WHEN: Thursday, March 24, 2016, 6 - 8 PM

WHERE: Knox Hall, 606 W. 122nd Street, Room 509

Oral historians work today in a social context of rising economic inequality, mass incarceration and neo-liberalism. Ideas of the public good are being subsumed in favor of privatization and gentrification. What role(s) can oral history and story-telling play in such a crisis era?

Paul Ortiz is the director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program and associate professor of history at the University of Florida. He is a past president of the Oral History Association. His publications include the Emancipation Betrayed a history of the Black Freedom struggle in Florida, and the co-edited volume, Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Jim Crow South which recently went into its 4th printing. He has published in journals including Radical History Review, Latino Studies, The Oral History Review, Truthout, Against the Current, Southern Exposure, Works in Progress, and the Florida Historical Quarterly. He writes frequently for the popular press about African American and Latino histories and politics. Paul is faculty adviser for UF chapter of the Dream Defenders, Students for a Democratic Society, & CHISPAS. He was awarded the 2013 César Chávez Action and Commitment Award, by the Florida Education Association, AFL-CIO. SPOHP received the Oral History Association’s 2013 Stetson Kennedy Vox Populi Award for outstanding achievement in using oral history to create a more humane and just world. SPOHP received the Society of American Archivists 2015 Diversity Award for outstanding contributions in advancing diversity within the archives profession.

SPONSORS: This talk is part of the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Lecture Series, co-sponsored by the Columbia Center for Oral History Research (CCOHR) and the Oral History Master of Arts Program (OHMA). Support from the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE) is provided for programming that embodies late Professor Paul Lazarsfeld’s commitment to improving methodological approaches that address concerns of vital cultural and social significance.

INFORMATION: For more information, please email Amy Starecheski at aas39(at)columbia.edu

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

NO REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED

The following day, don't miss this forum on CLR James and the Race Question, in which Paul will participate: