Oral Histories of the November 13 Terrorist Attacks in Paris and of September 11 in the U.S

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Christian Delage discusses a research program he led with the Institut d’Histoire du Temps Present (IHTP) that involved filming the testimonies of the women and men who lived through the terrorist attacks in Paris and St. Denis on November 13, 2015, in which 130 people were killed.  The aim was to capture a broad picture of the memory of what happened that night, by interviewing not only survivors of the attacks but the whole chain of people involved: police officers, fire-fighters, doctors, restaurant and bar owners.  To provide a comparative perspective on how oral histories can serve to capture the personal memories of victims in the immediate aftermath of such events, Mary Marshall Clark talks about the September 11, 2001 Oral History Narrative and Memory Project she co-directed with Peter Bearman, analyzing the role September 11 played in New Yorkers’ lives and how these New York stories differ from what 9/11 has come to mean in the national media.

From La Maison Française at Columbia.