Alumni News

This week we’ve had quite a lot of alumni announcements to share with our readers:

Alumna Sara Cohen Fournier contributed to a recently published collection of articles, entitled Beyond Testimony and Trauma: Oral History in the Aftermath of Mass Violence (ed. Steven High). The book surrounds ways to engage dealing with trauma and moving beyond in long form oral histories. It is based on the research "Life Stories of Montrealers displaced by war, genocides and human rights violations," which took place for 5 years in Montreal and collected stories from Rwanda, Haiti, Holocaust, and North African Jewery.

Alumna Liza Zapol has been working in collaboration with artists on a project on Embodied Mapping in the Lower East Side, sponsored by iLAND and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. This weekend (Friday, April 17 and Saturday, April 18, 2015) they will be hosting a symposium about this work and you can participate in some collaborative workshops for free. Check it out!

On May 14th and 15th, the Manhattan Repertory Theatre in New York is hosting full productions of alumnus Sam Robson’s play Timothy and Mary. Robson wrote the play based on oral history interviews he conducted for his OHMA thesis, for which he interviewed people with dementia and their family members and caregivers. 

Alumna Sarah Loose, co-founder of Groundswell: Oral History for Social Change, was awarded the Radcliffe Oral History Grant this year. Her project, Breastfeeding & Migration, explores the connections between motherhood and migration—specifically the impacts of immigration and immigration policy/enforcement on infant feeding practices. Using a combination of oral history, photography, community organizing, participatory research and popular education, the project aims to:

• document and share the experiences of immigrant mothers (especially low-income and undocumented immigrant mothers),
• identify barriers to immigrant parents’ right to choose how to feed their infants and potential solutions, and
• support the efforts of immigrant mothers in advocating for their health, the health of their babies, and their basic human rights, dignity, and self-determination.

Ultimately, Breastfeeding & Migration seeks to contribute to organizing efforts at the intersections of gender and racial justice, workplace and immigrant rights, and maternal, infant and public health.

Alumna Elisabeth Sydor is hosting a staged reading of her thesis, Stories from the Carriage Trade, on Saturday, April 25, 2015 at 8 pm. Hear inside tales of the carriage business in the 1980’s, when Hell's Kitchen's horse-drawn carriages still trotted the streets of New York City any time of the day or night. The evening will be narrated by former carriage drivers Dave Forshtay, Maggie Goodman, Bryan Northam, Åsa Jahnke Stephens, and Elisabeth Sydor - from the book of their oral histories and Elisabeth's written recollections, developed from her masters thesis for OHMA. Free admission and no minimum, but purchase of drinks/dinner go toward the room rental - much appreciated!

Alumna Crystal Baik will be the keynote speaker at Williams College's Asian American Popular Culture conference this week (sponsored by Asian Americans Students in Action, or AASiA)-- one of the first Asian/American studies conferences organized by small liberal arts colleges in the Northeast.

Alums Erica Fugger and Anna Kaplan were elected to the board of Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region (OHMAR) at their annual conference last week!

At the OHMAR conference, April 9 and 10, 2015. Left to right: Erica Fugger, Cameron Vanderscoff, Cameron Donald.

It’s a pleasure to see our alums’ innovative work flourish in such a diverse array of fields—from dance, to theater, to pure oral history!

News Brief: The Latest in Oral History VI

Kate Brenner is a current OHMA student. Hailing from the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, she spends a lot of time laughing at New Yorkers who complain about the cold, and generally bemoaning a lack of availability of cheesecurds. When she's not busy perpetuating stereotypes about Midwesterners, she explores the dynamics of group interviews and story circles to better capture the history of a community.

The last round-up I did was thematic, and while I was planning on making another focused one, I’ve just come across a lot of compelling projects that do not connect in any way, so this is a selection of recent items that caught my attention.

Of course the week after I do a post entirely about photography-based oral history projects, I’m sitting in the main room at the Oral History of the Mid Atlantic Region conference, and there is a presentation on The Graying of AIDS, which tells the stories of older adults living with AIDS. Originally a photography project, they began collecting stories as well and now it has morphed into this larger oral history project as well.   

Read Larry's story at www.grayingofaids.org

The Museum of Modern Art in New York just opened an exhibit on Jacob Lawrence’s iconic series of paintings on the Great Migration. The exhibition website is robust, with a variety of extra media. Though most of it is recordings of songs and poems, I was pleased to see how seamlessly they integrated oral history clips in a few parts. The oral histories are taken from Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South, where you can actually listen to the full interviews. Furthermore, you can read about the artist himself in an oral history interview at the Smithsonian from 1968. 

By Jacob Lawrence

Seeing this integration of oral history made me revisit a site we looked at in class, Goin’ North by students at West Chester University. When learning about Omeka as a platform, we used it as an example. It serves as an online archive where you can access full interviews and transcripts with both African Americans who had migrated to Philadelphia and African Americans who had been longtime residents of the city. In addition, it has various multimedia essays, incorporating video, audio, and images. They explain the different types of new technology they used to create the website, and I think it serves as an example of how interactive and engaging an oral history project website can be.

If those two websites leave you wanting to know more about the Great Migration, last semester I read The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. It focuses on the lives of three people who experienced the Great Migration in different ways, and is based on extensive interviews with them, as well as others to provide a larger historical context for the main stories. It’s been out for a few years, but if you haven’t read it, it is beautifully written and incredibly compelling, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Forty years after the fall of Phnom Penh, the oral history project Transmissions 2015 is showcasing interviews with survivors of the Khmer Rouge that were conducted by young relatives of theirs, in order to combat the silence within families around that history.

Oral history projects often focus on the impact of an event on those who experienced it, but the Children of Holodomor Survivors Oral History Project looks at the impact of that event on survivors’ children. 

Many museums incorporate and search out oral history to add to their collection, but the Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum is going a step further, and showing their dedication to acquiring interviews by closing the museum for the entire month of April to focus on allowing members of the community to come by and record oral histories. 

Because oral histories are primary sources, used by people other than their creators, there’s the possibility for them to be used in ways the creator may never have expected. I was bored and searching Kickstarter for projects, and while nothing came up for “oral history,” when I searched “folklore,” this comic book based on the folklore of ex-slaves as found in the WPA slave narratives came up. I’m sure neither the interviewers nor the narrators ever thought their stories might someday contribute to a comic book, but I think it’s awesome and shows the manifold uses for interviews.

News Brief: The Latest in Oral History

Kate Brenner is a current OHMA student studying the history and importance of St. Augustine's Church in the African American community on the Lower East Side of New York City. In our new series, Kate marshals new developments related to oral history.

One of the exciting things about the field of oral history is that it has such broad applications, what you can do with it seems endless. Of course, that also means there’s a lot of oral history- related content available. I have put my fondness for reading things on the internet to use, creating a highly subjective roundup of interesting oral history- related links. Some I picked for the topic, some for the application, all because I found them intriguing. This weekly list is only a tiny fraction of what I come across from my Google alert, links from classmates and professors, and what I stumble upon naturally.  

As an oral historian, and someone who has worked with K-8 students, I think it’s great to see oral history being used to engage kids. This article uses Black History Month to highlight the Children’s Oral History Project at the African American Museum of Iowa as an educational tool, where the interviews (both video and transcript available) are conducted by kids.

Oxford University Press did a follow up Q and A with Katie Kuszmar, the author of From Boat to Throat: How Oral Histories Immerse Students in Ecoliteracy and Community Building, going into more depth about her experiences of doing oral history projects with students.

An intern at the Southern Oral History Project shares her reflection on working with the oral histories there, and emphasizes that their archives are accessible online for anyone to browse.

After the death of Norman Bridwell, the author of the beloved Clifford children’s books, a museum in Martha's Vineyard decided to curate an exhibit on pets, including clips of oral histories where people talked about their animals.

While many people know StoryCorps, they might not know about the different initiatives they have. Some have been highlighted in the news recently, including telling stories of Latin@s, LGBT stories, and soon StoryCorps will be telling New Orleans post-Katrina stories, with an emphasis on getting a broad spectrum of people to come and share their experiences.

Since moving to New York from Wisconsin, I’ve discovered just how homogenous people assume the Midwest is, so it’s great to see there’s a new oral history book documenting Hmong lives in Michigan. As a bonus, the author even included a few recipes for the reader to try.

Oral history is often used for institutional histories, but I never considered focusing on the oral history of a relatively small hospital in Virginia. It’s a topic I didn’t expect, but it allows you to take a look into healthcare, and the interviews are all right there for you to watch.

Another easily accessible online collection, this one chronicles the oral history of dance in Western Australia.

Oral history has the capacity to be used for really interesting creative pieces. "Vignettes: Ellis Island," takes stories from the Ellis Island Oral History Project, turning the journey to America into a musical piece, one that many listeners were able to personally connect with.

Technology is a neverending subject of discussion for oral history, but sometimes even simple shifts can make it much more accessible. The Cultural Landscape Foundation is moving its videos to YouTube, making them viewable on your phone. This is especially relevant because their videos talk about architects and their work, so now you can stand in a place while hearing someone talk about it.

[Workshop Reflection] Daniel Wolff: Listening to New Orleans

by Shannon Geis and Laura Barnett

 
On September 26th, Daniel Wolff, author of The Fight for Home: How (Parts of) New Orleans Came Back and executive producer of the documentary “I’m Carolyn Parker,” both about the rebuilding of New Orleans post-Katrina, spoke to the OMHA students about the differences between using life histories in book form versus documentary film. Both were released in 2012.

Daniel Wolff is the author of How Lincoln Learned to Read, a Chicago Tribune Editor's Choice pick; 4th of July, Asbury Park, a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice pick; You Send Me: The Life and Times of Sam Cooke, a national bestseller; and two volumes of poetry, among other books. His writing has appeared in publications ranging from Vogue to Wooden Boat to Education Weekly.

Wolff also served as executive producer of The Agronomist, a 2003 documentary directed by Jonathan Demme following the life of Jean Dominique, who ran Haiti’s first independent radio station, Radio Haiti-Inter, during multiple repressive regimes.

Although Wolff doesn’t necessarily consider himself an oral historian, much of his work as a non-fiction writer has depended on the oral histories of people involved with the subjects he writes about.

Wolff began the process of documenting New Orleans when he accompanied Jonathan Demme about five months after Hurricane Katrina. As he helped with the filming, he started learning more and more about the people trying to rebuild. But it was Demme who convinced him to write the book.

Writing a book also allowed him to focus on many more of the people he encountered through the time he spent in New Orleans than are included in the film, as well as provide background and context to what he was witnessing.

The role of providing background was one of the most important ways he felt his book differed from the film. As an example, he showed the same scene in three different formats.

First he played the opening scene of the documentary, narrated by Jonathan Demme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdShyOYVx_M

Then he read the section of the book where he introduces readers to Carolyn Parker:

The light’s starting to orange toward sunset. It strikes the panes of the twin fanlights. Out one door comes a broad woman with a yellow kerchief covering her hair. “I’m Carolyn…That’s Father Joe Champion, our parish priest.”

            Carolyn’s wide short frame nearly fills the door. She’s brown-skinned with a broad nose, almond-shaped eyes, and a welcoming smile. There’s a touch of the troublemaker in the way she turns the priest’s name into Champion. She’s wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt with SAVE THE TIGER printed on the front. When she walks, it’s with an awkward roll, as if something hurts. But the smile is overwhelming. She invites the little crowd on the street to come in.

            It’s dark in her house, and there are few walls. The rooms are separated by blue tarp. “This is my brother Raymond. Who’s enjoying himself.” A gray-haired black man is sitting on the edge of a cot, watching TV and eating. Later, Carolyn will explain how she hadn’t seen her brother for ten years when she found him in the crowds of the Superdome. “He’s eating my famous fired fish. And that’s my daughter, Kyrah.”

            Kyrah is sitting on a bed in the other half of the double shotgun. She’s watching her own TV. Kyrah looks to be in her late teens with pulled-back short hair, her mother’s almond eyes, and a bright smile. Father Joe givers her a hug and asks when she got in. “Last week,” she says. Her freshman year at New York’s Syracuse University has just ended.

            A neighbor appears from down the block. It’s becoming a small, noisy party.

            […]

            “Come see,” she says, inviting her guests to tour her home.

            A shotgun is typically one room wide and two or three deep: a long, narrow rectangle you could supposedly fire a shotgun straight through. Carolyn’s double is two of these under one peaked roof, with a wall down the middle. She thinks it was built in the mid-nineteenth century; it’s on an 1875 map as part of a truck farm.

And then finally, he played the raw footage from the moment that he and Jonathan Demme met Carolyn Parker. Through showing these different versions of the same moment, Wolff was able to make apparent some of the key differences between documentary film and documentary writing, particularly the ability to include background.

For Wolff, being able to provide context to his readers is an important part of the writing process. He is able to shape how the readers view certain moments and events. However, he acknowledges the challenges of objectivity that this can create:

This was also the first time Wolff was writing a book where he had video footage to reference, which meant he could go back and see how a person told the story not just listen to it and try to remember.

Wolff also discussed the politics of editing people’s voices for film and writing and how those editorial choices affect the final product whether he means for them to or not.

Overall, the role of context and background have played largest role in the Wolff’s choice to write a book based on his observations and experiences surrounding the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and why he says he will probably continue to write books rather than delve into other formats. Though, if Jonathan Demme asks him to make a movie again, he certainly wouldn’t refuse.