Article on OHMA in August Cross Ties

http://march.rutgers.edu/2013/08/02/columbias-master-of-arts-in-oral-historyeducates-the-next-generation-of-oral-historians/

Job announcements: Congratulations OHMA alumna Erica Fugger!

OHMA is excited to share the successes of its graduates and we will be posting announcements about all of the exciting things our alums are up to in the coming days and weeks!  

Erica Fugger [OHMA 2014] was recently hired for the full-time position of Administrative Assistant at the Columbia Center for Oral History (CCOH). As a work-study editorial assistant at CCOH during the 2012-2013 academic year, Erica gained experience in the archives by aiding researchers utilizing the collections, audit editing transcripts, and serving as a staff member of the 2013 Oral History Summer Institute. In her new role, Erica directs the work of the graduate assistants, offers consultations to individuals and organizations on implementing oral history projects, and develops projects to expand access to the archive. Erica is currently completing her thesis project, which will include an audio documentary based on narratives of practitioners in the tradition of Vietnamese Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh and a guide to oral history interviewing through Buddhist practice.

[Workshop Reflection] Daniel Wolff: Listening to New Orleans

by Shannon Geis and Laura Barnett

 
On September 26th, Daniel Wolff, author of The Fight for Home: How (Parts of) New Orleans Came Back and executive producer of the documentary “I’m Carolyn Parker,” both about the rebuilding of New Orleans post-Katrina, spoke to the OMHA students about the differences between using life histories in book form versus documentary film. Both were released in 2012.

Daniel Wolff is the author of How Lincoln Learned to Read, a Chicago Tribune Editor's Choice pick; 4th of July, Asbury Park, a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice pick; You Send Me: The Life and Times of Sam Cooke, a national bestseller; and two volumes of poetry, among other books. His writing has appeared in publications ranging from Vogue to Wooden Boat to Education Weekly.

Wolff also served as executive producer of The Agronomist, a 2003 documentary directed by Jonathan Demme following the life of Jean Dominique, who ran Haiti’s first independent radio station, Radio Haiti-Inter, during multiple repressive regimes.

Although Wolff doesn’t necessarily consider himself an oral historian, much of his work as a non-fiction writer has depended on the oral histories of people involved with the subjects he writes about.

Wolff began the process of documenting New Orleans when he accompanied Jonathan Demme about five months after Hurricane Katrina. As he helped with the filming, he started learning more and more about the people trying to rebuild. But it was Demme who convinced him to write the book.

Writing a book also allowed him to focus on many more of the people he encountered through the time he spent in New Orleans than are included in the film, as well as provide background and context to what he was witnessing.

The role of providing background was one of the most important ways he felt his book differed from the film. As an example, he showed the same scene in three different formats.

First he played the opening scene of the documentary, narrated by Jonathan Demme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdShyOYVx_M

Then he read the section of the book where he introduces readers to Carolyn Parker:

The light’s starting to orange toward sunset. It strikes the panes of the twin fanlights. Out one door comes a broad woman with a yellow kerchief covering her hair. “I’m Carolyn…That’s Father Joe Champion, our parish priest.”

            Carolyn’s wide short frame nearly fills the door. She’s brown-skinned with a broad nose, almond-shaped eyes, and a welcoming smile. There’s a touch of the troublemaker in the way she turns the priest’s name into Champion. She’s wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt with SAVE THE TIGER printed on the front. When she walks, it’s with an awkward roll, as if something hurts. But the smile is overwhelming. She invites the little crowd on the street to come in.

            It’s dark in her house, and there are few walls. The rooms are separated by blue tarp. “This is my brother Raymond. Who’s enjoying himself.” A gray-haired black man is sitting on the edge of a cot, watching TV and eating. Later, Carolyn will explain how she hadn’t seen her brother for ten years when she found him in the crowds of the Superdome. “He’s eating my famous fired fish. And that’s my daughter, Kyrah.”

            Kyrah is sitting on a bed in the other half of the double shotgun. She’s watching her own TV. Kyrah looks to be in her late teens with pulled-back short hair, her mother’s almond eyes, and a bright smile. Father Joe givers her a hug and asks when she got in. “Last week,” she says. Her freshman year at New York’s Syracuse University has just ended.

            A neighbor appears from down the block. It’s becoming a small, noisy party.

            […]

            “Come see,” she says, inviting her guests to tour her home.

            A shotgun is typically one room wide and two or three deep: a long, narrow rectangle you could supposedly fire a shotgun straight through. Carolyn’s double is two of these under one peaked roof, with a wall down the middle. She thinks it was built in the mid-nineteenth century; it’s on an 1875 map as part of a truck farm.

And then finally, he played the raw footage from the moment that he and Jonathan Demme met Carolyn Parker. Through showing these different versions of the same moment, Wolff was able to make apparent some of the key differences between documentary film and documentary writing, particularly the ability to include background.

For Wolff, being able to provide context to his readers is an important part of the writing process. He is able to shape how the readers view certain moments and events. However, he acknowledges the challenges of objectivity that this can create:

This was also the first time Wolff was writing a book where he had video footage to reference, which meant he could go back and see how a person told the story not just listen to it and try to remember.

Wolff also discussed the politics of editing people’s voices for film and writing and how those editorial choices affect the final product whether he means for them to or not.

Overall, the role of context and background have played largest role in the Wolff’s choice to write a book based on his observations and experiences surrounding the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and why he says he will probably continue to write books rather than delve into other formats. Though, if Jonathan Demme asks him to make a movie again, he certainly wouldn’t refuse. 

Congratulations to OHMA Graduate, Ellen Brooks!

Ellen Brooks [OHMA graduate 2013] was recently hired as the Oral History Archivist and Curator at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum in Madison, WI. Aside from coursework and fieldwork experiences, her position as Education Intern at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum this past summer helped prepare her for the role of integrating oral history into public programming. She also has considerable experience archiving and analyzing oral history through her work as research assistant to Professor Amy Starecheski, whose work utilizes oral history to explore the experiences of squatters on the Lower East Side. In her role at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, Ellen will be splitting her time between organizing the extensive current collection of oral histories, collecting additional interviews, training volunteers and designing exhibits and programming that feature the Museum’s oral history collection. Ellen’s primary objective at the Veterans Museum will be to promote oral history as an essential facet of museum education and public history.

Advice: Attend Events at Columbia University Just Because You Are Interested

by Jacob Horton
 
On Tuesday October 1st I attended a lecture at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute titled “Stormy Seas: Japan’s Disputes Over History and Territory and the US-Japan Alliance”.  Thomas Berger, the guest speaker, is a Columbia alumnus and professor of International Relations at Boston University.  Berger argued that any solution to these disputes will involve direct confrontation with differing historical pasts and he laid out three ways in which historical memory can be addressed.   In a lecture that was largely about political alliances and war scenarios I was struck by how important oral history interventions might be. 

Briefly:  The Empire of Japan began expanding in the late 19th century.  By the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese war in 1937 Japan fully occupied the Korean peninsula, many areas in Southeast Asia, and large sections of what is now Eastern China.  Today's territorial disputes between Japan, China and Taiwan revolve around (in English) the Pinnacle islands in the East China Sea and between Japan and South Korea, the Liancourt islands in the Sea of Japan.  Japan often claims that governance was settled through various treaties over the last 150 years. Japan's neighbors argue that these agreements have been rendered void by history.  But how can 8 uninhabited islands and some 38 rocks spark large-scale, popular riots and protests?  Berger argues correctly that these disruptions pour from a fount of popular memory; from suppressed and unaddressed grievances.  Beneath these disputes lie the deeper concerns of how Japan addresses or ignores its past as an imperial power that exploited the populations of its now sovereign neighbors.

Berger spoke about the construction of historical memory in three ways.  The first was through political power.  Polities make claims on history in order to legitimize their existence.  The governed come to know the world because they are told stories about it.  These stories are shaped by political interests.  A senior resident of Nanjing in Eastern China, for example, might know Japan as the occupying empire that invaded their city and tormented their neighbors.  From this person’s point of view Japan was only ejected by and is only held at bay by the liberating army of the Communist revolution.  A young Japanese person, however, may know Japan primarily as a small but wealthy pacifist nation that is struggling to recover from a recession and a series of national disasters.  History is instrumental in defining a sovereign state and allowing the population to interconnect, to be sympathetic toward itself and develop a relationship toward outsiders.  National stories map the world through prefabricated narratives with a political core.   This can be tracked in textbooks.  The shape of an individual's world is mapped through personal experience.  The oral history method can open this map.

Berger also described how wildly different historical memories can coexist within a political polity.  One American may understand the Florida trial of George Zimmerman to be an example of how the American legal system systematically decides cases based on a skin or race bias.  Another American may see the trial as another example of the world's most fair and deliberative justice system.  Both of these people are Americans and yet they understand the history of their nation in almost contradictory ways.  For a government to address conflicts that have roots in historical memory it must address how internal histories have come to be radically different.  Historical narratives become impressed on individual lives and they also emerge from individual experience.  Oral history interviews can demonstrate the emergence of differing histories within complex, intertwined nations of people.

 Lastly Berger identified the history of experience.  This is the most obvious home for oral history as he meant exactly the stories that people recall from their own lives.  While large identity histories are documented through collective means, personal histories always start with a single person.  Berger noted that one of the ways Japan might address grievances with South Korea would be to address the lives of individuals, in particular the so-called “comfort women”.  This term refers to Korean woman, now grandmothers, that were requisitioned during the wars to service the desires of Japanese occupiers.  Reaching out to these individuals, Berger argued, is an acknowledgment South Korea's historical memory.  As these women pass away the issue will not pass with them – the opportunity to address historical damage will.  Oral history is exceptionally well suited for documenting such stories, those that will soon pass beyond our reach.  The formal documentation of these individual stories would be a suitable core for a reconciliation action as suggested by Berger.

 Berger discussed historical memory because he rightly believes it to be central this dangerous set of tensions in our world today.  He identified broad actions that might be taken to avoid the worst outcomes.  But what I saw was the paths that oral historians should walk.  It is into these dens of past hurt and conflict that we must venture.  The past is not always so distant.  It shapes today.  As oral historians we can be actors on this level.  It is our responsibility to consider context, method, bias, and modes of analysis not only for the sake of accurately representing our narrators but in order to make clear to our audience the ways that these histories, personal and small, are essential components in the larger, shared histories that change our world.  Next time a lecture or an event piques your interest, make time for it.  It may be more important to your work than you first think.

[Workshop Reflection] Darija Maric: Personal Memories of War and Detention in Croatia from 1941 toToday

To watch the full video, click here

In Croatia, oral history is being used to build sustainable peace after decades of conflict.  On September 12, at a public workshop co-sponsored by the Columbia Center for Oral History and Columbia’s Center for the Study of Human Rights, Darija Maric, a fellow at Columbia this year, shared the work of Documenta, Centre for Dealing With the Past, a Zaghreb-based NGO that has done over 400 oral history interviews in an attempt to end a culture of silence about the wars in the countries that were formerly Yugoslavia. 

The interviews are the first stage of a project titled “Unveiling Personal Memories on War and Detention.”

Documenta was founded in 2004 in order to both establish the truth about what happened during wars, and to create a shift in the public dialogue about the wars -- from arguing over the facts of what happened, to sharing individual and subjective experiences of what happened.  You can explore Documenta’s work through their website:   http://www.documenta.hr/en/home.html

In 2006, Documenta began using oral history with some audio recordings made in Slavonia.  The recordings offered a surprising revelation:  that people connected the events of the 1990s with the Second World War, explaining how the old violence had been used to justify a fresh cycle of violence.  Documenta saw that by uncovering and sharing the wide variety of war experiences, oral history could help people to develop a nuanced understanding of what leads to war. 

“Individual voices show us collectively what factors lead to the collapse of civil society,” Maric explained.

For “Unveiling Personal Memories on War and Detention,” Documenta used an extensive NGO network and previous field experience to identify interviewees.  “We looked for people who were absent from the dominant or official narrative.  We wanted to hear the experience of minorities and of ordinary civilians, not just veterans; we wanted to give power to people who didn’t cause the events,” Maric said.

Look at some interview clips here:  http://www.osobnasjecanja.hr/en/video-search/

Maric described the interviews as personally and socially empowering.  “After the interview, some people began speaking out publicly after a lifetime of silence,” she said.  The interviews can have a community-building impact, as some communities have been holding events at which interview clips are shown.

“It’s amazing how revealing the suffering of your neighbor, or the suffering of someone from a different ethnic group, can start dialogue, which leads to understanding.  And that understanding creates empathy,” Maric said.

One audience member observed that human rights advocates always seek big changes.  But this oral history project is  leading to small changes, imperceptible at first, as shifts occur within individuals, families and communities as a result of telling and hearing stories.

Four hundred video-taped interviews, from all over Croatia, creates an enormous archive.  Documenta has transcribed each interview, translated it, gone through a scrupulous informed consent process (including erasing portions of interviews at the narrator’s request), and archived it with impressive security.  The first interview clips have just been made available to the public on the Internet, with many more to follow. 

“We thought our work was done,” Maric said, laughing.  “But now we realize that just putting it up on the Web is not enough.  What do you do with such rich material, how do you spread it around?  That’s why I’m here.”  Maric will be spending this year, she said, exploring artistic and innovative ways to use the “Unveiling Personal Memories” interviews to help heal Croatia’s past and build a lasting peace.

[Workshop Reflection] Community-based Oral History in Weeksville, Brooklyn

[For a full video of the talk, see here.}

Questions Asked:

Please tell us about your background and how you got to where you are.

Please tell us about what Weeksville is.

You touched on the idea of the movement creating the museum. It what ways, now that the center has been established, will the exhibits and programs continue to be movement based?

You touched on the idea of trying to make it a democratic place but how do you balance that with the sometimes bureaucratic process of running the center? Are there sacrifices that need to be made?

What does your audience look like? And are you trying to reach beyond the community?

What is Weeksville’s relationship to the surrounding community and how has it affected or been affected by change in the community?

What are other creative ways of preserving community history and what are impediments to it? What kinds of technology do you use?

Workshop Reflection: Weeksville Heritage Center uses Oral History to Preserve a Sense of Place

On April 25th, Jennifer Scott of the Weeksville Heritage Center, which preserves several homes that were part of the original Weeksville community, established in 1838 as one of the first free black communities in the country where blacks owned property, spoke to the OMHA students about the center’s use of oral history to encourage the democratization of this unique Brooklyn community’s history.

The community has always been an important part of the Weeksville Heritage Center starting with the preservation of the Hunterfly Road site in the 1970s, which was a concerted effort taken on by many residents of the area. The level of community involvement through archeology and preservation that could be seen in the fight to preserve the Hunterfly Road Houses is always rare, said Scott, but extremely rare in 1968, when this was happening.

Oral histories were collected in the early days of the preservation of Weeksville in conjunction with Medgar Evers College. Histories were collected from a wide range of community members, including many of the people involved in preserving the Hunterfly Road Houses and other Brooklyn residents associated with the place. Luckily, most of those histories survived and are now preserved.

The Center has started collecting more oral histories from community residents over the past few years. Scott said she sees the oral history collection as vital to understanding the place, helping to connect the people of the community to the historic location and giving these histories and memories a tangible location to be attached to.

Scott emphasized that one of the critical roles of oral history is to erode illusions  about people, places, and history. And for Weeksville, it has been a way to encourage a more democratic and inclusive view of this important but relatively unknown part of Brooklyn, New York, and American history.

Scott also said that the oral histories collected from those that were influential in preserving Weeksville have the benefit of showing the webs and networks of people that make things happen. In some ways, she said, it demystifies the process.

As for the future of oral history at the Weeksville Heritage Center, Scott believes that the past needs to be connected to the present and that oral history is a great way of doing that. She said she has used the collection of oral histories as a way of getting people re-involved in the project and that it is a great way of cultivating community involvement.

Scott said that they continue to experiment with new ways of presenting the oral histories within the exhibits at the Center and to rotate the histories used to make sure that every story is heard and available to the community and the greater public. Scott assured students that the Weeksville Heritage Center continues to look at new ways to make the oral history collection accessible and engaging. 

By OHMA Student Shannon Geis      http://shannongeis.net

[Workshop Reflection] Subjectivity, Authority, and the Uses of Oral History

On April 11th, OHMA students were given the opportunity to interview Sarah Mountz, a scholar and advocate of LGBTQ youth in child welfare systems.  The talk was part of OHMA’s year-long oral history workshop class, in which students meet with oral historians, activists, scholars, journalists and others who incorporate oral history into their work. During the hour-long session, the students asked questions on several topics, including subjectivity, authority, and the role oral history can play in academia and social work.  Some highlights from the session have been provided below.

OHMA Student Work to be Shared in Audio, Video, Online and Edible Forms in Multimedia Showcase Next Week

See here for full conference program.​

Registration Now Open! Free Public Oral History Workshops by OHMA Alums and Students

On Thursday, May 2 we will be kicking off our 5th Anniversary celebration with three free, public, interactive lunchtime oral history workshops taught by OHMA alums and students: Oral History and Psychotherapy, Designing Oral History Projects, and Stories Beyond Digital Tools. Register now to reserve your spot! Lunch will be provided, and all workshops will take place in Buell Hall from 12:15-1:45.

Workshop #1: Convergences and Divergences of Oral History and Psychotherapy

Lauren Taylor

This workshop will examine the convergences and divergences of oral history and psychotherapy. Public and private themes will be explored in a sociocultural context, with a focus on trauma interviewing. Participants will learn how narrative may be developed to therapeutic effect in a range of clinical and non-clinical settings. The workshop will include participant role plays and analysis of audio and video interviews.

Part one, Contrasts and Similarities, will compare the approaches and interviewing techniques of both the oral historian and the psychotherapist, will an emphasis on understanding intersubjectivity and appropriate use of self-disclosure. Part two, Understanding Trauma, will provide an understanding of the bio-psycho-social effects of trauma, and the development of skills for coping with vicarious traumatization during the interview process. Register to reserve your spot!

Lauren Taylor, M.A., M.S., L.C.S.W., oral historian and psychiatric social worker, is an adjunct professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work. As an oral historian, Ms. Taylor has conducted dozens of life history interviews with older adults, both in the United States and abroad, and is studying the subjective experience of aging through the medium of narrative in a cross-cultural context. Ms. Taylor has lectured and published on the therapeutic use of oral history and life review for an aging population, and on the integration of oral history and social work education, both in the US, in France, and in Canada.

Workshop #2: Designing Projects: What is the message, why is it important and who got it?

Marie Scatena

This workshop goes through the steps of planning an oral history project with attention to backward design. We’ll explore how the original intention of the collecting effort is reflected in tangible and intangible outcomes by: 

Envisioning connections between potential audiences or publics and narrators to create a project mission statement or guiding question

Identifying points in the process where ‘translation’, or decisions about refashioning research into what is often called interpretation, takes place

Work-shopping questions and scenarios to achieve different outcomes

Brainstorming evaluations which might be built into the process

Register to reserve your spot!​

Marie Scatena experienced OHMA as a student in the first graduating class, and from 2010 to 2012 she taught OHMA’s Oral History Workshop and Fieldwork, Production, Documentation and Archiving courses.   Marie conducted her thesis research at the MoMA, and drew on her background in museum education to help OHMA students realize collaborative projects for public presentation and creative theses. In recent years Marie contributed to oral history projects such as Columbia Teacher’s College ART CART Project with fellows interviewing aging visual artists for an exhibition and website and The National Public Housing Museum’s collection efforts with youth.  Today Marie is an independent researcher, developer and consultant based in Chicago. She works with institutions, organizations and communities to collect and interpret stories.

Workshop #3: Stories Beyond Digital Tools

Sewon Christina Chung

Explore the world of interactive web technology, and gain hands-on experience utilizing new storytelling platforms and social media outlets for oral history.

New digital tools can help us craft compelling audiovisual and interactive stories. This workshop is designed to provide exposure to new trends in digital storytelling, all the while investigating the potential traps of digital tools. We will work together to develop thoughtful approaches to using new technologies, taking the stories beyond the tools. Chung will highlight Oral History-related websites with interactive functions, beginning a conversation about the potentials of new media tools and will go over main tools and web platforms, giving an explanation of its functionality and limitations. Participants should bring their laptops. At the close of the workshop, the group will spend 30 minutes building a web story on Zeega. We will close with a discussion about more thoughtful ways to approach new technologies and avoid the traps of believing that tools are more than just tools. Register to reserve your spot!

Sewon Christina Chung received her B.A. in Sociology and Literary & Cultural Studies from the College of William and Mary in 2009. During her studies, she produced a documentary film about the U.S.‐Mexico border to facilitate discussion concerning race, identity, and community in Williamsburg, Virginia. After graduation, Sewon completed a multimedia blog series for MIT's CoLab Radio in Kunming, China. Her work focused on the daily experience of urban development in one of China's quickly changing border region. At OHMA, she is combining her interests in visible and invisible borders as well as new media as a medium and method for oral history in research about Central Park North.