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 IV: Visual Oral History

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 saying may be “a picture speaks a thousand words,” but when combined with oral history, a photograph can say so much more. I began thinking about the marriage of photographs and oral history when looking at the incredibly popular Humans of New York. I was really hoping I could construe it as a type of oral history, but I watched some videos about how he got the quotes that accompany the photos, and most come from very brief conversations. I decided to try to search out some ways that were more explicitly using oral history with photography.

Fortunately, my classmate Liz has already done some of the work for me. Last semester, after a lecture on two different oral history projects focusing on AIDS, she wrote this post about the use of photography to humanize and break down stereotypes about people who are HIV positive, as well as people with breast cancer.

Though I normally seek out articles about oral history, the following just popped up in my Facebook newsfeed one day. In New York, the juxtaposition between those who have (a lot) and those who don’t can be very stark, as one real estate agent realized. She became frustrated with the disparity between the luxury apartments she was showing and the people living on the streets around them, so she started buying them coffee and listening to their story.

Winona, 44. www.coffeewiththehomeless.com.

The New York Times’ Lens Blog has showcases gorgeous photos and the stories behind them. Margo Cooper’s interest in the blues, and the realization that many musicians were getting older and had stories to be documented, led her to use both photography and oral history. Her website only displays the photos, but this article has brief excerpts from the musicians.

Shine and Sam Carr. By Margo Cooper

Unfortunately, most photography oral history projects I come across online are physical exhibitions, but so interesting that I still want to highlight them. This one is outside of New Orleans, but it addresses concerns about changes in the environment of the Gulf Coast with a combination of paintings and photos of the river and oral histories by those interact with it, with the hope that the images and stories will allow visitors really see how much the environment has changed, and be able to connect to the impact that land loss has on the culture. 

Asher Milgate photographed Wiradjuri elders who had grown up in an Aboriginal mission in Wellington, and interviewed them about their lives. While this is also a physical exhibit, there are a few photos online with short quotes. The exhibit in Dubbo uses audio and video as well as the photographs.

By Asher Milgate

Most movie theaters are generic boxy buildings with multiple screens, but I grew up also watching movies at the Oriental Theater in Milwaukee, a theater from 1927. Benita VanWinkle started photographing old movie theaters to document them before they all disappeared, but realized that the people who would go there also had stories about the importance they had in their lives that were just as important to preserve as the architecture.

This is what I’ve been able to find so far, but would love to know about more photography-based oral history projects. Several weeks ago, a guest blogger with OHMA told us about her fledgling oral history project as archivist for the organization Professional Women Photographers. If you know of any, leave them in the comments!

News Brief: The Latest in Oral History III

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.

Technically I’m supposed to find projects and write about them, but I found this blog post on Northwest History that talks about Spokane’s Pride, an LGBT oral history project. He discusses the project and even highlights a few more LGBT oral history projects. The rest of his blog might be of interest as he is a public historian and assistant digital archivist who uses it to “explore the intersections of public and digital history."

The U.S. Naval War College just completed a 20 year oral history project with women who were in the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES). There’s no audio online, but the full transcripts are there so you can learn about another facet of American military history.

If you’re interested in oral history of people in religious orders, and happen to be in Peoria, you can stop by this exhibit, which features a few oral histories with older priests. No matter where you are, you can listen to these clips of interviews with nuns.

Oral history can make for great performances. Here one town, inspired by StoryCorps, is collecting stories of residents and producing a play. Of course, oral histories of significant events can contribute to a more well rounded production, as it does in this project, which addresses the impact of World War I in England both nationally and locally.

The Catskills are suffering from what has been deemed a heroin epidemic. The Kingfisher Project is an attempt to use oral history and storytelling to report on the problem, as well as to fight it.

Though I didn’t know much about the partition of India, I’ve heard about the 1947 Partition archive before. I think this article really sums up the importance of the archive as a record of the largest mass migration in history.

This wasn’t a very audio-heavy list, so I’ll end with an assortment of short clips from Columbia’s archive. Enjoy listening to people from Thurgood Marshall to Dorothy Parker.

News Brief: The Latest in Oral History II

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.

As much as it’s fun to read about oral history, it can also be nice to revel in the actual orality of it. So here are links that (mostly) have an oral component for you to listen to.

I may be biased because I read some of Listening on the Edge for a class, but here’s an opportunity to listen to the two authors discuss their opinions on interviewing people closely after an event, as well as the impact on the interviewer.

If you listen to Radio Diaries you may have already heard this, but I just started listening, and was very excited when I listened to their podcast from last September. It has 2 previously unpublished oral histories conducted by Studs Terkel for his Working series, one with a taxi driver, the other with a parking attendant.

Speaking of Studs Terkel and Working, did you know they made it into a musical in the 70’s? I did not, but a school in California recently performed it, and a blogger mused upon the relevance of performing it today.

The New York Public Library is embarking on a massive oral history project on living in New York. Here they’ve assembled a sampler of clips to pique your interest in interviews about life in Greenwich Village, Harlem, Morris Park, as well as the experiences of being blind in the city. Listen to them and then explore the full interviews available on each project’s website.

This essay from Transom about perception of voices on NPR was published in multiple places on the internet, inspiring a lot of different conversations. One was orchestrated on twitter by NPR’s Code Switch blog team. It was also a topic of discussion on one of my favorite podcasts, NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, where they took into consideration all different types of voices and the general perception of them on the radio.

February was Black History Month, so a lot of links in my Google alert were specifically related to that, which is great, but wouldn’t it be cool if African American history wasn’t highlighted for just one month? The Visionary Project looks at the lives of African American Elders. Each person’s page has a brief biography, and then a selection of clips to watch from their interview. It’s really well organized and seems like it would be a great teaching tool to use all year.

Despite being a self-avowed nerd, I have never watched Star Trek. But after the death of Leonard Nimoy, this segment of his interview with the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexlar History project describing exactly his inspiration for the Vulcan hand gesture was widely circulated on the internet.

Gender at Work Storytelling Events

Gender at Work and the Women's Rights Storytelling Collaborative Initiative, two Center for Oral History community partners, have several events coming up!

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.

Apply now for the Columbia Center for Oral History Research's 2015 Summer Institute on Population Health

The Columbia Center for Oral History Research housed at INCITE is pleased to announce its 2015 Oral History Institute, “Narrating Population Health: Oral History, Disparity, and Social Change,” to be held June 15-26, 2015 at Columbia University in New York City. Increasing economic disparities, war, political conflict and identity-based forms of discrimination have resulted in an unprecedented global crisis in equitable health practices and the distribution of resources.  Specifically, we will look at concrete ways that oral history reveals those disparities within communities that face discrimination and stigma, and offers new paradigms for understanding and response.  

Areas of focus will include: HIV/AIDS, mass incarceration, reproductive rights, harm reduction, addiction, stigma and discrimination and the impact of the built environment on health such as asthma and other diseases.  The program will focus on ways that scholars and advocates have used oral history to illuminate the impact of inequitable distribution of health resources in local and global communities. 

The program will hold workshops on interviewing, analysis, digital oral history applications, and interdisciplinary research methods with presentations from medical researchers, historians, population health experts and sociologists.  We encourage applicants to use the Institute to explore a range of oral history-research applications, and will select participants based on a successful pairing of the oral history method with other modes of inquiry and analysis in engaging the topics of population health from interdisciplinary perspectives.
 

The 2015 Application is Now Open
Priority will be given to applications submitted by February 28
Applications must be submitted no later than April 15

Tuition for the Institute is $2,200. Fellowships are available. Visit CCOHR's website for more information, including a list of faculty. For any inquiries, please email ccohr@columbia.edu.

Faculty will include:

Mary Marshall Clark, Director of the Columbia Center for Oral History Research and co-director of the Oral History Master of Arts Program at the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics of Columbia University

Gerald Albarelli, Professor of Writing, Sarah Lawrence College

Peter Bearman, Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics, co-director of the Oral History Master of Arts Program, co-director of Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars Program, and Member of the National Academy of Sciences

Doug Boyd, Director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries

Terrell Frazier, Education and Outreach Director, Columbia Center for Oral History Research

George Gavrilis, Research Fellow, Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life at Columbia University

Ronald J. Grele, Director Emeritus of the Columbia Center for Oral History

Alondra Nelson, Dean of Social Science, professor of sociology and gender studies, and director of the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University

David Rosner, Ronald H. Lauterstein Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and Professor of History at Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University

Linda Shopes, Former President of the U.S. Oral History Association, Freelance Editor and Consultant in Oral and Public History

Amy Starecheski, Associate Director of the Oral History Master of Arts Program at the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics of Columbia University

Keith Wailoo, Townsend Martin Professor of History and Public Affairs and Vice Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University

OHMA alum Nicki Pombier Berger will teach workshop at 2015 Oral History Summer School

OHMA alum Nicki Pombier Berger will teach a workshop, Memory Loss and Mixed Ability Interviewing, at this summer's Oral History Summer School in Hudson, New York.

Podcast: OHMA Associate Director Amy Starecheski in the Oral History Review

OHMA Associate Director Amy Starecheski wrote the lead article in the Summer/Fall 2014 issue of the Oral History Review.  "Squatting History: The Power of Oral History as History-Making Practice" explores the ways in which an in intergenerational group of activists have used oral history to pass on knowledge through public discussions about the past. Check out OHR's podcast about it, in which Troy Reeves, managing editor at OHR, interviews Amy about the project. Amy also discusses her involvement with the upcoming Annual Meeting of the Oral History Association.

Amy Starecheski. 2014. "Squatting History: The Power of Oral History as History-Making Practice," Oral History Review 41(2): 187-216.

Having trouble listening to the podcast? Try it on Soundcloud or download the mp3.

Article on OHMA in August Cross Ties

http://march.rutgers.edu/2013/08/02/columbias-master-of-arts-in-oral-historyeducates-the-next-generation-of-oral-historians/

Job announcements: Congratulations OHMA alumna Erica Fugger!

OHMA is excited to share the successes of its graduates and we will be posting announcements about all of the exciting things our alums are up to in the coming days and weeks!  

Erica Fugger [OHMA 2014] was recently hired for the full-time position of Administrative Assistant at the Columbia Center for Oral History (CCOH). As a work-study editorial assistant at CCOH during the 2012-2013 academic year, Erica gained experience in the archives by aiding researchers utilizing the collections, audit editing transcripts, and serving as a staff member of the 2013 Oral History Summer Institute. In her new role, Erica directs the work of the graduate assistants, offers consultations to individuals and organizations on implementing oral history projects, and develops projects to expand access to the archive. Erica is currently completing her thesis project, which will include an audio documentary based on narratives of practitioners in the tradition of Vietnamese Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh and a guide to oral history interviewing through Buddhist practice.

Congratulations to OHMA Graduate, Ellen Brooks!

Ellen Brooks [OHMA graduate 2013] was recently hired as the Oral History Archivist and Curator at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum in Madison, WI. Aside from coursework and fieldwork experiences, her position as Education Intern at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum this past summer helped prepare her for the role of integrating oral history into public programming. She also has considerable experience archiving and analyzing oral history through her work as research assistant to Professor Amy Starecheski, whose work utilizes oral history to explore the experiences of squatters on the Lower East Side. In her role at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, Ellen will be splitting her time between organizing the extensive current collection of oral histories, collecting additional interviews, training volunteers and designing exhibits and programming that feature the Museum’s oral history collection. Ellen’s primary objective at the Veterans Museum will be to promote oral history as an essential facet of museum education and public history.

OHMA Student Work to be Shared in Audio, Video, Online and Edible Forms in Multimedia Showcase Next Week

See here for full conference program.​

Registration Now Open! Free Public Oral History Workshops by OHMA Alums and Students

On Thursday, May 2 we will be kicking off our 5th Anniversary celebration with three free, public, interactive lunchtime oral history workshops taught by OHMA alums and students: Oral History and Psychotherapy, Designing Oral History Projects, and Stories Beyond Digital Tools. Register now to reserve your spot! Lunch will be provided, and all workshops will take place in Buell Hall from 12:15-1:45.

Workshop #1: Convergences and Divergences of Oral History and Psychotherapy

Lauren Taylor

This workshop will examine the convergences and divergences of oral history and psychotherapy. Public and private themes will be explored in a sociocultural context, with a focus on trauma interviewing. Participants will learn how narrative may be developed to therapeutic effect in a range of clinical and non-clinical settings. The workshop will include participant role plays and analysis of audio and video interviews.

Part one, Contrasts and Similarities, will compare the approaches and interviewing techniques of both the oral historian and the psychotherapist, will an emphasis on understanding intersubjectivity and appropriate use of self-disclosure. Part two, Understanding Trauma, will provide an understanding of the bio-psycho-social effects of trauma, and the development of skills for coping with vicarious traumatization during the interview process. Register to reserve your spot!

Lauren Taylor, M.A., M.S., L.C.S.W., oral historian and psychiatric social worker, is an adjunct professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work. As an oral historian, Ms. Taylor has conducted dozens of life history interviews with older adults, both in the United States and abroad, and is studying the subjective experience of aging through the medium of narrative in a cross-cultural context. Ms. Taylor has lectured and published on the therapeutic use of oral history and life review for an aging population, and on the integration of oral history and social work education, both in the US, in France, and in Canada.

Workshop #2: Designing Projects: What is the message, why is it important and who got it?

Marie Scatena

This workshop goes through the steps of planning an oral history project with attention to backward design. We’ll explore how the original intention of the collecting effort is reflected in tangible and intangible outcomes by: 

Envisioning connections between potential audiences or publics and narrators to create a project mission statement or guiding question

Identifying points in the process where ‘translation’, or decisions about refashioning research into what is often called interpretation, takes place

Work-shopping questions and scenarios to achieve different outcomes

Brainstorming evaluations which might be built into the process

Register to reserve your spot!​

Marie Scatena experienced OHMA as a student in the first graduating class, and from 2010 to 2012 she taught OHMA’s Oral History Workshop and Fieldwork, Production, Documentation and Archiving courses.   Marie conducted her thesis research at the MoMA, and drew on her background in museum education to help OHMA students realize collaborative projects for public presentation and creative theses. In recent years Marie contributed to oral history projects such as Columbia Teacher’s College ART CART Project with fellows interviewing aging visual artists for an exhibition and website and The National Public Housing Museum’s collection efforts with youth.  Today Marie is an independent researcher, developer and consultant based in Chicago. She works with institutions, organizations and communities to collect and interpret stories.

Workshop #3: Stories Beyond Digital Tools

Sewon Christina Chung

Explore the world of interactive web technology, and gain hands-on experience utilizing new storytelling platforms and social media outlets for oral history.

New digital tools can help us craft compelling audiovisual and interactive stories. This workshop is designed to provide exposure to new trends in digital storytelling, all the while investigating the potential traps of digital tools. We will work together to develop thoughtful approaches to using new technologies, taking the stories beyond the tools. Chung will highlight Oral History-related websites with interactive functions, beginning a conversation about the potentials of new media tools and will go over main tools and web platforms, giving an explanation of its functionality and limitations. Participants should bring their laptops. At the close of the workshop, the group will spend 30 minutes building a web story on Zeega. We will close with a discussion about more thoughtful ways to approach new technologies and avoid the traps of believing that tools are more than just tools. Register to reserve your spot!

Sewon Christina Chung received her B.A. in Sociology and Literary & Cultural Studies from the College of William and Mary in 2009. During her studies, she produced a documentary film about the U.S.‐Mexico border to facilitate discussion concerning race, identity, and community in Williamsburg, Virginia. After graduation, Sewon completed a multimedia blog series for MIT's CoLab Radio in Kunming, China. Her work focused on the daily experience of urban development in one of China's quickly changing border region. At OHMA, she is combining her interests in visible and invisible borders as well as new media as a medium and method for oral history in research about Central Park North.