Historians are encouraged to look to the archive a foremost site for constructing events of the past. However, in examining 20th century Iran, this approach brings about an incomplete depiction of national landscape in transformation. Tracing documentation practices from the fall of the Qajar family to the rise of Khomeini, this research argues that oral histories - a stigmatized medium for historians - remain imperative to chronicling the political, social, and ideological developments absent from the written court histories and archives of Iran. In the case of Iran, cultural reproductions of memory are rich and legitimate sources for comprehending historical experience. The context of state-sponsored documentation practices, mass censorship, and suppression of testimony vaguely in opposition to the Shah affirm the tenets of archival theory contending the archive to be a site of constructed narrative. The epistemological foundations of new historicism affirm the field's urgent need to deconstruct the networks of power involved in narrative production. The Revolution triggered an exponential surge of oral history projects. The multiple initiatives offer thousands of pages of transcripts and hundreds of hours of recorded tape illustrating experience otherwise unchronicled. Retrospective oral interviews privilege the voices of activists, women, and racial and religious minorities whose accounts provide insight into events including the 1963 pro-Khomeini demonstrations, vast persecution of Baha'is, and omnipresent instances of disappearance, torture, and murder by SAVAK. Collected interviews are pivotal in reshaping historical discourse of not only the social landscape, but the political. During the nearly 40-year reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi there was one vision projected on the international stage: that of the Shah. Due to the nature of his authoritarian rule, dialogue with his foremost advisors and politicians provide insight to the Shah's monarchial strategies, concerns, and constraints otherwise not privy to documentation. Multi-lingual, open-access offerings enhance global understanding of the norms, concerns, and constraints which shaped and continue to shape Iran. This case illustrates oral histories as a vital medium for accessing historical knowledge which both contrasts and negates existing accounts. It is only through embracing narrative platforms outside sites of formal, written documentation that the scholar and inquisitive individual alike can best comprehend the Iranian domestic and transnational landscape past and present. Furthermore, lessons learned are applicable to other countries of the region and beyond where censorship and exclusionary documentation practices remain utilized as political forces.