Doing Recent History: On Privacy, Copyright, Video Games, Institutional Review Boards, Activist Scholarship, and History That Talks Back ed. by Claire Bond Potter and Renee C. Romano (review)

As the lengthy subtitle of Claire Bond Potter and Renee C. Romano’s new book, Doing Recent History, suggests, any historian who reads this collection of essays stands to gain something. “Recent” is defined here as 1970 to the present, a period during which we saw the rise of new media, such as television and the internet; the development of new research tools and methodologies; and the formation of interdisciplinary academic fields, such as American Studies and Women’s Studies. This edited collection contains thoughtful writing about the challenges these changes pose for the field of history. It explores the varying uses and values of oral history, as well the legal and ethical challenges oral historians face. It also helps introduce all historians to oral history as a research methodology and field.

Potter and Romano introduce their book with a discussion of the ways in which doing recent history is both a scholarly necessity and a befuddling enterprise. Addressing what seems to be an almost paralyzing awareness of a generational divide, they acknowledge that historians fear that doing recent history, using new media, and trying new methodologies threaten the very definition of the field of history. The essays in the book’s five sections tackle these fears and explore a wide variety of topics, some of which are especially pertinent to the oral historian.

In part 1, Framing the Issues, two essays illustrate the methodological and theoretical difficulties and advantages of doing recent history. Romano grapples with the lack of secondary sources available for recent history, and Shelley Sang-Hee Lee notes that studying recent history using new media can “bring students alive” (55). Part 2, Access to the Archives, addresses the more difficult, daunting, and at times tedious issues that historians face when studying the recent past. These essays concern intellectual and archival property rights, protecting subjects’ anonymity, and the ownership of history. Discussing medical archives that contain information about people who are still alive, Laura Clark Brown and Nancy Kaiser note that censoring names could destroy “webs of meaning that these records can otherwise reveal” (59). They point out that if historians expect less restrictive archival processing, then they must play a part in determining what is ethical to publish. A one-size-fits-all policy has been untenable thus far. Gail Drakes writes in her essay that she should not “have to violate a federal law to give a paper at a major history conference” (83). She highlights how copyright laws can constrain academic work in an age when academics from all fields are striving to employ Youtube and other new media.

Part 3, Working with Living Subjects, is the most pertinent section for those interested in the craft, challenges, and methodology of oral history. Martin Meeker’s essay outlines one of the most contentious issues facing historians who work with living subjects: Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). Meeker argues that “cooperation with IRBs offers” a way to “be more systematic about doing oral histories as a form of research” (115). He dates the establishment of IRBs, as most do, back to the Nuremberg Military Tribunal, which implemented protections for human research subjects. Diving directly into a divisive debate, Meeker critiques Linda Shopes’s argument that oral history should be excluded from IRB regulations since the regulations were designed for generalizable, scientific research (cf. Shopes’s essay at http://www.oralhistory.org/about/do-oral-history/oral-history-and-irb-review/). He frames Shopes’s 2003 statement that oral historians are unlikely to gain concessions from federal and institutional regulators as a defeat for her views on IRB regulation. While he mentions the increasing litigiousness of academia (occurring concurrently with oral history’s professionalization), he glosses over the ways IRBs have...