WHEN: Thursday, April 27, 2017, 5:00 - 8:00 pm
WHERE: The Social Hall, Union Theological Seminary, 3041 Broadway at 121st Street
Oral history is a dialogic encounter. Unlike other historical documents, an oral history source is not found, but created during an interview—a record unique to the time and place of its creation, and the relationship of its authors.
On Thursday, April 27, 2017, “Inside Voices,” a multimedia pop-up exhibit curated by the students and faculty of Columbia’s Oral History Master of Arts program, will invite a new element into each dialogic encounter: you.
Exhibits include:
BOON+IMBABA by Dina M. Asfaha
Experience Eritrean culture and join me in drinking boon (coffee) and eating imbaba (popcorn) while hearing stories about Eritrean life during the revolution
Vietnam Draft Lottery: Fate of a Lifetime by Steve Fuchs
When your fate depends on your birthdate!
Show Me Your Hands by Fanny García
Keep your eyes on her hands as you learn about one Central American woman’s story of motherhood, migration, and detention.
Voices of Giving by Shira Hudson
Taking participants on a philanthropic journey: first listen, then reflect, then give.
Memory Records by Bud Kliment
A place where visitors can find, revisit, and share their memories of the music that has particular resonance and meaning for them.
Intergenerational Dialogue in a Home Space by Xiaoyan Li
A short film screening and participatory exhibit encouraging you to explore family memory
The Space of Memory by Monica Liu
Imagine you are a detective and step in a room of someone's MEMORY. Time has been murdered here.
God Forged in Fire & Flood: Oral Histories of an Appalachian Geography by Robin Miniter
An exploration of Southern Appalachian land and faith in Hot Springs, N.C.
Ebola Soldiers by Rachel Unkovic
Stories of the front line fighters who stopped the spread of Ebola and saved the lives of millions.
Who Are All Those Asian Students? by Yutong Wang
The real life and voice from a growing group: Chinese students in America.
Four Chairs by Robin Weinberg
Conversations with women from motherhood to the empty nest.
This event is free, open to the public, accessible, and open to all ages! It will help kick off a long weekend of oral history programming in New York, alongside the 2017 Oral History and the Mid-Atlantic Region Conference, Oral History & The City, co-sponsored by OHMA.
"Inside Voices" is curated by OHMA Co-Director and Fieldwork instructor Amy Starecheski and current OHMA student Emma Courtland (2016). Questions? Please reach out via ohma@columbia.edu.
Curators of 'Inside Voices': An Oral History Exhibition
Since graduating from UCLA with a BA in English, Emma Courtland has worked as a writer, editor, film programmer, and exhibitions curator in Los Angeles. The bulk of her professional efforts, however, has been on behalf the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where her public programs focused on intersections of storytelling and technology. She is especially interested in cultural form and narrative cognition, and how our modes of sharing stories shape our understanding of and interactions with the world.
Amy Starecheski is a cultural anthropologist and oral historian who co-directs the Oral History MA Program at Columbia University. In 2016 she was awarded the Sapiens-Allegra “Will the Next Margaret Mead Please Stand Up?” prize for public anthropological writing. She received a PhD in cultural anthropology from the CUNY Graduate Center, where she was a Public Humanities Fellow. Her book, Ours to Lose: When Squatters Became Homeowners in New York City, was published in 2016 by the University of Chicago Press.