The NYC Trans Oral History Project (NYC TOHP) is a vibrant, growing online archive of 200 interviews with trans New Yorkers sharing their life stories. NYC TOHP is a collaboration between an independent collective and the New York Public Library. In its project design, the NYC TOHP reflects a number of unusual choices that differ from standard oral history best-practices: the interviews are all in the public domain through Creative Commons, they are overwhelmingly conducted by volunteers with little training, the collective selectively compensated some narrators, and we have prioritized making transcripts easily available. In this presentation, Michelle will outline the work of NYC TOHP, and explain the rationale for these unusual choices, and how they contribute to making the interviews useable by trans communities themselves. 

Michelle Esther O’Brien is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at New York University. She is currently finishing her dissertation on LGBTQ social movements in New York City. Michelle is a co-editor of Pinko, and her writing has appeared in Social Movement Studies, Commune, Homintern, Endnotes and Invert. 

Michelle is the outgoing Community Oral History Coordinator at the New York Public Library, where she has spent three and a half years leading the New York City Trans Oral History Project. The Project is gathering a growing online archive of personal oral histories from trans New Yorkers. 

Michelle received her Masters of Social Work from the Hunter College School of Social Work, CUNY. She spent several years working in HIV/AIDS service agencies, as a community organizer, support group facilitator and case worker. She served as the Executive Director of Housing Here and Now, at the time the leading coalition of tenant rights organizations in New York City.

WATCH NOW

These events are open to all. For more information or if we can make any of these events more accessible to you please contact Rebecca McGilveray at rlm2203@columbia.edu.