Congratulations to OHMA Co-Director and Columbia Center for Oral History Research Director, MARY MARSHALL CLARK, on being awarded the 2017 Forrest C. Pogue Award from Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region! Mary Marshall has served on the OHMAR Board and is a lifetime member of the organization.
Read MoreOn behalf of the Oral History Master of Arts Program at Columbia University, thank you to the emerging and established oral historians who made our One-Day Oral History Training Workshops on Saturday, January 28 such a huge success.
Read MoreIn this post, Mary Marshall Clark—Director of the Columbia Center for Oral History Research, Co-Director of OHMA, and Senior Member of the Columbia University Institutional Review Board—reflects on the recent update to the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects, which has clarified the exclusion of oral history from its research review mandates.
Read MoreIn this inauguration season post, OHMA alum Jonathon Fairhead (2015) writes about applying skills he learned as an oral historian to listen deeply to a friend whose political perspectives he does not align with and as a path to understanding a country divided.
Read MoreIn this post, current OMHA student Yutong Wang (2016) explores how oral histories can be both meaningful and impactful to public audiences.
This article is the final piece in a three-part series exploring Jack Kuo Wei Tchen’s recent OHMA Workshop Series lecture, “Below the Grid.”
Read MoreIn this post, current OHMA student Xiaoyan Li (2016) reflects on how the dynamic dialogic process enlightens the shadows of our past and present.
This article is the second in a three-part series exploring Jack Kuo Wei Tchen’s recent OHMA Workshop Series lecture, “Below the Grid.”
Read MoreIn this post, Chinonye Alma Otuonye explores the dialogic space as a mechanism towards a human understanding of the self and history. She reflects on the ways John Kuo Wei Tchen—NYU professor, historian, and curator—decolonizes both space and history within and through his work.
This article is the first in a three-part series exploring Tchen’s recent OHMA Workshop Series lecture, “Below the Grid.”
Read MoreThis article is the third and final in a three-part series examining the Brooklyn Historical Society’s ongoing oral history project “Voices of Crown Heights.” In this post, current OHMA student Meave Sheehan (2016) looks at what it means to “live” a public policy and how oral history can be used to uncover both noticeable and more subtle changes over time.
Read MoreTo close out the year, OHMA is excited to share these recent news updates about our students and alumni. We hope that you will be able to join us for our Spring Open House on January 26 and One-Day Oral History Training Workshops on January 28, 2017 to meet a number of our program affiliates—including Nicki Pombier Berger (2010) and Fernanda Espinosa (2015)—and learn more about their innovative work!
Read MoreIn this post, OHMA alumna Cindy Choung (2009), recipient of our first OHMA Alumni Conference Travel Grant, writes on dialogue and difference among oral history practitioners at the 2016 Oral History Association Meeting. She offers thoughts on creating space for connection and reflection between oral historians across generations.
Read MoreWe are proud to announce that our 2016-2017 OHMA Research Grants have been awarded to current students Robin Miniter (2016) and Fanny Julissa García (2016), who will be exploring the experiences of women who have navigated either American wilderness and patriarchy, or immigration detention and identity formation. Funding and support has been made possible through the GSAS Thesis Research Matching Award program.
Read MoreThis article is the second in a three-part series examining the Brooklyn Historical Society’s ongoing oral history project “Voices of Crown Heights.” In this piece, current OHMA student Rachel Unkovic (2016) focuses on how oral history can illuminate (rather than obfuscate) historical narrative even in times of confusion and conflicting ideas.
Read MoreThis article is the first in a three-part series examining the Brooklyn Historical Society’s ongoing oral history project “Voices of Crown Heights.” In this post, current OHMA student Dina Asfaha (2016) writes that Zaheer Ali's project is a prime example of the need for oral history in understanding society. She proposes that Ali does an exemplary job of situating people's narratives in their respective historical contexts and putting those narratives in conversation with one another in order to deduce conclusions about how gentrification in Crown Heights can be understood today.
Read MoreEarlier this fall, OHMA students Emma Courtland (2016) and Robin Miniter (2016) met in a third story apartment in Hamilton Heights to “narrate their photos.” Using a modification of the methods used by artist and urbanist Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani to put walking tours, photography, and memory in conversation about the experience of gentrification in Prospect Heights, Courtland and Miniter planned to use photography and oral history to explore their changing relationships to the city. They then visited the places depicted in their photos. This is the story of one of those photos.
Read MoreIn this post, current OHMA student Steve Fuchs (2016) explores the New York Public Library’s Community Oral History Project—directed by Alex Kelly—and the Library’s expanding role in the community.
Read MoreOHMA is excited to announce that Amy Starecheski’s book, Ours to Lose: When Squatters Became Homeowners in New York City (University of Chicago Press, 2016), has officially been published! It is for sale online and is starting to appear in bookstores, from Red Emma's in Baltimore to Book Culture on Broadway in New York City. Congratulations, Amy! We look forward to hosting you for an OHMA Workshop lecture on Thursday, January 19, 2017.
Read MoreEarlier this fall, DW Gibson, author of Not Working and The Edge Becomes the Center: An Oral History of Gentrification in the Twenty-First Century, gave an OHMA Workshop Series lecture in on how he used oral history to reflect the changes in peoples’ lives through gentrification. This article—written by current OHMA student Liu Ting (2016)—focuses on how Gibson presents oral histories in his book and how his own narrative interplays with the interviews.
Read MoreApplications are now open for a new two-week long intensive seminar exploring oral history, memory, visuality, and the body. The course is co-sponsored by the European Research Council Project Bodies Across Borders: Oral and Visual Memory in Europe and Beyond (BABE) and the Columbia University Oral History Master of Arts Program (OHMA), and hosted by the Department of History and Civilization at the European University Institute, Florence.
Read MoreIn this post, current OHMA BA/MA student Rozanne Gooding Silverwood (2015) reflects on the art of transcription and offers her perspective on how the NYPL Community Oral History Project might increase the enlistment of volunteer transcribers by educating prospective participants about the literary history and aesthetic value of rendering the spoken word to text.
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