News Brief IV: Visual Oral History

Kate Brenner is a current OHMA student. Hailing from the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, she spends a lot of time laughing at New Yorkers who complain about the cold, and generally bemoaning a lack of availability of cheesecurds. When she's not busy perpetuating stereotypes about Midwesterners, she explores the dynamics of group interviews and story circles to better capture the history of a community.

The saying may be “a picture speaks a thousand words,” but when combined with oral history, a photograph can say so much more. I began thinking about the marriage of photographs and oral history when looking at the incredibly popular Humans of New York. I was really hoping I could construe it as a type of oral history, but I watched some videos about how he got the quotes that accompany the photos, and most come from very brief conversations. I decided to try to search out some ways that were more explicitly using oral history with photography.

Fortunately, my classmate Liz has already done some of the work for me. Last semester, after a lecture on two different oral history projects focusing on AIDS, she wrote this post about the use of photography to humanize and break down stereotypes about people who are HIV positive, as well as people with breast cancer.

Though I normally seek out articles about oral history, the following just popped up in my Facebook newsfeed one day. In New York, the juxtaposition between those who have (a lot) and those who don’t can be very stark, as one real estate agent realized. She became frustrated with the disparity between the luxury apartments she was showing and the people living on the streets around them, so she started buying them coffee and listening to their story.

Winona, 44. www.coffeewiththehomeless.com.

The New York Times’ Lens Blog has showcases gorgeous photos and the stories behind them. Margo Cooper’s interest in the blues, and the realization that many musicians were getting older and had stories to be documented, led her to use both photography and oral history. Her website only displays the photos, but this article has brief excerpts from the musicians.

Shine and Sam Carr. By Margo Cooper

Unfortunately, most photography oral history projects I come across online are physical exhibitions, but so interesting that I still want to highlight them. This one is outside of New Orleans, but it addresses concerns about changes in the environment of the Gulf Coast with a combination of paintings and photos of the river and oral histories by those interact with it, with the hope that the images and stories will allow visitors really see how much the environment has changed, and be able to connect to the impact that land loss has on the culture. 

Asher Milgate photographed Wiradjuri elders who had grown up in an Aboriginal mission in Wellington, and interviewed them about their lives. While this is also a physical exhibit, there are a few photos online with short quotes. The exhibit in Dubbo uses audio and video as well as the photographs.

By Asher Milgate

Most movie theaters are generic boxy buildings with multiple screens, but I grew up also watching movies at the Oriental Theater in Milwaukee, a theater from 1927. Benita VanWinkle started photographing old movie theaters to document them before they all disappeared, but realized that the people who would go there also had stories about the importance they had in their lives that were just as important to preserve as the architecture.

This is what I’ve been able to find so far, but would love to know about more photography-based oral history projects. Several weeks ago, a guest blogger with OHMA told us about her fledgling oral history project as archivist for the organization Professional Women Photographers. If you know of any, leave them in the comments!

News Brief: The Latest in Oral History III

Kate Brenner is a current OHMA student. Hailing from the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, she spends a lot of time laughing at New Yorkers who complain about the cold, and generally bemoaning a lack of availability of cheesecurds. When she's not busy perpetuating stereotypes about Midwesterners, she explores the dynamics of group interviews and story circles to better capture the history of a community.

Technically I’m supposed to find projects and write about them, but I found this blog post on Northwest History that talks about Spokane’s Pride, an LGBT oral history project. He discusses the project and even highlights a few more LGBT oral history projects. The rest of his blog might be of interest as he is a public historian and assistant digital archivist who uses it to “explore the intersections of public and digital history."

The U.S. Naval War College just completed a 20 year oral history project with women who were in the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES). There’s no audio online, but the full transcripts are there so you can learn about another facet of American military history.

If you’re interested in oral history of people in religious orders, and happen to be in Peoria, you can stop by this exhibit, which features a few oral histories with older priests. No matter where you are, you can listen to these clips of interviews with nuns.

Oral history can make for great performances. Here one town, inspired by StoryCorps, is collecting stories of residents and producing a play. Of course, oral histories of significant events can contribute to a more well rounded production, as it does in this project, which addresses the impact of World War I in England both nationally and locally.

The Catskills are suffering from what has been deemed a heroin epidemic. The Kingfisher Project is an attempt to use oral history and storytelling to report on the problem, as well as to fight it.

Though I didn’t know much about the partition of India, I’ve heard about the 1947 Partition archive before. I think this article really sums up the importance of the archive as a record of the largest mass migration in history.

This wasn’t a very audio-heavy list, so I’ll end with an assortment of short clips from Columbia’s archive. Enjoy listening to people from Thurgood Marshall to Dorothy Parker.

News Brief: The Latest in Oral History II

Kate Brenner is a current OHMA student. Hailing from the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, she spends a lot of time laughing at New Yorkers who complain about the cold, and generally bemoaning a lack of availability of cheesecurds. When she's not busy perpetuating stereotypes about Midwesterners, she explores the dynamics of group interviews and story circles to better capture the history of a community.

As much as it’s fun to read about oral history, it can also be nice to revel in the actual orality of it. So here are links that (mostly) have an oral component for you to listen to.

I may be biased because I read some of Listening on the Edge for a class, but here’s an opportunity to listen to the two authors discuss their opinions on interviewing people closely after an event, as well as the impact on the interviewer.

If you listen to Radio Diaries you may have already heard this, but I just started listening, and was very excited when I listened to their podcast from last September. It has 2 previously unpublished oral histories conducted by Studs Terkel for his Working series, one with a taxi driver, the other with a parking attendant.

Speaking of Studs Terkel and Working, did you know they made it into a musical in the 70’s? I did not, but a school in California recently performed it, and a blogger mused upon the relevance of performing it today.

The New York Public Library is embarking on a massive oral history project on living in New York. Here they’ve assembled a sampler of clips to pique your interest in interviews about life in Greenwich Village, Harlem, Morris Park, as well as the experiences of being blind in the city. Listen to them and then explore the full interviews available on each project’s website.

This essay from Transom about perception of voices on NPR was published in multiple places on the internet, inspiring a lot of different conversations. One was orchestrated on twitter by NPR’s Code Switch blog team. It was also a topic of discussion on one of my favorite podcasts, NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, where they took into consideration all different types of voices and the general perception of them on the radio.

February was Black History Month, so a lot of links in my Google alert were specifically related to that, which is great, but wouldn’t it be cool if African American history wasn’t highlighted for just one month? The Visionary Project looks at the lives of African American Elders. Each person’s page has a brief biography, and then a selection of clips to watch from their interview. It’s really well organized and seems like it would be a great teaching tool to use all year.

Despite being a self-avowed nerd, I have never watched Star Trek. But after the death of Leonard Nimoy, this segment of his interview with the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexlar History project describing exactly his inspiration for the Vulcan hand gesture was widely circulated on the internet.

Gender at Work Storytelling Events

Gender at Work and the Women's Rights Storytelling Collaborative Initiative, two Center for Oral History community partners, have several events coming up!

News Brief: The Latest in Oral History

Kate Brenner is a current OHMA student studying the history and importance of St. Augustine's Church in the African American community on the Lower East Side of New York City. In our new series, Kate marshals new developments related to oral history.

One of the exciting things about the field of oral history is that it has such broad applications, what you can do with it seems endless. Of course, that also means there’s a lot of oral history- related content available. I have put my fondness for reading things on the internet to use, creating a highly subjective roundup of interesting oral history- related links. Some I picked for the topic, some for the application, all because I found them intriguing. This weekly list is only a tiny fraction of what I come across from my Google alert, links from classmates and professors, and what I stumble upon naturally.  

As an oral historian, and someone who has worked with K-8 students, I think it’s great to see oral history being used to engage kids. This article uses Black History Month to highlight the Children’s Oral History Project at the African American Museum of Iowa as an educational tool, where the interviews (both video and transcript available) are conducted by kids.

Oxford University Press did a follow up Q and A with Katie Kuszmar, the author of From Boat to Throat: How Oral Histories Immerse Students in Ecoliteracy and Community Building, going into more depth about her experiences of doing oral history projects with students.

An intern at the Southern Oral History Project shares her reflection on working with the oral histories there, and emphasizes that their archives are accessible online for anyone to browse.

After the death of Norman Bridwell, the author of the beloved Clifford children’s books, a museum in Martha's Vineyard decided to curate an exhibit on pets, including clips of oral histories where people talked about their animals.

While many people know StoryCorps, they might not know about the different initiatives they have. Some have been highlighted in the news recently, including telling stories of Latin@s, LGBT stories, and soon StoryCorps will be telling New Orleans post-Katrina stories, with an emphasis on getting a broad spectrum of people to come and share their experiences.

Since moving to New York from Wisconsin, I’ve discovered just how homogenous people assume the Midwest is, so it’s great to see there’s a new oral history book documenting Hmong lives in Michigan. As a bonus, the author even included a few recipes for the reader to try.

Oral history is often used for institutional histories, but I never considered focusing on the oral history of a relatively small hospital in Virginia. It’s a topic I didn’t expect, but it allows you to take a look into healthcare, and the interviews are all right there for you to watch.

Another easily accessible online collection, this one chronicles the oral history of dance in Western Australia.

Oral history has the capacity to be used for really interesting creative pieces. "Vignettes: Ellis Island," takes stories from the Ellis Island Oral History Project, turning the journey to America into a musical piece, one that many listeners were able to personally connect with.

Technology is a neverending subject of discussion for oral history, but sometimes even simple shifts can make it much more accessible. The Cultural Landscape Foundation is moving its videos to YouTube, making them viewable on your phone. This is especially relevant because their videos talk about architects and their work, so now you can stand in a place while hearing someone talk about it.

Apply now for the Columbia Center for Oral History Research's 2015 Summer Institute on Population Health

The Columbia Center for Oral History Research housed at INCITE is pleased to announce its 2015 Oral History Institute, “Narrating Population Health: Oral History, Disparity, and Social Change,” to be held June 15-26, 2015 at Columbia University in New York City. Increasing economic disparities, war, political conflict and identity-based forms of discrimination have resulted in an unprecedented global crisis in equitable health practices and the distribution of resources.  Specifically, we will look at concrete ways that oral history reveals those disparities within communities that face discrimination and stigma, and offers new paradigms for understanding and response.  

Areas of focus will include: HIV/AIDS, mass incarceration, reproductive rights, harm reduction, addiction, stigma and discrimination and the impact of the built environment on health such as asthma and other diseases.  The program will focus on ways that scholars and advocates have used oral history to illuminate the impact of inequitable distribution of health resources in local and global communities. 

The program will hold workshops on interviewing, analysis, digital oral history applications, and interdisciplinary research methods with presentations from medical researchers, historians, population health experts and sociologists.  We encourage applicants to use the Institute to explore a range of oral history-research applications, and will select participants based on a successful pairing of the oral history method with other modes of inquiry and analysis in engaging the topics of population health from interdisciplinary perspectives.
 

The 2015 Application is Now Open
Priority will be given to applications submitted by February 28
Applications must be submitted no later than April 15

Tuition for the Institute is $2,200. Fellowships are available. Visit CCOHR's website for more information, including a list of faculty. For any inquiries, please email ccohr@columbia.edu.

Faculty will include:

Mary Marshall Clark, Director of the Columbia Center for Oral History Research and co-director of the Oral History Master of Arts Program at the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics of Columbia University

Gerald Albarelli, Professor of Writing, Sarah Lawrence College

Peter Bearman, Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics, co-director of the Oral History Master of Arts Program, co-director of Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars Program, and Member of the National Academy of Sciences

Doug Boyd, Director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries

Terrell Frazier, Education and Outreach Director, Columbia Center for Oral History Research

George Gavrilis, Research Fellow, Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life at Columbia University

Ronald J. Grele, Director Emeritus of the Columbia Center for Oral History

Alondra Nelson, Dean of Social Science, professor of sociology and gender studies, and director of the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University

David Rosner, Ronald H. Lauterstein Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and Professor of History at Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University

Linda Shopes, Former President of the U.S. Oral History Association, Freelance Editor and Consultant in Oral and Public History

Amy Starecheski, Associate Director of the Oral History Master of Arts Program at the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics of Columbia University

Keith Wailoo, Townsend Martin Professor of History and Public Affairs and Vice Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University

OHMA alum Nicki Pombier Berger will teach workshop at 2015 Oral History Summer School

OHMA alum Nicki Pombier Berger will teach a workshop, Memory Loss and Mixed Ability Interviewing, at this summer's Oral History Summer School in Hudson, New York.