Oral History and the City, Fall 2016: What can oral histories tell us about life at the scale of the city? About how people make their homes in neighborhoods, or think of themselves as urban citizens? How can the practice of oral history be used as an intervention in urban life? Taking New York City as a lab, this series will explore oral history in and of the city.

Oral History and the Social Sciences, Spring 2017: Oral history is a practice with deep roots in the archive and in the discipline of history, where oral history is a unique and valuable genre of primary source. But what happens when we treat oral histories as data for sociological, anthropological or geographic research? Or use the tools of the social sciences to study oral history as a social practice? Is it possible, or desirable, to generalize from the particular and complex narratives of the oral history interview? In this series we will explore the tensions and possibilities at the interdisciplinary seams of oral history and the social sciences.