In OHR’s spring 2023 issue,scholar Estelle B. Freedman shares her findings from a macro-level analysis of oral history databases in order to analyze women’s memories and responses to sexual harassment and violence. Freedman’s research shows the potential of applying digital humanities tools for distance reading to the close reading of intimate details of oral histories. […]
StoryCorps may perhaps be the United States’ most familiar and largest oral history project, yet many oral historians have trouble knowing whether to embrace it as such. Guest contributor Aubrey Parke suggests that another lens through which to consider StoryCorps is digital humanities, with its ethos of crowdsourcing and collaborative forms of publication. What can […]
The Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project recently completed an NEH-funded project to transform its oral history collection through the use of cutting edge oral history technologies that allow exploration of interviews through bilingual indexes. Here, Wexler Oral History staff members share their process and innovative results. By Christa Whitney and Carole Renard The […]
Digital technologies have created the opportunity to share oral history interviews in new ways, as evidenced by the many projects we discuss here on the blog and in the journal’s media reviews. The educational nonprofit, Clio, offers a place-based website and mobile interface to experience history where it happened. A recent update allows integration of […]
In OHR‘s ongoing series investigating how COVID-19 is changing the field of oral history, this post by Shu Wan discusses the implications of “digitizing” the interview process itself, with remote interviews conducted over web cams and microphones. What happens when uninvited guests appear in the interview? By Shu Wan During the COVID-19 pandemic, an increasing […]
As we have collectively hit pause on many routines, projects, and plans, oral historians are considering whether it’s time to pick up the recorder again, and if so, how to conduct interviews from a social distance. The field has long prioritized in-person interviews, but the current pandemic has led some to adapt practices to our […]
In issue 47.1, we feature the review essay, “The New Oral History of Architecture” by Kevin Block, exploring the historiography of architectural oral history and reviewing several recent projects and publications. Here, as he embarks on his own oral history project focused on architectural expertise and knowledge, he shares some of what he learned by […]
In their recent OHR article, “Migration and Inclusive Transnational Heritage: Digital Innovation and the New Roots Latino Oral History Initiative,” Hannah Gill, Jaycie Vos, Laura Villa-Torres, Maria Silvia Ramirez demonstrate how the New Roots Latino Oral History Initiative engages with and documents immigrant populations. Here Gill answers a few of our questions about the project. […]
New York University graduate student Yu-Shih Huang discusses her oral history StoryMap project which maps the life of one of Taiwan’s Lo-Sheng Sanatorium patients, Báu Bān-Ki. By Yu-Shih Huang According to an estimated statistic of International Telecommunication Union, “at the end of 2018, 51.2 per cent of the global population, or 3.9 billion people, was using […]
