Learning How to Listen

This conversation explores a central topic: How can oral historians listen closely, critically, and imaginatively to silences and emotion? How might speculative and creative practices preserve dimensions of testimony that exceed both language and transcription? What, finally, are the ethical challenges of documenting endangered oral traditions or stories of violence?

Over many years, the panelists have worked closely with Canadian World War veterans; women who participated in the Lebanese Civil War; Chinese-speaking immigrant women who experienced intimate partner violence; and the Mirasi community of Punjab. For all four panelists, relationality lies at the core of their commitment to non-extractivist research. Their research affords an extended contemplation of the principle of “Sharing Authority,” so foundational to our work at COHDS. In essence, panelists are reflecting on what we are doing to try and “make oral history a more democratic cultural practice.” (Zembrzycki, 2009)

How can you participate? Join us in person by or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.

Have questions or if we can make this event more accessible for you: Contact us at info.4@concordia.ca

Ian Cosh 

Ian Cosh is a writer and anthropologist based in Toronto whose work combines oral history, ethnography, archival investigation, and literary nonfiction. His first book, Ghosts of Ortona: Reckoning with the Traumas of Canadian World War II Veterans (Sutherland House, 2026), draws on interviews and archival research conducted in Canada, Italy, and Germany to explore the long aftermath of war through the stories of veterans and civilian survivors, and the uneasy relationship between lived experience and public memory. He studied history and anthropology at McGill University and holds a PhD in social anthropology from York University. He is currently writing essays on war memory and literary representation.

Caline Nasrallah 

Caline Nasrallah is a literary translator, editor, and researcher based between Montreal and Beirut. Her extensive editing and translation work spans fiction and non-fiction. She has co-translated multiple books documenting women’s experiences of war, political struggle, resistance, and displacement, and her work has appeared with Syracuse University Press, Wasafiri, Interlink Publishing, and 53rd State Press, among others. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Communication Studies at Concordia University, where her research explores oral history, memory, narrative, and mediation, with a particular interest in how experiences of war are remembered and communicated.

Yun-Lin Wang 

Yun-Lin Wang is a PhD candidate in the Individualized Program (INDI) at Concordia University. Her doctoral research examines Chinese-speaking immigrant women’s experiences of intimate partner violence (IPV) in Canada, with particular attention to how women recognize, interpret, and respond to IPV within relational, cultural, migration-related, and structural contexts. Her broader research interests include gender-based violence, migration, qualitative inquiry, and meaning-making across time.

Muhammad Arslan Hanif 

Muhammad Arslan Hanif is a doctoral student at the McGill University Institute of Islamic Studies. His research focuses on folklore in Urdu and Punjabi, with particular emphasis on storytelling traditions across South Asia. He examines literary and poetic practices in colonial and post-colonial South Asia through the Mirasi and Bhand communities, historically significant groups of storytellers, oral historians, performers, and genealogists.

Tesfa Aki Peterson

Tesfa Aki Peterson is a public humanities researcher and community-based scholar whose work centers Caribbean history, feminist postcolonial thought, and participatory storytelling. As a student in the PhD Humanities program at Concordia University, her current project traces the life and legacy of Helen Louise Langdon Norton Little, a woman born in LaDigue, Grenada in the late nineteenth century, whose life connected Grenada, Montreal, and the American Midwest. Helen Little was active in the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Montreal and was the mother of eight children, including civil rights leader Malcolm X. Grounded in community knowledge and Caribbean feminist and postcolonial perspectives, her work asks how public humanities can preserve and honor lives that have been marginalized by colonial archives, while creating inclusive, intergenerational spaces for learning in both Grenada and the diaspora. Since 2020, she has collaborated with the Institute for People’s Enlightenment in the Grenadian village of LaDigue to organize lectures, storytelling sessions, and public conversations that center local voices and oral histories. Additionally, the project also extends to Montreal through an oral history and ritual storytelling podcast documenting Grenadian women’s community organizing. Across storybooks, podcasts, workshops, and public events, Tesfa’s work models a decolonial public humanities rooted in care, collaboration, and community memory.