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Oral Histories in Cypriot Classrooms: Memory, Reconciliation and Divided Communities

Fri, October 16, 8:30 to 10:00am, Tampa Marriott Waterside, Floor: 3, Meeting Room 4

Abstract

Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities on the island of Cyprus remain separated after more than four decades; UN Peacekeepers have been in Cyprus for nearly fifty years. Cypriot media, government, and institutions typically reflect political positions hardened over decades of impasse, these attitudes are often shared by large segments of the ethnic communities. This highly politicized environment constitutes part of the fabric of daily life in Cyprus.

University students in Cyprus live in an environment of politically charged media and culture that often promotes negative perspectives of “the other” and discourages collaborative efforts or peace and reconciliation. Efforts against these hegemonic forces include civil society projects involving community-based media and people-to-people communication projects, including oral histories.

This paper explores oral history and reflexivity projects in university classrooms in the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities in 1996 and 2010, and published on the website, Cypriot Voices ( http://www.cyvoices.org ).
The experiences are framed within Engaged Pedagogy, a synthesis of critical and feminist pedagogies stemming from the work of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, which encourages involvement in the world beyond classroom walls for the purposes of personal and social transformation. Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology provides a means of implementing the principles of Engaged Pedagogy.

The experiences indicate that oral histories and related self-reflexive practices served to both validate and challenge personal and cultural experiences through the creation of a student base of ‘legitimate knowledge.’ Reflexive responses by students in Cyprus to their community interviews in 1996 and 2010 suggest that some participants experienced a transformative shift in perspective toward history, politics, and culture. Self-reflexivity is explored as a life-long method of promoting personal and social change.

This paper draws from the author’s chapter in Challenging History: Oral History Work in Cyprus (Briel, 2014).

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