Kurdish Oral History

Aynur de Rouen, Ph.D.

In 2011, Binghamton University Libraries received the donation of the Vera Beaudin Saeedpour Kurdish Library and Museum Collection. The acquisition opened a dialog with the local Kurdish community in Binghamton, N.Y., which led to the creation of the Kurdish Oral History Project.

These interviews provide deeper insight into the history of the Kurdish culture through personal accounts, narratives, testimonies, and memories of their early lives in their adoptive country and back in Kurdistan. This growing collection holds interviews in English and/or Kurdish with informants of all ages and a variety of backgrounds from various parts of Kurdistan. The interviewees share remarkable stories of their migration, their persecution in Kurdistan, the resilience of their Kurdish identity in assimilating into the host culture, and the ties they maintain with their homeland in diaspora.

The oral histories in this collection are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in this collection, you must seek permission, or decide if your use can be qualified as fair under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will work with you to resolve the issue. Please see our take down request policy.

If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes please cite accordingly. When citing documents, researchers/educators should credit Digital Initiatives as the custodian of the collection. The following is a suggested citation: “Name of collection, Item, Digital Initiatives, Binghamton University Libraries.”