KW’s Storytelling and Oral History Project is a project of building a feminist archive. In it, we house oral histories of women and gender non-conforming people who share with us stories of their lives.
Our oral history process is directed by feminist values, at the core of which lie the importance of storytellers’ agency in speaking their narratives, of documentation and the preservation of their voices, of listening and learning through connection and stories, of acknowledging multiplicity and complexity, of producing knowledge embedded in experience, and of refuting the erasure of women and gender non-conforming people from history tales as we write alternative ones.
On this page you will find selections from our archive, including:
• full-length interviews with their transcriptions or indexes
• shorter sound clips from various interviews (coming soon!)
• thematic artwork based on themes pulled from the oral histories
• a complete database of our public collection
To listen to interviews not published our website or Soundcloud page, you are welcome to our library in Furn el Chebbak, open Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 11 AM to 5 PM.
We do not believe in censoring what we do not agree with; documenting these realities is a valuable part of feminist archiving. As such, the views expressed in the interviews do not necessarily reflect KW’s values or politics.
The Knowledge Workshop holds full or co-ownership of all items that it archives and publishes. Recordings published on the Knowledge Workshop website can be used only for cultural, educational and non-profit purposes, and never for commercial purposes. To use the material on our website, including the oral histories and their related images, we ask that you always reference the Knowledge Workshop with: Storyteller’s name, interviewed by Researcher’s name, Date, The Storytelling and Oral History Project, the Knowledge Workshop, Beirut, Lebanon, page number. [Ex. Nazik Saba Yared, interviewed by Deema Kaedbey, 2017, The Storytelling and Oral History Project, the Knowledge Workshop, Beirut, Lebanon, pp 12.]. Some of the items require permission from the storytellers before being used. To use published interviews that require the storyteller’s knowledge and consultation, you must fill out this request form, which you will also find on the pages of the respective interviews. To use limited-use items held within the Knowledge Workshop, you can visit our office in Furn El Chebbak and fill out a permission form.
To use these interviews for non-profit artistic, cultural, or educational
purposes, please fill out this form to request the permission of the narrator(s).
