Oral History Review

Learning from each other

By Andrew Shaffer and Troy Reeves

Here on the blog we have talked about the value of oral history in preserving spaces and memories, its importance in social change, and the work that goes into producing and presenting quality oral history projects. Throughout January we are focusing on educators who are using oral history in the classroom, and its transformative potential. Below we hear from our own Troy Reeves and students from his First-Year Interest Group (FIG) class on oral history and food production in Wisconsin. Make sure to check back in two weeks when Abigail Perkiss will join us to talk about her article in the most recent OHR and the profound changes she saw in students. If you are interested in contributing your own pedagogical experiences and insights email our blog editor, Andrew Shaffer, or Abigail Perkiss, Pedagogy Editor at the Review.

Fate intervened this summer, giving me the opportunity to teach a History 201 class this fall at UW-Madison. Over the course of fifteen weeks I instructed 15 first-year undergraduates about oral history. They all conducted a recorded audio interview and wrote a “Labor Portrait” – think Studs Terkel’s Working. In the end, as I hoped, I learned as much from them as they did from me.

At the end of the class I asked the students to think back on what they had learned. Below are a handful of excerpts from their reflections that give a glimpse into the transformative potential of oral history. They are as diverse and distinct as the students themselves, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have met and worked with such a fantastic group of human beings.

For one student, the class helped to forge connections between his disparate identities, connecting his childhood to his life as a college student.

It’s tough to say who I am, because I have always been constantly changing as a person. I have different accents, mannerisms, and even beliefs based on who I am surrounded by. Sometimes I am Mario Carrillo, the goofy nerd who enjoys reading old political books and drawing cartoons. Sometimes I am “Mah-yo Carreeyo,” a strong-willed Mexican kid who would rather see change out in the streets rather than in a classroom. I found that my time here at UW-Madison has challenged these two identities of mine. I am from the Illinois Rust Belt, a place where the atmosphere tastes like aluminum and ash. A place where hard work was valued more than your brain, which is something I’ve always struggled with.

I was a little afraid of what my parents would say about my choice of this FIG. After all, I was here to learn skills necessary to never again experience poverty, and a political science degree itself isn’t exactly a competitive degree. But taking this class reminded me of issues I faced as a kid. Even the narrator I chose reminded me of my own father: they both were Mexican immigrants who got their first jobs as low paid restaurant workers. I feel he has a story that is more common than it should, but it is the cultural barrier that stops American society from truly empathizing.

– Mario Carrillo

Some students latched onto the ability of oral history to amplify voices that rarely get an audience.

The woman I chose to interview is a type of worker that doesn’t often get a lot of credit. She works in the dining hall and is a student so her position is often overlooked and gone un-thanked. So I thought it would be nice to give her a voice.

– Annika Hendrickson

I chose my narrator because we had previously had conversations about work, and he seemed very opinionated on issues of workplace climate and the tipped wage. I also knew a bit about his life before coming to Madison and thought he had a story worth telling.

– AJ Hirschboeck

For some students, the class helped them see how history is constructed, and to see their own lives as a part of history.

The class certainly expanded my perspectives on a variety of topics, from destroying any misconceptions about history to all the social movements occurring today and the complicated commodity chains that put food on shelves.

– David Chen

I want to get more involved on campus to be a part of something and I hope that one day, a student will interview me and I will be in the UW Archives.

I wanted to have some information before choosing a person to interview so I went to the UW Archives to look at materials. I kept stumbling upon one person’s name over and over again, so I shot him an email and he was very willing to meet with me. At the time of the interview, I was in my first semester as a freshman at UW Madison. I absolutely love this school and I am very excited for next semester, next year, and all of the education I will get until I graduate. I want to get more involved on campus to be a part of something and I hope that one day, a student will interview me and I will be in the UW Archives.

– Stephanie Hoff

I never realized how much more there was to history besides multiple choice tests on wars. Although the interview was stressful, it was easily my most fun assignment that I had all semester. This class has even made me consider working for my local newspaper over the summer where I could conduct interviews with people and write articles.

– Madeline Kallgren

Some students saw the potential of the interview to make and improve relationships, building meaningful connections with people inside and outside of their communities.

I chose my narrator because Slow Food was a place that I really wanted to visit, but I could never muster up the courage to go alone and volunteer. So, I used this project as a way to get to know the people of slow food. I’m glad I did that because I was able to meet some really awesome and welcoming people. I’m also glad that I chose to be a part of this FIG because I got to meet some really cool people out of it.

– Yesha Shah

I chose my narrator because I had developed a good rapport with him before I even knew I was going to interview him. We are from the same country originally and I was interested in his story about his life in Madison as a fellow Indian. Oral history was the best to find out.

– Tanvi Tilloo

I may be a bit biased, but I agree – oral history is the best way for us to find out about each other, and to build connections. Teaching is exhausting, and grueling, and occasionally monotonous, and so damn worth it because it has allowed me to connect with some incredible people and to continue preaching the good word of oral history.

Want to contribute your own pedagogical insights or inquiries? Contact our social media coordinator, Andrew Shaffer, at ohreview@gmail.com to talk about writing for the blog. Add your voice to the conversation in the comments below or on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or Google+.

Featured image: “Classroom.” by MIKI Yoshihito, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

Troy Reeves is The Oral History Review’s Managing Editor. He also oversees the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s oral history program, which is housed in the UW-Madison Archives.

Andrew Shaffer is the Social Media Coordinator/Editorial Assistant at The Oral History Review and a Ph.D. student in History at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

A few (more) of our favorite things

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By Andrew Shaffer

As is becoming tradition, we want to use this, our last blog post of the year, to look back over last 12 months and remember all the fun we’ve had together. We have been drawn in by the “seductive intimacy” of oral history, and inspired by the power of audio to move “oral history out of the archives and back into communities.” We explored the world of transcriptionists and museum curators, and looked at projects that are putting oral history on the map. We asked practitioners to explain how they do oral history, and we are looking for contributors to expand this series in the coming year.

Our first series of the year was a dialogue between Tim Cole and Henry Greenspan about space and time in oral history interviews. In the first part, they delve into positioning and ask how we can think through a narrator’s physical and intellectual movements. In the second part, they wonder if “the now usual way we engage survivors and their retelling—the ‘testimony’ paradigm itself—is beginning to crumble.” Their conversation continues to spark ideas, and we are happy to help highlight the movements within our changing discipline

Another of our favorite things this year was the launch of our #OriginStories series, where we asked people from across the field to explain how they got into oral history, and why they love it. We started way back in February with Dana Gerber-Margie’s journey from the “gateway drug” of This American Life to her career as an audio archivist. Since then, we’ve heard from Adrienne Cain, Jessica Taylor, and Steven Sielaff, whose stories highlight both the power and value of oral history education.

In June, we celebrated Pride by talking to Josh Burford, who is using oral history and memory to resist anti-LGBTQ laws in North Carolina, and Jason Ruiz, who gave an in depth exploration of the article he co-wrote in The Oral History Review. The article was part of a special issue “Listening to and Learning from LGBTQ Lives” – another highlight from 2016. On the blog we also heard from contributors to the issue who explained the importance of music in queer memories, and the queer history of Madison, WI.

This year we also launched a blog takeover, where we invited students and alums from the Oral History MA program at Columbia University to occupy our little corner of the internet throughout the month of July. We are big fans of their blog and were excited to republish some articles by Audrey Augenbraum and Eylem Delikanli. One of my personal favorites was a piece by Andrew Viñales, in which he showed that oral history can be “a way for [students] to understand that the civil rights movement has never ended, that social justice movements always build from movements of the past.”

The most important event of the fall season is, of course, the OHA Annual Meeting, which took place in Long Beach, CA this year. We enlisted a local to explain some of the city’s fascinating history, and asked some of you to tell us what you love about the conference. We published a shortened version of a conference paper from Margaret Holloway, on her use of oral history in preserving a historically Black town in Alabama, and our own Troy Reeves took to the blog to show his gratitude for his OHA friends and family. We’re already counting down the days to #OHA2017, and hope you’re working hard on your proposals (reminder: the deadline for submission is January 31!).

Thanks for indulging our attempt to remember the good parts of 2016, even as we are eager to bid this year goodbye and good riddance. We hope to see you back on the blog again soon!

Featured image: “Christmas gift #3” by photochem_PA, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

Andrew Shaffer is the Social Media Coordinator/Editorial Assistant at The Oral History Review.

Oral History Annual Meeting: an enriching experience

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By Mark T Garcia

Before we give up on 2016, we’re taking one last look back at one of our favorite events from the year – the OHA Annual Meeting. We’ve already talked about why oral historians love the connectionsthey make at the Annual Meeting, and how it serves as a yearly dose of sanity. Today we bring you some final reflections from Mark Garcia, who served as our local guide during the meeting and managed social media throughout the conference. Enjoy his summary, and make sure to get your proposal for #OHA2017 in soon. The conference, entitled “Engaging Audiences: Oral History and the Public” will be held in Minneapolis, and the deadline for submissions is 31 January. We look forward to seeing you there.

This past October the Oral History Association conducted the Fiftieth Annual Meeting in Long Beach, California. The theme of the annual meeting was OHA@50: Traditions, Transitions and Technologies from the Field. Many of my fellow classmates and I attended the Annual Meeting. I had a unique role as the Oral History Review Editorial Assistant roaming the floor, attending panel discussions, providing updates via the Oral History Reviews social media accounts, and writing on the Oxford University Press’s blog about local Long Beach insights for the Annual Meeting. In addition, I attended the Oral History Review editorial meeting and took meeting notes. The meeting was an enriching experience as I was able to sit among the editorial staff while they strategized on topics for future issues, book and peer review updates, article submissions, and upcoming projects.

The heart of the Annual Meeting was the many panel discussions. One of the of panels I attended was Centennial Voices: Using Oral history to Document Traditions and Guide Transitions where National Park Service Staff Historian Lu Ann Jones discussed the various Oral History projects of the National Park Service. Another powerful panel was Activist Women Within: Re-thinking Red, Yellow, Brown and Black Power through Oral History. Special guest and commentator of the Warrior Women’s Film Project Madonna Thunder Hawk provided oral history accounts of the Standing Rock protest in North Dakota. Our very own Dr Natalie Fousekis, Director of the Center for Oral and Public History, was a speaker for the Oral History, Now (and Tomorrow) plenary session. Dr Fousekis provided insights on the current status of oral history, plus ideas, opinions, and discussion for future oral history projects. These are just a few highlights of the many engaging panels from fellow oral historians.

This enriching experience provided me affirmation on why I am studying to be an oral historian. It was exciting to hear and discuss many of the same practice’s I have learned at Cal State Fullerton and beneficial too learn new innovative ways to conduct oral histories. For more insight on the Oral History Association Annual Meeting listen to Outspoken: A COPH Podcast Episode Five and hear from other conference participant’s experiences.

Let us know what you loved about #OHA2016, or what you’re looking forward to about #OHA2017 in the comments below or on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or Google+.

Featured image credit: courtesy of the Oral History Association.

Mark T. Garcia is a graduate student at California State University, Fullerton. He co-curated Hard Times in the OC student exhibition for the Oakland Museum of California and participated in the Long Table Los Angeles Oral History Festival. Mark will be the Oral History Review Editorial Assistant for the 2016 Oral History Association Annual Meeting in Long Beach, CA and you can follow him on Twitter @HistoryBuffMark.

A note of thanks, a dose of sanity

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By Troy Reeves

2016 has had far more than its share of horribleness. Many of us are ready to leave this year far behind, even as we’re terrified of what the coming years may bring. At a time when many people are being told that their voices and lives don’t matter, we think oral historians have a vital role to play in amplifying silenced voices and helping us all imagine a better future. Before we say goodbye to 2016, Troy Reeves reflects back on some of the moments in which the support of friends, colleagues, and even strangers throughout the oral history world has helped to make the present survivable and the future imaginable.

Well, it has been a difficult twelve months. Andrew Shaffer and I both saw our mothers suffer through cancer diagnoses and recovery. We are both immensely thankful for those tasked with helping our mothers’ diagnoses and operations, and who assist with their continued convalescence. And I’m thankful for Andrew for carrying on with the social media during a difficult summer and fall.

I lost my father in July, and our Editor-in-Chief Kathy Nasstrom lost both her parents this summer. As we helped each other through our loss, we grew closer, which I did not think possible. So, I’m extremely thankful for Kathy, not only as the best damn developmental editor in the business but also as one of my best damn colleagues.

On top of that stress, the Oral History Association lost several key members in the last year. The organization’s executive director, Cliff Kuhn, passed away last November. And we lost long-time and well-known scholars Horacio Roque Ramírez and Leslie Brown since the 2015 OHA Annual Meeting in Tampa.

So, when #OHA2016—our 50^th Annual Meeting titled OHA@50—commenced last month in Long Beach, the feeling of loss weighed heavily on me. But when I got there, my colleagues reminded me that family does not mean just blood. And they offered a shoulder for me to cry on.

So along with my extended family—my in-laws and “laws”—I’m truly madly deeply thankful for my OHA family. Some of them I have known since my first OHA (Anchorage, 1999) some I just met, or really got to know, in the last couple years. All of them offer more to me in terms of advice, support, friendship, than I can give in return. To list them all here would serve little purpose; they know who they are.

I’m also quite thankful for the aforementioned venue, the OHA Annual Meeting, for furnishing all of us a place to meet and discuss all the myriad aspects of our profession. Thanks here can focus on a few, specifically Gayle Knight and Kristine Navarro-McElhaney, as well as the program and local arrangement committee members; I will rank this year’s conference as one of my favorites as well as most memorable. A shout out must go, too, to the Mentoring Committee; they have forced me to meet someone new the last two years, which all long-time conference attendees need.

In advance of OHA@50, Andrew and I, with the help of OHA leadership, asked my aforementioned oral history family to state why they love the OHA and/or its Annual Meeting. We listed some of them last month. I won’t bore you with mine, at least not in its entirety. But this year in Long Beach, #OHA2016 was indeed my yearly dose of sanity. While it sounds cliché to say it, in my case it rings true: I’m not sure what I’d have done without it.

Featured image credit: Thank you by Free for Commercial Use. CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Flickr.

Troy Reeves is the Oral History Review’s Managing Editor. He also oversees the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s oral history program, which is housed in the UW-Madison Archives.

Translating Hobson City

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By Margaret Holloway

While we still haven’t figured out a way to reproduce all of the excitement of the OHA Annual Meeting on the blog (see our most recent attempt here), we have figured out how to bring you a sampling of some of the exciting projects oral historians are working on. Below, we bring you a short version of Margaret Holloway’s paper from the conference, “Translating Hobson City, Alabama: An Ethnographic, Rhetorical, and Technological Approach.” Holloway is using oral history to preserve the memories of Hobson City, Alabama and help it survive into the future. If you are interested in contributing to the blog, email our social media coordinator, Andrew Shaffer, at ohreview[at]gmail[dot]com.

Crossing the train track from the predominantly white Anniston into the historically black Hobson City, Alabama, I immediately noticed the significant changes in environment and people. It was not until I exited my car and physically inserted myself into the Hobson City community that I learned that there was much more to this small town than what initially met my eyes.

Hobson City, Alabama is the oldest incorporated African American town in the state. The town is a part of a larger nationally recognized organization called the Historic Black Towns and Settlements Alliance, which includes Tuskegee, AL, Mound Bayou, MS, Grambling, LA, and Eatonville, FL. Hobson City is located right in predominantly white Anniston; the only thing that separates the two towns is a train track. The train track serves as a national marker that symbolizes segregation along with differences in socio-economic statuses within communities. Over the past two years, I have learned about the town’s rich African American origins, significant political events, and entrepreneurial pioneers of Hobson City that make this place a historical black town.

In May of 2016, I conducted an oral history interview with one of the town’s most significant citizens, Mr. Montressor Sudduth. A native of Hobson City, he is the middle child of three children, with an older brother and a younger sister. He was raised in a single-parent home by his mother. His story is rooted in the early beginnings of Hobson City, Alabama and his contributions to the town live on to this day.

An important theme in this interview was the park as a site for community fellowship and engagement. Mr. Sudduth spoke about how there used to be a swimming pool, a bowling alley and baseball field all at the park. The present park in Hobson City includes a playground, a field that could serve as a football field, and an old basketball court. The park that Mr. Sudduth spoke of in the interview was called the Booker T. Washington Park. I am not sure why this park dissolved but it was the nucleus of all community gatherings in the 50s and 60s.

Mr. Sudduth attended Miles College in Birmingham before working in a foundry in Anniston. While at the foundry he persuaded two of his friends to start a disc jockey group, which they called Stop Slicking the Wicked. The group developed their DJ skills before the disco wave so once disco became popular they were “prepared…ready for the game.” In between his time at Miles and his time as a foundry worker he landed an opportunity as a broadcaster. He stated that he “fulfilled the need for minority broadcasters…at that time FCC was opening doors for minorities to go into broadcasting.” That is how he landed a midnight DJ job at one of the top rock stations. Mr. Sudduth worked as a DJ for a number of years until he and his friends decided to open a record store. The store was located downtown on Noble Street and was the 2^ndor 3^rd black owned business in Anniston. To this day, Mr. Sudduth works as a DJ for the local radio station that serves the Hobson City area, WGHOM-am 1120 am. His group, Stop Slicking the Wicked, was one of the first to perform on WEN radio station, 107.7 which covered the entire state, from Mobile to Huntsville.

Mr. Sudduth continues to contribute to the historical richness of Hobson City, Alabama. He continues to leave a lasting mark by working at the only radio station that serves the Hobson City area. His presence and service helps preserve the history of this historical black town. Mr. Sudduth takes pride in being a professional, the son of a wonderful mother, a black business owner, a DJ, and a product of Hobson City. At the conclusion of our interview I asked Mr. Sudduth if he had any last thoughts that he wanted to share. He said “if you don’t see life giving you what you want, go out there and get it yourself. Design your life the way you want to design your life. Don’t let no one else design it for ya.” Those words exemplified how Mr. Sudduth lived and continues to live his life. He journeyed through life while making his own personal and professional choices and to this day he continues to contribute to the rich history of Hobson City.

Photo by the author, used with permission

The town established six goals in hopes of gaining access to human and capital resources, so that the town can return to a state of rich economic livelihood. Two of those goals are 1) recovering community histories and 2) achieving National Registry recognition. Collecting oral histories has accomplished the first goal and will hopefully help achieve the National Registry goal.

My oral history is the result of a class project from a course offered in the English Dept. at the University of Alabama taught by Dr. Michelle Bachelor Robinson. The class conducted a total of 14 oral histories with citizens of the town who were selected based on their contributions and significance to the town’s history. For my dissertation, I will conduct 2-3 more oral histories to add to that collection. Oral history plays a major role in gaining National Registry recognition because it recovers, rescues, and (re)inscribes (Royster and Kirsch) the stories that are not written in history books. Oral history allows others to hear and read about underrepresented stories that come out of towns such as Hobson City. It can be used to foster conversations across disciplines, across geographical locations, and across cultures on the importance of rescuing Historical Black Towns that have been marginalized, silenced, and dismissed in American history.

My dissertation goal is to create a digital space using a web platform that will house all of the research where I have assumed the role of either primary investigator or co-investigator for the entire Hobson City project. This space will serve as a digital preservation site for the town and will include the oral history projects, the Photovoice project and the cemetery and genealogy research. My target audiences for this digital space include the citizens of Hobson City, the HBTSA, The University of Alabama, and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who established the partnership with the HBTSA.

Chime into the discussion about aurality in oral history in the comments below or on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or Google+.

Featured image: “Tracks” by Kevin Moreira, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

Margaret Holloway is a 3rd year PhD student in English majoring in Composition Rhetoric and English Studies at the University of Alabama. Her work is grounded in qualitative research with a focus on historic African American community rhetorics found in oral histories, genealogical and archival studies, participatory action research in photovoice, and the functionality of digital spaces as a site for awareness, preservation, teaching and learning.

In the oral history toolbox

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By Steven Sielaff

Throughout 2016 we’ve featured oral history #OriginStories – tales of how people from all walks of life found their way into the world of oral history and what keeps them going. Most recently, Steven Sielaff explained how oral history has enabled him to connect his love of technology and his desire to create history. Today we launch a new series we’re calling #HowToOralHistory, where we invite you to explain some small aspect of your oral history practice. Our goal is both to promote best practices and to appreciate the detailed work that goes in to producing high quality oral history – from researching and recording, to transcribing, reviewing, editing, producing, publishing, and public presentation.

To kick off our #HowToOralHistory series, we invited Steven Sielaff to come back and explain some of how he estimates the costs – both in time and money – to produce a single well researched interview.

sielaff

Question: How much time should a small project budget to create a single oral history interview?

I have developed a general hourly cost schedule for use in the Baylor University Institute for Oral History, and I’ve tried to adapt it a bit for a one-person shop. I’m sure other people will have a variety of estimates depending on the composition of each oral history center and their policies regarding transcripts. Here are my results:

Calculations are in man-hours, and standardized for a one-hour interview:

Pre-Interview Research: 4-8 hours
Interview: 2-4 hours for onsite, 8 for local travel, 16 for longer
Audio Processing/Transcription: 15-20 hours
Review: 2-3 month wait
Post-Review Edits: 5 hours
Final Editing: 5 hours

Total: 30-60 hours, over 3-4 months

A few notes here:

I use one hour of audio as a control – obviously if your interviews are longer it will require more time for certain tasks such as transcribing/editing etc., so you can apply a multiplier based on your average length if you’d like.
The prep work and actual interview time can vary wildly depending on your topic and if you need to travel, so I provided a range there. For instance, I recently completed a long interview series I conducted in my office, so my prep involved listening to the previous interview while researching the two or three topics I planned to cover next. I usually would set aside half a day for this. If you are starting a project from scratch, obviously you will want to do more research.
I typically tell people it will take five to ten hours to transcribe one hour of audio. The low end represents an experienced listener and fast typist, the high end a novice. I also built into this transcription category the time it will take for you to audit check and initially edit your work. Remember, you want to represent yourself favorably when you send any produced materials to your narrators for the first time.
I included a review phase merely to point out how long we give our interviewees to correct their transcripts. Obviously you can not move forward until you receive the reviewed transcript back, so you will need to factor that into the overall consideration of what you can accomplish in a year, even though it might not directly be reflected in your own hours. For us, transcription review also serves as an additional ethical layer during processing, confirming the comfort level and willingness of the interviewee when it comes to presenting their interview to the world.
The final two categories are for adding corrections and final editing, which for us means making the final product “pretty” when it comes to overall amount of content included (updated information and/or editor notations) and style of the document. We will currently place what we call draft transcripts online that do not include the “Final Editing” steps, so you may or may not be interested in including this final category in your calculation.

In short: it varies. Every interview is different, but this guide can help to budget time when planning out an oral history project.

This guide was adapted from an answer Steven Sielaff provided on H-OralHist.

We are accepting proposals for both our #OriginStories and #HowToOralHistory articles for the next few months and look forward to hearing from you. We ask that finished articles be between 500-800 words or 15-20 minutes of audio or video. These are rough guidelines, however, so we are open to negotiation in terms of media and format. We should also stress that while we welcome posts that showcase a particular project, we can’t serve as landing page for kickstarter or similar funding sites. Please direct any questions, pitches, or submissions to the social media coordinator, Andrew Shaffer, at ohreview[at]gmail[dot]com.

Image: “Measuring Tape” by Jamie, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

Steven Sielaff became Senior Editor & Collections Manager at the Baylor University Institute for Oral History (BUIOH) in 2014. A graduate of Baylor University’s Museum Studies master’s program, he began at BUIOH as a graduate assistant from 2011 to 2013, working on various web-based and multimedia projects, including For the Greater Good: Philanthropy in Waco, the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission’s Texas Liberators Oral History Project, and War Comes to Waco, A WWI digital exhibit. Steven conducted oral history series locally on both the Dr Pepper Museum and Mayborn Museum Complex.

Steven’s primary professional foci are the value of institutional histories and the use of oral histories in the digital age, and his research includes museological surveys of Texas institutions and integration of the University of Kentucky’s Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS) online software at Baylor. He currently serves on the board of the Heart of Texas Regional History Fair and is on the Board of Directors for the Texas Oral History Association (TOHA). In addition, he is the current treasurer for the Museum Association of Waco (MAW), Technical Advisor/Managing Editor for the H-OralHist listserv, and is a member of the Oral History Association’s Metadata Task Force.

OHR Virtual Issue: from roots to the digital turn

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By Andrew Shaffer

We spend a lot of time in this space pointing to particular people or projects that we think are doing interesting things with oral history. In June we talked to Josh Burford, who is using oral history to start important conversations in North Carolina. In April, we heard from Shanna Farrell, who discussed Berkeley’s Oral History Summer Institute. Last September we talked to Doug Boyd about how he uses oral history in the classroom, and the incredible potential that OHMS (Oral History Metadata Synchronizer) has for making oral histories more accessible. We love highlighting the exciting things others are doing, but sometimes we can’t help but brag about our own work. We’ve done something really cool, and we are so excited to share it with you.

This week, in recognition of the OHA’s 50^th anniversary, we are releasing our very-first-ever-super-exciting virtual issue of the OHR. This special edition draws from more than forty years of work in the Review, from as far back as our first issue in 1973 and as recent as 2013. The articles included all investigate – from different angles – the nature and value of oral history. Together they demonstrate some of the ebbs and flows at work within our discipline over the last four decades.

The earliest article in the virtual issue, “Black History, Oral History, and Genealogy” by Alex Haley (yes – that Alex Haley!) retraces his steps as he uncovered his family history, from fragmented oral histories, to international research, and which would eventually become the beloved book and multiple television seriesRoots. In the process, Haley makes a compelling case for the value of oral history, connecting it to his family’s oral memories. The article is especially timely with the reboot of Roots, and could be a useful teaching tool for oral historians hoping to demonstrate the power of oral history.

On the other end of the spectrum, the most recent article republished in the virtual issue “Shifting Questions: New Paradigms for Oral History in a Digital World” by Steve Cohen asks how the digital turn makes us reconsider fundamental questions about the form and presentation of oral history. Despite four decades separating these two articles, they both demonstrate the value of oral history – and the work it takes to do it well.

In addition to these authors, the issue includes work from Ron Grele, Michael Frisch, Charlie Morrissey, Gary Okihiro, Linda Shopes, Kathryn Anderson, Susan Armitage, Dana Jack, Judith Wittner, Alessandro Portelli, Valerie Yow, Daniel Kerr, Mark Feldstein, Jerrold Hirsch, Erin Jessee, and Siobhán McHugh.

Putting together this special issue required months of soliciting suggestions, digging through back issues, and continually narrowing down a long list of articles until we felt confident that the 15 selections we made were some of the best reflections of the nature and value of oral history. In the process we were continually reminded just how much incredible content we’ve published over the years. Over the next few months we’ll be unlocking some of these articles, in addition to those selected for the virtual issue, so make sure to keep an eye on our Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ pages every #ThrowbackThursday for greatest hits from over 40 years of the Oral History Review.

Keep up to date with all of our exciting things happening in the oral history world by following us on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or Google+.

Note: the article “The Affective Power of Sound: Oral History on Radio” within the virtual issue contains audio files that work best in Internet Explorer. If the audio files appear as a link, you can access the files by right clicking on the audio links, saving them to your desktop, and playing them from there.

Featured image: Neon by nuzree, Public Domain via Pixabay.

Andrew Shaffer is the Social Media Coordinator/Editorial Assistant at The Oral History Review

Video didn’t kill the radio star – she’s hosting a podcast

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By Siobhán McHugh

When we’re not busy plotting to make Oxford University Press’s social media all oral history all the time, we occasionally branch out to see what oral historians are doing in other corners of the internet. This week we bring you one of our favorite recent pieces, in which Siobhán McHugh discusses the growth and power of podcasting. Originally published in The Conversation, the article explains some of the reasons why podcasting offers potential for social engagement and even social change. McHugh’s article in OHR 39.2 on the “Affective Power of Sound” was selected for re-publication as part of our special 50^th anniversary virtual issue, which will be released in the coming weeks

Podcasters P.J. Vogt, host of Reply All, and Starlee Kine, host of Mystery Show, addressed sold-out sessions at the Sydney Writers’ Festival last month, riding the wave of popularity engendered by Serial, the 2014 US true crime podcast series whose 100 million downloads galvanised the audio storytelling world.

Over 12 weeks, using a blend of personal narratives and investigative journalism delivered in ultra-casual conversational style, host Sarah Koenig examined the case against Adnan Syed, a Baltimore high school student who had been convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in 1999.

In risky but inspired innovation, the series launched without a conclusive ending. It invited listeners to veer with Koenig through the unfolding evidence – a departure hailed as making journalism more transparent, in a genre not without ethical conundrums. The show fomented raucous chatrooms online and Koenig featured on the cover of Time magazine.

“Hosting” is at the heart of the vaunted podcasting revolution that has seen comedy, “chumcasts” (friends riffing on a theme) and deeply personal storytelling vie with established radio documentary, feature and interview formats for audience share. In radio institutions such as the ABC or BBC, programs have “presenters” and the organisation adds further brand identity. In the ever-expanding podsphere (over 350,000 podcasts are listed on iTunes), “hosts” speak directly into our ear.

This seductive intimacy affects both the form and content of the audio storytelling genre. It appeals to listeners from hitherto untapped demographics as well as to rusted-on audiophiles – a development being watched by both advertisers and activists.

In the predominantly English-speaking 12-year-old podsphere, producers and consumers of podcasts used to be mainly young, white, educated, affluent males. But, in the last two years, female listenership has doubled. Female hosts are storming the studio (or bedroom, where many an indie podcast originates, or garage, where US comedian Marc Maron famously conducted a deeply revealing interview with Barack Obama last year).

“Hosts are really forming relationships in new ways with their listeners,” says Julie Shapiro, CEO of Radiotopia, “a curated network of extraordinary, story-driven shows” founded in 2014. It now has over ten million downloads a month of its 14 shows.

Radiotopia’s recent “Podquest” competition attracted 1,537 entrants from 53 countries. The finalistspropose shows that feature marginalised voices and quirky perspectives, delivered as engaging crafted narrative.

Radiotopia and Gimlet, the independent US network that hosts Kine and Vogt, have been created by former public radio broadcasters. They still proclaim the editorial values and lofty mission articulated when National Public Radio (NPR) was founded in 1971.

The podsphere is unregulated – open slather for hate speech and religious rants, with the medium already exploited by groups like ISIS. But minorities are also colonising the space, with growing audiences for shows on transgender issues, gender, sexuality and race.

In Australia, both public broadcasters are developing podcast-first formats. SBS has True Stories, unusual tales of multicultural experiences, and the ABC offers First Run, which ranges from comedy to entertaining history.

But other organisations, from community radio to independents, are now able to compete for listeners. Longtime ABC star Andrew Denton partnered The Wheeler cultural centre in Melbourne to launch his excellent podcast series on euthanasia, Better Off Dead.

Other veteran radio journalists are going solo. In 2015, US producer John Biewen, whose work has featured on prestigious outlets including This American Life, NPR and the BBC, launched his own show, Scene On Radio. He told me:

Liberation from broadcast gatekeepers and formats outweighed the advantages they bring … the only downside … is the loss of audience numbers. [But] the freedom to produce work in the tone and at the length that I choose is priceless.

Thrillingly, podcasts can be as long as a piece of string. Audio producers can focus on a natural narrative shape rather than artificially moulding a story to a pre-ordained duration. This enhanced Serial’s appeal and opens new structural possibilities for the form.

At one end, we may see podcasting develop further as a form of literary journalism: a poetic or narrative audio genre long established in Europe and articulated by the New Journalismof the 1960s and ‘70s. It incorporates qualities such as immersive reportage, scenes, evocative writing and a subjective point of view.

At the other end of the spectrum, cheaply produced podcast panel-fests are proliferating. The topics range from the elections in Australia and the US to race and popular culture. Some of these sound clunky and turgid – print journalists operating in a medium they don’t yet get. Others, such as Buzzfeed’s Another Round, have the chemistry and the tone spot on, snaring big names such as Hillary Clinton along the way.

This rapidly evolving podcast ecology is coming under increasing academic scrutiny.

Meanwhile, the race continues to find the next Serial. The second season of Serial, about the troubled Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, a US soldier held captive by the Taliban for almost five years, didn’t quite manage it. Canada’s CBC got close with Somebody Knows Something.

The best candidate yet is The Bowraville Murders, unexpectedly well produced by The Australian newspaper, in which rookie podcaster Dan Box investigates the unsolved murders of three Aboriginal children from the same small town 25 years ago, bringing raw pain and kneejerk racism directly to listeners.

Having received scant attention for his other crime reportage, Box was astonished by the reaction to the podcast: it has probably been instrumental in launching a fresh trial. Its power lies in fundamental aspects of the audio medium: its capacity to convey emotion and evoke empathy, imagination and intimacy. When those strengths are harnessed, podcasting becomes a formidable force for social engagement.

Want to read more from McHugh about radio, podcasting, and the future of oral history? Check her out online at www.mchugh.org or through her article “The Affective Power of Sound: Oral History on Radio” published in OHR 39.2. Add your voice to the conversation by chiming into the discussion in the comments below, or on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or Google+.

Featured image: Microphone by NikolayF, Public Domain via Pixabay.

Siobhán McHugh is an award-winning writer and documentary-maker, with broad experience of oral history as a practitioner, teacher and consultant. Her oral histories range across social, cultural, scientific, environmental, multicultural and political themes and have been made into books, films, TV and radio documentaries, CDs, a stage play, and featured on-line. Her doctoral dissertation, “Oral History and the Radio Documentary: Intersections and Synergies,” included an accompanying radio series, Marrying Out, which won a gold medal at the New York Radio Festival (2010). McHugh is a senior lecturer in the School of Journalism, Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong. More information about her work is available on her website.

A technophile embraces oral history in the digital age

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By Steven Sielaff

Today we return to our ongoing series of oral history origin stories. We hear how Steven Sielaff found his way to the crazy mixed up world of oral history, and how his technophilia feeds into his love of oral history.

Since this is an oral historian origin story, I feel I need to begin this post with a bit of a confession. Even though I earned a bachelor’s degree in History from Baylor University, it was not until the summer of 2011, the term before I was to begin my graduate work at Baylor in the Museum Studies program, that I was introduced to oral history in general, and the stellar work and reputation of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History (BUIOH) in particular. Some years had passed since I was in the classroom, and I was looking for a way to get back into the flow when the history department chair suggested I look into BUIOH Director Stephen Sloan’s Seminar in Oral History course. Thankfully Stephen was in his office across the street, and after a brief discussion, I decided to sign up for the seminar.

There were only three of us in this summer session: myself and two young ladies wrapping up their master’s in secondary education. Almost from the start of the course I saw in the oral history profession many of the same characteristics that drew me to museum studies, namely a multidisciplinary nature that encourages eager young historians to “do” and “create” rather than simply read and research. The recent emphasis on oral history’s entry into the digital age also caught my eye, as I am quite the technophile (I always seemed to find myself as the token humanities lover among my circle of programmer/coder friends).

About a month into the seminar Stephen offered me an assistantship at the Institute working on various grant-funded projects, a position I would keep throughout my entire tenure in the Museum Studies program. It was pretty exciting to combine what I was learning in class with both my work at the Institute and my interest in museums. For my seminar project I conducted several interviews on the origin of the Dr Pepper Museum here in town (yes, we have a Dr Pepper museum, and yes, you should totally visit next time you are in Waco!). Meanwhile, as part of my job I created a web portal for a project funded by a local foundation entitled “For the Greater Good: Philanthropy in Waco.”

I will say here it is interesting to see just how much things have changed for us here at the Institute when it comes to online access and curation in the short five years I’ve been involved in oral history. As I pulled the “Philanthropy in Waco” pages into our brand new institutional website last month, I reflected on how many digital tools are available now for oral historians looking to share their work, and how differently I would build this website if I was to create it today. It was one of these tools that also helped sell me on oral history when, still as a graduate student, I was able to beta test the University of Kentucky Louie B. Nunn Center’s Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS). Working on adapting our transcripts to work within the OHMS system was exciting work and also translated into a panel presentation at my first OHA conference in 2013. It was at this conference I also served as editorial/social media assistant for the Oral History Review (OHR), thus beginning a relationship with the good folks at OHR that has already led to several reviews and blog posts.

As I wrapped up my master’s degree with a joint BUIOH-Museum Studies oral history project on the genesis of our university museum complex, I knew that I was leaning more toward a life in oral history than museums. Thankfully only a month after my graduation a temporary position became available at the Institute, and I began a new role in researching university history. During this time, however, I also immersed myself in the entire digital lifespan of oral history and learned all I could about the Institute’s accession and processing procedures, particularly our budding new digitization initiatives. When my mentor Elinor Maze announced in the fall of 2013 she would be retiring soon, I knew immediately that this opening, now appropriately weighted more toward the collections management aspect of the job, was perfect for me. Fortunately, Baylor agreed, and I began my current position as Senior Editor and Collection Manager of the BUIOH in the spring of 2014.

Honestly, I cannot imagine a more exciting time to be an oral historian when you consider the wealth of information that the digital age enables us to both discover and, in the case of digitization, rediscover. I feel tremendously blessed to be able to apply my talents at BUIOH to help open our collection to world, and I look forward to the tidal wave of information and innovation that is sure to come from our profession in the years ahead.

Miss the excitement of the #OHMATakeover? Follow our friends at the Oral History Masters program at Columbia University online at oralhistory.columbia.edu or visit their blog here. Add your voice the conversation by chiming into the discussion in the comments below, or on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or Google+.

Featured image credit: “Technology, keyboard, computing” by Pixies, Public Domain via Pixabay.

Date August 5, 2016
Author Oral History
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Oral history for youth in the age of #BlackLivesMatter

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By Andrew Viñales

The #OHMATakeover of the OHR blog comes to a close as Andrew Viñales discusses the benefits of youth listening to activists in their communities. Thanks for following along as we invited our East Coast colleagues to shake things up a little, and come back in August for a return to our regularly scheduled program. For more from Columbia’s oral history program, visit them online or follow their blog.

As students in Columbia University’s OHMA program we are often urged to consider Oral History projects that not only serve to archive interviews for future use, but that “do something.” Indeed, many in my fellow cohort, myself included, have participated in community organizing, activism, and pushing for social change. On Thursday 24 March 2016, Paul Ortiz presented his talk “Oral History in the age of Black Lives Matter” as part of the OHMA workshop series. In the talk, he presented much of the work he and his students at the University of Florida are conducting, within the frame of the current political climate. He says what is special about this political climate is that young people, particularly students, are asking if they see a place for themselves in the world. I related heavily to this as a young student also interested in using oral history for social change. Ortiz provided many examples of how he and his students have used oral history to not only document the lives of people fighting for social justice, but also as a tool to inspire young people to act. He gave an example of his students being connected to former members of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the civil rights movements. Many of his students maintained contact with these civil rights veterans as they pursued their own activism and community organizing.

I was inspired to consider the possibilities of experienced activists and community organizers participating in public oral histories with young folks. This is already being done with the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida. As part of their Mississippi Freedom Project they have facilitated interviews with residents of the Mississippi Delta, and veterans of the civil rights movement. One of the most impressive outcomes of this project was the community investment in McComb, Mississippi, in which high school students were able to experience the history of the SNCC and Freedom Summer by listening to folks who lived through it. Not only was this a more tangible way to learn the history, but it was a chance for high school students to draw connections with what is going on in the world around them. If they could see people who were their age in the 1960s actively participating in civil disobedience, planning actions and celebrating victories, perhaps some would be moved to participate in current struggles. In fact, as Ortiz mentioned in his talk, some of the participants in that program went back to Florida and founded their local chapter of the Dream Defenders!

What is special about this political climate is that young people, particularly students, are asking if they see a place for themselves in the world.

As for myself, a young Afro-Latinx who grew up in the Bronx and attended high school on the campus of Hostos Community College, I was always surrounded by active participants in social movements. I knew I went to school in a place that existed because of activism including the Hostos Take Over, but I would have benefitted from listening to the these veterans. Although I’m sure not all students would be too pleased to attend a lecture, assembly or class in which an interviewer takes a life history approach to get a narrator’s story, I can imagine a wealth of creativity to make this an active and participatory oral history project.

“Black Lives Matter” by Gerry Lauzon, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

A great example of a community based youth program using oral history is the McComb Legacies Project in McComb, Mississippi which collaborates regularly with the University of Florida’s Samuel Proctor Oral History Program. According to the McComb Legacies Project website they aim to give youth an “opportunity to learn about, document, and share their local civil rights movement and labor history” and with this history they urge the students to “examine and take action to improve their world today.” In essence, they use oral history to not only archive the important history of the civil rights movement, but to inspire the youth to participate in social movements relevant to them. The best part is the participants seem to enjoy it! Students were even able to work with the Urban School of San Francisco, and the Telling their Stories Oral History Archives Project, to film and transcribe interviews they conducted with McComb veterans of the civil rights movement. For an example of the work McComb students have done, please see their interview with Ms. Jacqueline Byrd Martin, note that in “Part 4” Ms. Martin describes her experiences being arrested and traveling around the country to bring light to what was going on in her Mississippi community.

The McComb Legacies Project, and the Telling their Stories Oral History Archives Project have developed what I believe could be a great tool for oral historians to not only inform students of important local history, but as a way for them to understand that the civil rights movement has never ended, that social justice movements always build from movements of the past. As an oral historian doing work in the age of Black Lives Matter, I believe this approach can be a crucial tool in getting people to contextualize the world around them, but also encourage them to act!

This post was originally published on the OHMA blog. Add your voice the conversation by chiming into the discussion in the comments below, or on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or Google+.

Featured image: “Photograph of Butler Library, Columbia University’s largest single library.” by JSquish, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Andrew Viñales is a student in the Oral History Masters program at Columbia University in New York.

Date July 29, 2016
Author Oral History
Comments No Comments

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