Your Custom Text Here
image credit © ultra-red
In this post, OHMA student Holly Werner-Thomas (2017) considers the theme of struggle in the life and work of Robert Sember, who is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at The New School’s Eugene Lang College, and a member of the international sound-art collective, Ultra-red.
Read More
Stills from Michael Roberson on the Ballroom Freedom School by Shawn Van Sluys on Vimeo.
Current OHMA student Carlin Zia reflects on her experience of the penultimate workshop in our fall series—Michael Roberson’s A History of Echoes, Pt. 2: Sound of Trans Freedom—and shares how the event influences her own approach to oral history.
Read More
In this post, OHMA student Lynn Lewis (2017) describes a recent workshop with Ultra-Red member Michael Roberson. Roberson is a public health practitioner, advocate, activist and leader within the LGBTQ community who created the Federation of Ballroom Houses, and co-created the National Black Gay Men's Advocacy Group.
Read More
Image from Public Listening Session, held within Vogue'ology 2010 exhibition. Event lead by Robert Sember
In this post, OHMA student Yameng Xia (2017) considers Robert Sember’s work in public health and his work as an artist based on his work and an interview she conducted. Robert Sember is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at the New School’s Eugene Lang College, and a member of the international sound-art collective, Ultra-red.
Read More
In this post, part-time OHMA student Bud Kliment reviews “The B-Side: ‘Negro Folklore in Texas Prisons’ A Record Album Interpretation’” a performance piece of musical theater and oral history based on the 1965 LP “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons.”
Read More
From left to right: Jess Lamar Reece Holler, Kimber Thomas, Danielle Dulken, Rachel Gelfand and Fanny García after their workshop, "Orality, Affective Power, and Activism: Making Oral History Art" at the 2017 Oral History Association Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
In this post OHMA alum Fanny Julissa García (2016) discusses her experience at the recent 2017 Oral History Association Conference in comparison to her first visit to the conference in 2016, and her collaboration on a panel about making oral history into art.
Read More
In this post OHMA student Alissa Funderburk (2017-2018) introduces the second Future Voices Fellow, Desmond Austin Miller. Alissa recently conducted a one-on-one interview with Desmond to learn more about her classmate’s life, education, work, and research interests.
Read More
In this post OHMA student Alissa Funderburk (2017-2018) introduces Future Voices Fellow, Lynn Lewis. Alissa recently sat down for a one-on-one interview at Lynn’s home. Below she uses Lynn’s life story and inspirations to understand her work and academic interests.
Read More
In this post, Rachel Unkovic, member of the 2016 cohort, talks about why oral historians have a unique role to play in amplifying and signal boosting marginalized voices to enable "history" and communal memory to be appropriately critiqued.
Read More
"lampedusa" (CC BY 2.0) by noborder network.
Alliance for Historical Dialogue and Accountability fellow Lura Limani reflects on what stories of migrants, as collected by Professor Luisa Passerini’s Bodies Across Borders in Europe project, can teach us about European identity.
Read More
In this post, OHMA student Tomoko Kubota (2017) explores how we can make meaning of oral history in an era of Post-Truth. This article is the first in a three-part series exploring Dr. Luisa Passerini’s recent OHMA Workshop Series lecture, “Interviewing Artists: Intersubjectivity and Visuality.”
Read More
In this post, current OHMA student Shira Hudson reflects on how Mi’Jan Celie Tho-Biaz’s lecture inspired her to consider what it means to identify as an oral historian.
Read More
In this post, Robin Weinberg, member of the 2016 cohort, talks about how we, as story collectors, oral historians and engaged listeners, need to make sure we have an toolbox of techniques to take care of ourselves.
Read More
Photo credit: Ali Lapetina
Shot onsite during 2017 Burnside Farm artist residency in Detroit, Michigan (with permission/gratitude to Kate Daughdrill, Burnside Farm founder).
In this post OHMA student Elly Kalfus (2017-2018) discusses how Mi’Jan Celie Tho-Biaz’s approach to designing and facilitating oral history storytelling events led her to a deeper understanding of the value of collaboration and humility.
Read More
A photograph from Intersecting Histories: The Story of Her Skin
In November of 2015, Jeffrey H. Brodsky, OHMA alum, announced a generous annual cash prize of $3,000 for an outstanding thesis. The criteria for receiving the award is that the thesis must “make an important contribution to knowledge and exemplify the rigor, creativity and ethical integrity we teach our students.”
We are proud to announce the winner: Nyssa Chow, and Ellen Coon, the runner up. We invite you to consider the resonances between these two theses: in the recreation of the literal voices and memories of powerful women who tend to the living and the dying and all the attendant rituals in between, and who translate the stories that enliven the next generation.
Read More
Whitney Dow (left) and Nyssa Chow (right)
We are excited to welcome new faculty member Whitney Dow and teaching fellow Nyssa Chow to OHMA for the coming school year.
Read More
Oral history is an art. The practice of oral history is creative -- in interviews we make narratives together with our interviewees, imagining worlds, telling stories, creating characters. Oral history can also be used to document the arts, to tell the stories of painters and dancers and actors and writers and the worlds they live in. And the arts are a powerful means to amplify and interpret oral histories, transforming them into literary narratives, building theater or music or dance performances from them, using them to create documentaries. This year, we will explore all of these many intersections of oral history and the arts, asking what unique contributions an oral history approach can make to artistic practice, and how oral history can help us to think about art and its role in the world.
Read More
Recent OHMA graduate Fanny Julissa García (2016) recently accepted a position at the New-York Historical Society.
Read MoreThe Columbia University Oral History Master of Arts Program has two exciting opportunities available this year to work with the program's incoming students -- the Fieldwork Partners and Internship Programs.
Read MoreIn this article, Monica Liuting (2016) writes about her installation for the Inside Voices: An Oral History Exhibition in April 2017. Here we see her struggle with the question about how to represent place, memory, and the passage of time in her exhibit.
Read More