Fall 2019- Spring 2020 | Oral History and Storytelling
Oral history could not exist without storytelling. Oral histories are always full of stories, often stories that have been handed down, passed around, honed through performance. And as we seek to amplify oral histories, the storytelling arts become crucial tools in the oral historian’s toolbox. Yet academic oral history has often defined itself in contrast to storytelling and to oral traditions.
In this series, we will explore the relationships between oral history and storytelling. As a practice that values life experiences that cannot be contained in tidy stories, what can oral history offer in a moment when storytelling is ubiquitous in the public sphere? How can a focus on storytelling illuminate the performative, creative, social, and cultural aspects of oral history that are not always prioritized in its practice?
Thursday Evening Event Series
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Thursday Evening Event Series 〰️
Find more about speakers and individual events through student reflections below.
Fall 2019
September 12, 2019, 6:10-7:30 pm
Europe according to Auschwitz: Experiments from the Laboratory of Reportage
IN-PERSON with Marek Miller, Jacek Wasilewski, and Michał Bukojemski
A team from the Laboratory of Reportage will share their innovative work through a case study of their Europe According to Auschwitz project, which includes experiments with historically rigorous polyphonic novels that aim to incorporate the tensions and inconsistencies of experiences into a shared story made up of many perspectives, as well the documentary miniseries "From The Auschwitz Chronicle."
September 19, 2019, 6:10-7:30pm
Newest Americans: Stories from the Global City
IN-PERSON with Tim Raphael
Newest Americans is a multimedia documentary and storytelling project that explores the implications of this seismic change from the perspective of the campus of Rutgers University-Newark, the most diverse university in the country for the past two decades. A unique collaboration between a public research university, an award-winning media production company and some of the world’s leading photojournalists, the project affords a glimpse into the world of the newest Americans and a vision of our demographic future.
September 26, 2019, 6:10-7:30 pm
Oral History and Indigenous Peoples: Rethinking Oral History, Methods, Politics and Theories
IN-PERSON with Dr. Nēpia Mahuika
Oral history was a native and indigenous practice well before, and after, the arrival of colonisers. With the resurgence of oral history in academic practice and as a popular public history approach, indigenous oral history has been displaced as folklore, superstition and often puerile and unreliable oral traditions. This discussion presents an indigenous perspective of oral history.
October 3, 2019, 6:10-7:30pm
Finding Fathers: A Cautionary Tale for Oral Historians
IN-PERSON with Emma Courtland
How do people turn their lived experiences into life stories? Through storytelling and analysis (and probably some word games), Emma will demonstrate the limitations of conventional oral history interview methodologies, exposing, most significantly, the tremendous force of conjecture on life history construction.
October 24, 2019, 6:10-7:30pm
Standing With Sky Woman: A conversation on cultural fluency
IN-PERSON with Dr. Kahente Horn-Miller (Kanien:keha’ka/Mohawk)
Indigenous peoples carry the knowledge of our ancestors on our bodies. Our responsibility as knowledge keepers is to tell our history in a way that makes it come alive. The concept Tsi-ni-tsi-wen-ah, “to make it alive in the minds of the people” is about the practice of storytelling. Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) Kahente Horn-Miller carries us through the performance of the Sky Woman Story and explores storytelling as ceremony.
November 7, 2019, 6:10-7:30pm
"Necessary as Water": Queer Black Ceremony and the Depth of Listening
IN-PERSON with Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Inspired by Audre Lorde's poetics of water and relation and drawing on her experience as co-founder of the Mobile Homecoming Black LGBTQ Experiential Archive and Living Library, Alexis Pauline Gumbs will lead the gathered community in a series of interactive listening activities designed to transform the possibilities of intimacy, intergenerational learning and presence in your own practice.
Spring 2020
February 6, 2020, 6:10-7:30 PM
Art, Oral History, and New Approaches to Telling the “Story” of Institutionalization in Pennsylvania
IN-PERSON with Nicki Pombier Berger and Lisa Sonneborn
In this workshop, we will explore how putting oral history in dialogue with other artistic practices can expand what we think of as “story,” and move us toward a more radically inclusive practice, one that questions the privileging of the oral over other ways of showing lived experience.
February 13, 2020, 6:10-7:30pm
The Stories That Rise
IN-PERSON with Rachel Falcone and Storyline
Do stories have a DNA? How are stories that have never been told different than stories that have been passed down and performed over generations? Are stories grown wild or sculpted? This workshop will focus on what makes certain stories and story structures rise to the top from interviews, and how storytelling impacts the way in which oral histories are conducted, shared, and collected.
March 5, 2020, 6:10-7:30pm
Uncertain Journeys
IN-PERSON with Carlin Liu Zia
Carlin Zia and her now-93-year-old Chinese-born grandfather started recording his life story over the phone in June 2016. In sharing and reflecting on his experience of, among other things, education, geopolitical conflict, (im)migration, and history, they quickly developed the provisional title An Uncertain Journey. In this presentation Carlin will share her experiments in transcription and/as poetry, discuss form, and reflect on process.
April 2, 2020, 6:10-7:30pm
Oral history as told by Al
ONLINE with Stephanie Dinkins
Not The Only One (N'TOO) is the multigenerational memoir of one black American family told from the “mind” of an artificial intelligence (AI) of evolving intellect. It is a voice-interactive AI entity designed, trained, and aligned with the needs and ideals of black and brown people who are drastically underrepresented in the tech sector. Not only does NTOO look like and emanate data derived from the position of blackness, it is also designed and programmed by us.
April 23, 2020, 6-7:30pm
THE STORIES WE TELL IMPACT THE ACTION WE TAKE: Our Histories, Our Illnesses, Our Futures
ONLINE with Joseph Plaster
In this interactive online event, writer and organizer Theodore (Ted) Kerr will facilitate an opportunity for participants to consider the role and practices of archiving and care in real time as it relates to memory, action, and historiziation. Kerr will connect this discussion with his work looking at the pre-histories of the ongoing AIDS crisis and how it relates to the unfolding story of COVID-19.
Find more Events with OHMA
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Find more Events with OHMA 〰️