pay attention to the logic of the narrative.
Both of them are consistent in telling their captivity story, how it happened, what they
experienced and what they were thinking at those moments. Theodora was thinking that they
would be killed and that her parents were dead, and Tony that he managed not to be executed
and he was tortured more than others. Theodora used conversational elements to represent
different speakers and emotions, and portray the happenings. Tony, like Giorgoula and
Huseyin, used a unified style to narrate the devastating events in their lives in a slow, almost
monotonous pace revealing deep pain and sadness, devastation and calmness, numbness and
deep thought, providing in-depth examples to convey their experience. Canan, George and
Stella combined a unified and episodic narrative style to narrate experiences with particular
recurring themes: the bad things that happened to the Turkish Cypriots, the characteristic
sound of the airplanes, and the efforts to teach the students in captivity, respectively.
Fourteen individuals performed in a distinct way, all of them in response to the same
question, with a variety of voices and in differing narrative styles. Their stories illustrate the
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performative aspects of storytelling, its diversity, the many capacities of individuals who
participated, and the multitude of political perspectives. Aside from the personal dimension,
the stories also provided us with a glimpse into the cultural and sociopolitical context of the
era: an abundance of hate, excitement over guns and conflict; following naive, nationalist
leaders, lack of education, political dogmatism and blindness; and that international
involvement led to the worsening of the situation.
Oral History Research and Curriculum
The oral history method and the knowledge we gather through it are useful tools in school
curriculum and in curriculum studies, a field that focuses on the study of the school
curriculum and its various dimensions. Firstly, oral history is a research method particularly
useful for gathering rich data from the point of view of the traditionally marginalized and the
excluded from self-representation (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2006). Voice, the reclaiming of
authority, empowerment, and the recognition of life experiences as an important source of
knowledge are issues of ethical, methodological and epistemological concern in curriculum
studies, both at a theoretical and a practical level.
Secondly, oral history allows us to situate life experiences within a cultural context.
Collective memory, political culture, and social power are illuminated via the people’s
personal stories, which are narrated through “culturally available stories” (Jack in Hesse-
Biber & Leavy, 2006, p. 160). Studying the interplay between the individual and society is a
tenet of curriculum studies. Thirdly, truth and objectivity may be problematic concepts in
oral history research, yet this concern is eliminated by shifting the focus towards the
performative aspect, rather than emphasizing on the truthfulness of the story. Having
understood that in some cases we may never find out “what really happened,” we accept that
“even errors, inventions, or lies are in their own way forms of truth” (Portelli, 1997, p. 64)
and an integral and important part of a performance, which only confirms that “a great deal
happened inside people’s minds in terms of feelings, emotions, beliefs, and interpretation”
(p. 64). The field of curriculum studies sees oral history research as the art and science of
producing a narrative and a performance, a form of aesthetic, arts-based inquiry, which
portrays a view of reality. This is the reality that students and researchers are called to study
and understand.
Given the shared characteristics of oral history and curriculum studies—i.e. the
educational process and the notion of experience—the two fields can benefit each other
through the interaction of their historical, social and methodological aspects. Oral history
gives us “a little knowledge” (Portelli, 1997, p. 63) that can prove to be tremendously useful
in the field of curriculum studies. It can be a useful source of information for curriculum
studies theorists and researchers in the studying of the various dimensions of school
curriculum, as it can inform their work; when thinking about what knowledge is of most
worth, where it comes from and how to illuminate it; and the art of producing that knowledge
itself.
Implications for Curriculum
This kind of research has several implications for curriculum memory, particularly in the way
that memory could constitute curriculum. Memory and history are present in the work of
many important curriculum studies scholars who have worked in fields such as
autobiography (i.e. Pinar, 1994; Miller, 2006), biography (i.e. Kridel, 1998), narrative inquiry
(i.e. Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), and in commemorating the journey of curriculum itself
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(Marshal, Sears, Allen, Roberts, & Schubert, 2006; Schubert, Lopez-Schubert, & Thomas,
2002). Studies such as these bring into focus the idea of memory as curriculum, illustrating
the way the various differing perceptions of history, acted out as performances, affect the
official ‘narrative of this period.
For example, the younger participants in the study expressed that as they grew up
they realized that “the reality is a little bit different” (Faika, Ali, Nasia). Such realizations has
implications for both the manifest curriculum and the latent curriculum. For example,
consider Salih’s confession, “We all believed what our only radio station was saying…and
we believed, unfortunately…” (Salih). The influence of the “nationalist stories” on people at
the time, who acting out of enthusiasm, spontaneity and naïveté versus using rational thought,
and the realization, years later, of the impact of all these, reveal the possible twists in reality
that add to our understanding of memory as curriculum.
As such, ‘curriculum memory’ can provide a window into the way these events are
repeated through the years. What people say, how they say it and why, and what they mean
by it and why, are of great importance in understanding the past, but also the current situation.
Also, finding ways to overcome how individuals are trained to think, hear, and learn is
important. In the related literature this is described as formalization and institutionalization
(Taylor & de Laat, 2013), which can affect younger generations’ perceptions of what it means
to be politically active. Whereas institutionalization can depress understanding of the kind of
social change or challenges that are possible, the tenets of such possibility can be revealed as
individuals examine the impact of formalization in relation to the various social changes that
have occurred (Taylor & de Laat, 2013). The stories in this study teach us about individuals
and the context of the era: the way individuals participated in the cultural and sociopolitical
context, and the way one’s personal narrative is intertwined with, distinguishes itself from,
and is in conflict with other larger narratives. The various perceptions of historical reality
can help unravel what is manifested and what is latent, what is institutionalized and what is
challenged. As Pinar (2010) puts it, some things are not as divided as they are presented, but
they go “hand in hand,” and in order to make sense of reality in this way, and the official
narrative of a period, it must be presented spherically, including the different perceptions and
performances that surround it.
There is a great volume of work on culture and identity that informs curriculum
studies. One important strand of research in this area is work about and with persons who
have lived through oppressive conditions (He & Phillion, 2008) and on exile pedagogy (He,
2010). There is also work concerning historic trauma, testimony, memory and relevant
questions arising in literature. Historic trauma is not just “an event encapsulated in the past,
but…a history which is essentially not over, a history whose repercussions are not simply
omnipresent…in all our cultural activities, but whose traumatic consequences are still
actively evolving…in today’s political, historical, cultural and artistic scene” (Felman &
Laub, 1992, p. xiv). The consequences of historic trauma are further evolving in curriculum
studies and in teaching. This type of research that examines the perceptions and beliefs of the
survivors of trauma is valuable, especially in understanding collective consciousness around
people and their assumed identity. This examination entails a particular kind of pedagogy;
one that is connected with understanding the reality lived, witnessed and narrated. Wiesel
(2006), in discussing the Auschwitz experience, states that “the witness knew then…that his
testimony would not be received… Only those who experienced…know what it was. Others
will never know. But would they at least understand?” (p. ix).
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This type of research and the focus on a person’s ‘performance’ can offer a view of
the individual in relation to a historical period. The period examined in the case of Cyprus,
1960-1974, defines the current society as one filled with dislocation, uprooting and post-
traumatic stress syndrome. These themes come up again and again in the narrations of the
fourteen individuals who participated in the study. Apart from compelling stories, what we
extract from the performative aspect of storytelling and the various perspectives adopted, is
information about the individual, the culture and politics of the time. All this is of course,
rich curriculum material, that adds to the basic and conventional history teachings, which
reveal aspects of latent curriculum. This essay could be the start of a broader sociological
study, which would pose a challenge to the formation of the Cypriot curriculum. The study
would tackle the issue of reconciling different interpretations of alienation and anomie, and
pose significant challenges connected with issues of reconciliation and identity formation.
This essay is a contribution to the field of curriculum studies as it illustrates how we
can consider oral history, not only as a source of information about ordinary people’s lives
but also for the role it can play in the construction of a historical context that is based upon
people’s narratives. Thus it can help us understand how the ‘everyday’ person was affected
by the events, as we hear directly from the person who has lived them, rather than the official,
institutionalized version of the story. Hearing all the different points of views that are often
encountered through the practice of oral history can enable students to understand history in
a broader context and as a contradictory field of possibilities. It can also enable them to see
history as not limited to what is written and official but also as something produced by people
who experience it and, in another sense, by those who study and write about it.
Notes
1 n.christodoulou@frederick.ac.cy
2 The Project was hosted by the Frederick Research Center at Frederick University and was
funded by the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation (PROSELKYSH/0609, 2010-2012).
3 www.frederick.ac.cy/research/oralhistory
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Submitted: September, 24th, 2013
Approved: May, 15th, 2014